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Well-recorded, quality popular music albums
This topic appears from time to time, but I was unable to find a dedicated thread for this. I frequently enjoy this YouTuber's output, and this seemed like in might help those looking for great recordings for those DIY events. It is all popular music, but there is plenty of diversity here. Note that while he is sampling and mentions songs, his point is that the entire album is a great recording.
While these may or may not feature passages that make sub-par designs come unglued, they likely will make all your equipment sound glorious and shouldn't give you a 6-day brainworm 
. It could also give you incentive to expend the range of your collection or sample some untouched genres. Biggest surprise: no Dire Straits, Nora Jones or Celtic folk. (Not that there's anything wrong with those. 
)
Comments
I knew most of these, or knew of them. I did not know of Karnivool, but liked it. The Memoirs of a Geisha I may have to grab a copy of....
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I'm making a playlist in Tidal. I'm only at #35, Bonnie Raitt, "I can't Make You Love Me" I used that song in my Iowa DIY demo a few years ago.
Really good song there! I've almost used it as a cut prior.
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Rick Beato has some good content.
Yup I like Beato, learned some things from him.
Here's another source, with some overlap, that was posted just last month. Recordings span about the last 50 years.
https://www.whathifi.com/features/best-produced-recordings-to-test-your-speakers
Also:
https://www.whathifi.com/features/50-albums-audiophiles
Somewhat related - we will eventually be posting a page which contains download links to a metric fuckton of demo tracks created by MAC and our members.
Rick's videos are excellent, he knows his stuff and as a musician/producer, explains things in a way non-musicians can understand. His "What Makes This Song Great" clips are really good.
For well recorded albums, my votes go to oldies:
I like the 'sound' of these records: you can hear everything, the instruments - particularly drums - sound right and the mixes are clear. Several were produced by Glyn Johns, whose work over the years has been great.
Not necessarily my 'favourite' albums, but some of the 'best sounding'.
Geoff
If anything Rush made these lists then the entire list is suspect.
You'd have to be able to stand Rush's vocals to find out if it was well recorded.
Ron
Anything recorded by Steely Dan/Donald Fagen is going to be well done and I use it for a sanity check when applying DSP - especially in the Bass/Mid XO's.
However my mix always need to be adjusted from one artists recordings to another because the mix/balance is different for each artists engineered recordings.
I am really impressed with these Eminence CX10's in a 0.6 Cu Ft enclosure and crossed @ 100Hz to a sub - very clean, tight, punchy - excellent/articulate midbass driver.
Shame on you.
.....but anyway,
I don't mind SOME of Rush's music.
I don't like ANY of Steely Dan's stuff, no matter how well recorded. However, I do own Morph the Cat, a Fagen album. I don't listen to it much.
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To each his own - I don't care for country music at all but I tolerate it when I have too.
Rush was good when I was younger - not so much now.
Heavy metal/screeching & wailing is abnoxios to me anymore - getting older sux.
Jazz is cool now as is classical piano but opera hasn't yet floated my boat . . .
And all of it is bad if it is poorly recorded. YMMV.
Thanks for that! I've been to a few Rush concerts and like their music, just not Getty's voice so much.
The only Rush show that absolutely sucked was their "Roll the Bones" tour. Saw that at the Bradly Center in Milwaukee. They were trying to do some sort of surround sound thing with lots of PA stacks set up towards the back of the venue, on the second tier walkway, facing the stage. It might have sounded ok for the people lucky enough to have floor seats (and the FOH Engineer of course). For the rest of us it sucked. The delay effect made everything one huge garbled mess! The other Rush shows have been pretty awesome. ZZ Top has had some too! RIP Dusty.
I was thinking about Rush on my way home from work today. At last year's DIY Iowa, I mentioned to BK at some point Saturday night/Sunday morning that I preferred Triumph to Rush - which wasn't particularly well received. I stand by that take, but have a little more rationale. I have the utmost respect for the talent of Rush, but feel that somehow the results (at least the studio albums) were less than the sum of the parts. I think Rush would have covered a lot of bands better than the original - but also better than what Rush actually wrote/produced. Just my $0.02
Sehlin Sound Solutions
Check out Max Webster -->
Didja hear some familiar musicians in there?
