[gevorg]

I enjoy Zimmer soundtracks as well, too bad that "The Dark Knight Rises" hi-res from HDTracks is brickwalled at ~22KHz:

 

[johnnyb]

From what I've read across Head-Fi, some are recorded much better than others.  That's of course what I am looking for .

A particularly good recording, from an outstanding conductor, is Dudamel's Discoveries album. Available in hi rez too. Great sampler of what classical can sound like.

 

[Rob Watts]

I enjoy Zimmer soundtracks as well, too bad that "The Dark Knight Rises" hi-res from HDTracks is brickwalled at ~22KHz:

What is the difference between the top track and the bottom track? Is top 44.1 and bottom 192?

 

[gevorg]

Its the Left / Right channel of "The Fire Rises" track on the 24/192 version.

Screenshot of spectral frequency display as rendered by Adobe Audition.

 

[Rob Watts]

That's weird. The left looks like 44.1 - you can see a image line around 44.1 showing the timing errors - but the bottom looks correct for 192 (there is little energy in music above 20k). When I get home from holiday I will FFT my copy.
 
Rob

 

[wskl]

This one has a timeless quality - "Adagietto" from Mahler's Symphony No.5
 

 

[Slaphead]

That brings up a good point, what about movie soundtracks? Certainly some scores are amazing pieces of work, one of my favourite genres.

Absolutely - when I'm producing (Trance, Drum & Bass) I find that I'm highly influenced by incidental movie music (For the record that's influenced, not copying)

There are some movie soundtracks that are absolute works of art.

 

[kstuart]

There were sub-labels in the late 50s and early 60s that had particularly good classical music recordings - "RCA Living Stereo" and "Mercury Living Presence".   Those may or may not be the best performances of the particular work, but they were always among the best recordings - minimally miked in true stereo on hand built tube consoles and tape decks.
 
IMHO, the "Scheherazade" (Rimsky-Korsakov) by Reiner and the Chicago Symphony on RCA Living Stereo (especially the SACD) is both the best performance of the work, and also one of the best recordings of an orchestra (I use it in testing audio gear).

 

[Rob Watts]

I have used Audacity to analyse the first 55 seconds of the fire rises track on the 192k The Dark Knight Rises. This is the FFT I got from the data from Audacity with plot to 96K with markers at 11.025 kHz:
 

Firstly lets ignore the 22.05k peaks which are odd. The plot we are getting though is entirely consistent with a 192k recording - music simply does not have much energy above 20k. We can see the noise increasing above 50k, and this is consistent with ADC noise from the noise shaper - that's why Dave has an optional filter to remove this unwanted noise. If this was a 44.1 upsampled, we would not see this, as the upsampling filter would remove this noise. Its also one of the benefits of Davina ADC project, as this will not have significant ADC noise shaper noise below 500 kHz.
 
But what is odd is the 22.05k peak. I suspect this is coming from a synthesiser that is running at 44.1k, and has been SRC and added to the mix - but the primary recording of the acoustic instruments is indeed at 192k. Or it may be simple noise pick-up in the studio from 44.1k sources. Either way, I don't like it.
 
Rob

 

[sjwaudio]

  There were sub-labels in the late 50s and early 60s that had particularly good classical music recordings - "RCA Living Stereo" and "Mercury Living Presence".   Those may or may not be the best performances of the particular work, but they were always among the best recordings - minimally miked in true stereo on hand built tube consoles and tape decks.
 
IMHO, the "Scheherazade" (Rimsky-Korsakov) by Reiner and the Chicago Symphony on RCA Living Stereo (especially the SACD) is both the best performance of the work, and also one of the best recordings of an orchestra (I use it in testing audio gear).

 
I agree - both the RCA Living Stereo and the Mercury Living Presence recordings are excellent - and Reiner's "Scheherazade" is an all-time great for both sound and performance. 
 
