Sound Quality Listening Guide
We all know that music speaks to our emotions. This guide sets out to demonstrate the difference superior sound can make. Purely in terms of quality, once you become aware of various sonic and spatial distinctions, be they ever so subtle, you will all the more relish the music you love.
Music tracks that highlight clarity, dynamics, resolution, soundstage and timbre
Good stereo creates an illusion. The better the stereo, the better the illusion, specifically a perception of harmonically rich, lifelike sounds occurring a real-life space. The guidelines and questions accompanying these tracks will help you appreciate the rewards superior sound delivers. These tracks may be freely distributed in its entirety only with attribution to Nuforce. The album art file must be included with the distribution.
- Drum Dynamics
This track demonstrates a largely misunderstood term: dynamics. Any boombox can play loud. A good stereo’s dynamics range from feather-soft to thunder-clap loud. The metal and drums (skins and rims) reveal a system’s ability to convey lightning-swift transients.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Cello Tonality
Good stereo allows you to appreciate this 300-year-old cello’s unique timbre and rich resonance.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Piano Tonality
This intimate yet remarkably powerful recording is especially revealing of the Fazioli piano’s percussive attacks, overtones and decays, and most especially, of its soul-stirring middle and lower range.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz
- Jazz Plucked Bass
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Classical Plucked Bass
Apart from both instruments’ rich fundamentals and warm overtones, can you detect differences with respect to their individual character?
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Vocal Tonality
Her sibilants should have a natural rather than “spitty” character. You should also have a sense of the singer’s physical body – lips, tongue, throat, lungs and chest. The human voice via good stereo can be very seductive.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Asian Flute
A brilliant yet distant, soulful and spacious sound, the result perhaps of applied reverberation?
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Binaural Tonality
You should experience a strong sense of left-right separation in an intimate setting yet with no sense of a hole in the middle of the soundstage.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Complex Tonal Resolution
In contrast to the above, the flute and guitar appear to occupy the space between the speakers in yet another intimate setting.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Outdoor Ambience
Does the band seem to be playing in an acoustically ideal space? – a well designed performance shell perhaps? Pay particular attention to location within the soundfield.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Outdoor spaciousness
Have you a sense of the trumpets’ knife-edged brilliance playing into the open air?
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Harmonic Group Unity
Here we have an excellent example of a fully occupied, harmonically luxuriant soundfield. Our table in this jazz club isn’t very far from the band.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Tonal Delicacy
Note the swift attacks and the harmonics they produce. Our proximity to the guitarist permits us to hear this beautiful instrument’s every intricate aspect.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KH - Complex Tonal Purity
Do you hear this performance as entirely natural or artificially enhanced? You should be getting better at this.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Ensemble Power
A hard-driving performance you can almost feel in your chest. Does the band seem to be indoors or outdoors?
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz - Exotic Percussion
A perfect demonstration of sharp attacks, rich overtones, authoritative bass, and long, elegant fades into space.
@ 4608 Kbps / 96KHz
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