Now check out Kim Mitchell (No Rush) but an awesome tune and equally well produced/recorded -->
If a performance is good enough, my ears can 'tune out' the recording quality and enjoy the musicianship: Hendrix at the LA Forum in 1970, Rachmaninov playing his concertos in 1935, The Beatles in Hamburg 1962, Django Reinhart, Charlie Christian, etc.
Of course I wish those albums were much better recorded, but you can't have everything.
Geoff
You'll always get a WTF from me if you make a statement like that.😛
I love Hendrix but sometime the live recordings are just unlistenable. Joe Cocker has some bad ones as well.
I make no apologies for not being a fan of Rush. I grew up and people always talked about their greatness, so I listened and listened and pretended I liked them because it seemed I must. I always felt guilty because secretly I did not enjoy their music.
I know a helluva lot more about myself then I did then. One thing I've learned is we are all wired differently, and making someone else feel bad for not liking the same thing is just not that cool. If we say stuff in a fun, friendly manner is one thing - but I have had people imply I just don't know enough to appreciate them or I wouldn't know good music if it bitch slapped me in a bar lol.
Classical music fans are usually the worst, but classic rock fans can be quite abrasive when I mention I like Smashing Pumpkins a helluva lot more than Led Zeppelin.
Of course, I came of age when the Pumpkins were breaking in to the mainstream so they are my go to for prog rock. Depending what age we are when we are exposed plays a huge role in our opinions of things, hence the "ok boomer" memes floating around.
Listen to what you like and love, not every listening session has to be demo worthy.
I agree about the age thing in general. Interestingly (well, probably interesting to me only) my brother and I are one year apart and have very similar taste in music. One of his favorites is Smashing Pumpkins but I never liked their music. There is a lot of nuance to our personal preferences. I will admit that there is a LOT of music where I respect the talent but still don't like the music.
I worked with a guy who thought the Beatles were over rated and Don McLean (American Pie) was much better.
Ron
I don't own any albums from the Pumpkins or LZ, however, I would buy SP long before LZ. MCatIS was a phenomenal release in the 90s when I was in high school and college. When was LZ last release? 1975? I wasn't born yet.
Hendrix recordings you can blame on Mutt Lang for sure for not sounding very clear, but what good is clear sounding music like Steely Dan's if you don't like it? Raw and brutal cuts also have their place.
And just for my nickel thoughts, LZ was coined 'heavy metal', without really being it. I also would place SP firmly in the 'alternative' category. Yet both were progressive without being 'prog' music.
One more thing, a lot of my classmates liked Green Jelly too, but I did not see the charm... i was raised in country music and adult soft rock of the 70s and 80s, but listen to very little of the first 2 in that list It's not all environment based. I hated Metallica back in high school, but like them a lot more now.
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Hence the vast majority of music today. If we all liked the same thing it's be a vuuury boring place.
On that note, if band X (one you like) did a cover of a band Y (one you dislike) song, is it automatically hated?
Even some of the 'official' releases, particularly the music produced by the late Alan Douglas (Jimi Hendrix Concerts, the first Monterey release, the Stages box set) and some 'semi-legal' releases have harsh sound, so I just dial back the treble and still enjoy them just for the musicianship. Mitch's drums in particular were often poorly recorded anyway and the mixing/mastering didn't do any favours.
The concerts which sound very good to my ears, such as Blue Wild Angel (Isle of Wight), Berkeley 1970, Winterland 1968 and the 1969 LA Forum show have a warmth and fullness to the sound which stand up pretty well today. Band of Gypsys sounds OK, even if there's a dullness to the drum sound; now that I think of it, the sound suits the general funkiness of the music anyway.
What's more, unlike some nameless bands' live recordings, there were obviously no overdubs to fix up flubs etc on Jimi's material. To my knowledge, only the 1970 Maui show was overdubbed, and then only by Mitch as his drums weren't recorded properly due to the string and sticky tape equipment.
Geoff
Absolutely not! Some covers blow away the original well written but badly executed songs.
No. I don't actually dislike Kelly Clarkson but don't really listen to her stuff much either. But I love Day to Remember's (one of my favorite bands) version of Since You've been Gone. I have all of the Punk Goes Pop albums in my Spotify library.
"You're No Good"
Linda Ronstadt or Van Halen?