A few months ago, you could get the first two RCA Living Stereo box sets relatively cheap on Amazon. Volume 1 dropped as low as $60 (for 60 CDs) from some third party sellers, but is back up around $100 now. That is a great way to ramp up your classical collection very fast with some great recordings. 
 
I have the first two Mercury Living Presence box sets, but have not yet grabbed the third. Their prices tend to stay higher than for the RCA Living Stereo boxes. Both Mercury box sets that I have include lots of classic performances in excellent sound. But the Mercury "house sound" can be somewhat dry, which which can sound shrill to some people and/or on some equipment. I'll usually listen to Mercury recordings on warmer headphones (e.g., Phillips Fidelio X2 or Sennheiser HD650) rather than on more analytic headphones (e.g., AKG Q701 or Beyerdynamic DT880). 
 
For sound quality, a number of smaller "boutique" labels are worthwhile. The labels I gravitate toward include Harmonia Mundi, BIS, Channel Classics, Linn, Telarc, Hyperion, and Chandos. Most of these labels have both Super-Audio CDs (SACDS) and high-resolution downloads, and the quality of their regular CDs is excellent. Harmonia Mundi is particularly strong for baroque music, both popular (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi) and more obscure. Channel Classics has a range of great recordings - try Rachel Podger for baroque music (concertos and solo violin works by Bach or Vivaldi) or Ivan Fischer for Mahler symphonies. Hyperion offers a free monthly sampler for download in FLAC, ALAC, and MP3 formats, which is a great way to try out new composers and compositions -- this month's is at     http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_HYP201606
 
Another option for great sounding classical music comes directly from some of the symphony orchestras themselves. Both the San Francisco Symphony and the London Symphony have created their own labels and released a number of excellent high-resolution recordings of major symphonic works. Many of the SF Symphony recordings of Mahler Symphonies conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas are excellent - you can sample several if you are an Amazon Prime member and then get the high-res downloads or SACDs directly from the SFSO web site. 

 

[Mr Trev]

   
I agree - both the RCA Living Stereo and the Mercury Living Presence recordings are excellent - and Reiner's "Scheherazade" is an all-time great for both sound and performance. 
 
A few months ago, you could get the first two RCA Living Stereo box sets relatively cheap on Amazon. Volume 1 dropped as low as $60 (for 60 CDs) from some third party sellers, but is back up around $100 now. That is a great way to ramp up your classical collection very fast with some great recordings. 
 
I have the first two Mercury Living Presence box sets, but have not yet grabbed the third. Their prices tend to stay higher than for the RCA Living Stereo boxes. Both Mercury box sets that I have include lots of classic performances in excellent sound. But the Mercury "house sound" can be somewhat dry, which which can sound shrill to some people and/or on some equipment. I'll usually listen to Mercury recordings on warmer headphones (e.g., Phillips Fidelio X2 or Sennheiser HD650) rather than on more analytic headphones (e.g., AKG Q701 or Beyerdynamic DT880). 
 
For sound quality, a number of smaller "boutique" labels are worthwhile. The labels I gravitate toward include Harmonia Mundi, BIS, Channel Classics, Linn, Telarc, Hyperion, and Chandos. Most of these labels have both Super-Audio CDs (SACDS) and high-resolution downloads, and the quality of their regular CDs is excellent. Harmonia Mundi is particularly strong for baroque music, both popular (Bach, Handel, Vivaldi) and more obscure. Channel Classics has a range of great recordings - try Rachel Podger for baroque music (concertos and solo violin works by Bach or Vivaldi) or Ivan Fischer for Mahler symphonies. Hyperion offers a free monthly sampler for download in FLAC, ALAC, and MP3 formats, which is a great way to try out new composers and compositions -- this month's is at     http://www.hyperion-records.co.uk/dc.asp?dc=D_HYP201606
 
Another option for great sounding classical music comes directly from some of the symphony orchestras themselves. Both the San Francisco Symphony and the London Symphony have created their own labels and released a number of excellent high-resolution recordings of major symphonic works. Many of the SF Symphony recordings of Mahler Symphonies conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas are excellent - you can sample several if you are an Amazon Prime member and then get the high-res downloads or SACDs directly from the SFSO web site. 

