Operaramblings was never intended as a source of reviews for audio recordings of standard operatic rep.  There are plenty of those and, anyway, the sheer size of the back catalogue would make creating a useful reference source virtually impossible.  However, a significant number of audio recordings do come my way and so I have created an index of my reviews of them. It’s mostly a mixture of rarities (especially French ones), recital disks (mostly Canadian singers), new music (much of it Canadian) and audiophile material (see note at the bottom of the page). As the list has grown to be rather unmanageable as a single page I have broken it down into sections.  CDs containing works by one (or occasionally two) composers are indexed by composer.  Recital and Collection disks are indexed by performer.

Composers A – G
Composers H – M
Composers N – T
Composers U – Z
Recitals and Collections A – M
Recitals and Collections N – Z

A note on my listening habits with a bit of audiophile geekery thrown in…

I’m blown away by the video and sound quality of the latest Blu-ray (video) and SACD (audio) releases.  Whether one listens in stereo or surround sound there is some amazing stuff.  Best, unlike the vinyl era, one doesn’t need to spend a fortune to get good gear.  Although high end speakers don’t, and likely won’t ever, come cheap.

My front end is a Sony disk player that I picked up on sale a few years ago.  It will play pretty much anything I throw at it; SACD, 4K Blu-ray and just about any file format off a USB drive or from a UPnP server (currently using FireStream from a Macbook hooked up to an array of hard drives).  It feeds a Sony 7.2 channel receiver that cranks out as much power as one can reasonably use in a condo.  The speaker set up is a 6.1 array of Bowers and Wilkins speakers (the luxury bit) but since I share my space with someone who doesn’t necessarily want to share my music all the time I use headphones more often than not.  I’ve experimented with lots of types; earbuds, closed backs, open backs, RF wireless, Bluetooth and wired and I have concluded that for best quality over the ear wired phones are the way to go.  I’m using Sennheiser HD598SRs at the moment and they are superb for classical music. I’ve found that when using the phones with digital files there’s little or no difference between using the Sony player or playing from my Macbook.

In terms of format for audio, SACD is the way to go if it’s available.  Failing that 24bit 48kHz (or higher) recordings on CD or FLAC are pretty close.  Standard res CD and FLAC definitely come third.  Of MP3 we shall not speak.  As far as video formats go, there is so little opera available in 4K that it doesn’t really figure in my calculations.  Blu-ray is vastly superior to DVD though.  FWIW I haven’t bothered to upgrade the TV that the disk player feeds to 4K.  With the lack of available opera content it seems a bit silly.