Which artists from your teenage years or twenties does your system render so powerfully that the chills genuinely surprised you?

It obviously also depends on the recording and it doesn’t have to apply to all the songs on an album. Never expected it. I love dCS. I’ll start.

Sade Diamond Life and The Ultimate Collection

Lionel Richie Tuskegee (GAS Version) and The Definitive Collection

Sting Ten Summoner’s Tales

Eric Clapton Unplugged (Live)

One track from the “soundtrack of my life” that I hadn’t played since around the time it was released was “Walking on the Moon” from the Police’s Regatta de Blanc. There is a strange sound at the beginning that was always audible and part of the track but I could never make sense of on my college system. When I played it on my Vivaldi for the first time I had to laugh out loud, it’s mains hum on a guitar amp!

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Pixies
Surfer Rosa, “Where Is My Mind?”


Smashing Pumpkins
Siamese Dream, “Mayonnaise”


dEUS
In A Bar, Under The Sea, “For The Roses”


Portishead
Dummy, “Roads”


Tricky
Maxinquaye, “Hell is ‘round the Corner”


Radiohead
OK Computer, “Exit Music (for a Film)”


Death In Vegas
Scorpio Rising, “Hands Around My Throat”

It has been a shock really to (re?)discover all those albums and tracks on my today’s system.
Goosebumps for sure!

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Can’t argue with your choice of Mayonnaise. That whole album has significant meaning for me. It got me through sleepless nights lonely at boarding school with my Panasonic personal cd player with MASH!

Had it on tape as well for my Aiwa Walkman.

Too many to list really, and it’s not just through my dCS gear, Wifey was streaming Suede’s Beautiful Ones on YouTube yesterday… gave me goosebumps :blush:

Louis Armstrong and Roy Orbison

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When I was 16, I bought the LP of Genesis, Nursery Cryme. On the stereo of my parents, the first track “Musical Box” started gently and it sounded great, but then in the middle of the track it was a kind of a chaos, I always jumped on the amplifier to lower the sound…I never understood, at that time, why Genesis ruined that song with this messy sound…And 30 years later, when I had a much better stereo than my parents (100 times better, probably 100 times the price), I heard this song completely different, no messy sound, I was able to hear a complex piece of music, but every instrument was precise and I heard the harmony instead of a noisy dissonance. I was shocked how much a good stereo can make a difference !

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Made me reconsider my stage dive at a Clash show in SFO, circa 1982, fueled by liquor and ludes. Upon hearing it on the dCS>Naim>Dynaudio rig, I knew I was right to do it at the time, and wiser at 18 than I knew.:wink:

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Traffic – The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (November 1971): The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys / Rainmaker

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