As a bonus, some of the RCA SACDs are also recorded as a 3 channel (L, R, Centre fill) - can't remember which ones though.
 
I have some SACDs from the Pentatone label which sound pretty good as well. Only have a couple of Mercury discs, but the ones I have are quite ridden with tape noise -quite a bit of hiss

 

[RCBinTN]

Thanks to all who posted recommendations for well-produced classical music!  I appreciate your help and especially related to the Mahler.  What piqued my interest was a visit to the Nashville Symphony last w/e when they performed Mahler's Third.  Absolutely blew me away.  I want to hear that kind of sound on my HD800!!  Therefore, the search for the best CD's goes on.
 
Enjoy your music,
RCB

 

[sjwaudio]

  Thanks to all who posted recommendations for well-produced classical music!  I appreciate your help and especially related to the Mahler.  What piqued my interest was a visit to the Nashville Symphony last w/e when they performed Mahler's Third.  Absolutely blew me away.  I want to hear that kind of sound on my HD800!!  Therefore, the search for the best CD's goes on.
 
Enjoy your music,
RCB

Mahler heard live is an amazing experience.
 
For Mahler recordings in high-resolution, you also have the option of blu-ray recordings with high-resolution blu-ray audio that will play on any blu-ray player. 
I've been very impressed with the Claudio Abbado / Lucerne Festival Orchestra recordings. You can get #1-7 in a box set for about $75. No. 9 is available separately.
The blu-ray recordings by Ricardo Chailly and the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra have received strong reviews, but I've not heard any of them yet. 
 
For SACDs or high-res downloads combining great sound and strong performances, in addition to the Tilson-Thomas / SFSO recordings (I like his Mahler #7, #8, and #9) and the Adam Fischer / Budapest Philharmonic recordings on Linn (I like his Mahler #2 and #4) I recommended above, the recordings on Telarc by Benjamin Zander are worth seeking out. He never finished his set, but I have enjoyed his recordings of #1, #3, #4, #5, #6, and #9. All but #9 are SACDs. For a while most of these discs were available very cheap at Berkshire Record Outlet (www.broinc.com) but are no longer in stock there. It looks like they are available on Amazon. His recording of #2, the "Resurrection" is on Linn and widely available. One bonus with Zander is that he usually includes an additional disk in which he gives a long talk about the symphony and its background, which may be oversimplified but for a non-musician like me is helpful and interesting.
 
Apropos of kstuart's recommendation of Fritz Reiner on RCA, Reiner's RCA SACD of Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde is a classic and still sounds quite good.

 

[Mr Trev]

  Thanks to all who posted recommendations for well-produced classical music!  I appreciate your help and especially related to the Mahler.  What piqued my interest was a visit to the Nashville Symphony last w/e when they performed Mahler's Third.  Absolutely blew me away.  I want to hear that kind of sound on my HD800!!  Therefore, the search for the best CD's goes on.
 
Enjoy your music,
RCB

Nashville Symphony?? So what, do they have a banjo and steel guitar section? (sorry, couldn't resist)

 

[Light - Man]

Talking of up-and-coming solo violinists, I went to see a brilliant concert recently where Esther Yoo played (American born with Korean parents).
 
She started playing when she was 4 and was brought up in Europe due to her fathers job as a Uni Prof.
 
She is now 21, I happened to bump into her after the concert and I had a quick chat with her where she was very friendly and unassuming.
 
At the concert she did an encore and I have never seen the lead violinist (and her second) lean back in their chairs with the biggest grins in amazement at her talent and technique.
 
I also spoke to the lead violinist after and she said she was simply "World Class."
 
There are not many YT videos of her - I will post the pieces she played when I get a chance.
 
As examples here she is when she was 16.
 

 
Here she is fairly recently (video uploaded Jan 2016) - Brahms / Violin Concerto in D Major Op. 77 '3rd Movement.