Stereophile's Records to Live for - 2025

Recently published, very interesting!

“A list of stereo recordings that are both musically and sonically impeccable. In other words, the best, the tops, to die for.”

https://www.stereophile.com/content/records-2-live-4-2025

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Splendid so see those music selections that are so perfectly correct when they accord with my taste and yet so horribly ignorant, uninformed and crassly mis-judged when they don’t :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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Noticed in the comments field a Qobuz playlist of 46 hours - here’s the link for sharing on Qobuz.

Best to all and thanks to MLP

Bob

"All that stream collected as a playlist

Submitted by MLP on January 18, 2025 - 8:17am

All the R2L4 2025 albums that stream are collected in this Qobuz playlist:

https://open.qobuz.com/playlist/28334472

Put it in random play and learn some new music for 46+ hours straight!"

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Thank you Robert for the heads up! Just saved the Qobuz playlist.

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Ermos you beat me to the punch. I looked over the list this afternoon and bookmarked what sounded to be interesting.

People should Google the old TAS pressings to die for lists. There are some real gems there.

For anyone who has a record player, the first lp to get would be Louis Armstrong St. John’s Infirmary

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As is typical with the annual list maybe 1/2 dozen even worth a listen.

For those interested in the Stereophile Records To Die For lists of 1991 - now:

https://www.stereophile.com/category/records-die

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Thanks Ermos - very helpful

On a different note I was actually referring to the old The Absolute Sound, TAS, lists of great recordings. I’m not sure they are still doing them however, back in the day (Harry Pearson), they had a number of amazing recordings which were listed.

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I believe they still publish an annual summary for LP’s etc. Not sure of the month.

In this months (Feb25) issue they have a Super Tape List for those so inclined.

The missing one:

Unfortunately purchases on Apple Music are only m4a lossy. Has anyone found a source for the CD / lossless download?

There are numerous vendors of lossless downloads in CD resolution and/or in hi-res. For example the entire Qobuz catalogue is available or download sale. In fact they were download vendors before they expanded to become a streaming service as well. If you are not a Qobuz member there is still a download shop. If you are and a Sublime + subscriber there are also many discounts to the price of downloads.

However there are loads more more like Presto Classical, Highres Audio etc. Many record labels also have a download shop for their products .

Thanks @PAR I am a regular customer of these sites, but the Mongolian Folk Long Songs album is not available on any of them.
Its on Spotify, but only two tracks are available,
No items available on Discogs marketplace.
This seems to be a rare gem of Japanese origin (judging the cover on amazon.com).
The only source at the moment seems to be apple music.

There is a difference between searching for a specific recording and a question about where to find downloads in general.

Access to everything has never existed.

Can’t believe Necrophagist is actually on this list :smiley:

Sorry if I was not clear enough in my question. English is not my native language.

Thanks Rudi. OK maybe a “lost in translation” moment but, from a native English speaker’s viewpoint, your English is very good and I appreciate your skill.

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