Natural sounding albums in this digital era

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I know..too expensive.at 15USD . I had bought a set of them during a landmark sale at INR 350 a piece...some still have their plastic cover. never know when i develop a liking:rolleyes:

And if you conclude ‘never’, I’d be glad to unload them off you! :D
 
If keen on old Bollywood titles, look for the PMLP series. These have Made in England marked on them. Couple of them will have Made in Switzerland or South Korea. Those are also good. Made in USA is inferior.

The series starts from PMLP 5001. All titles upto PMLP 5650 are fine. After that it could be a bit of hit or miss.

These were all made between 1987 and 1992/1993
 
Sandeep, thanks. Do they have recordings (CD format) on sale anywhere? I could only find the app based video subscription option on the website.
Hi Sachin, After Prem mentioned about FM bhagwan's post, I noticed that the darbar festival concerts were recorded and engineered by Sense world music, UK. That explains the natural sounding records. The 4 concerts from 2006 that are available on the streaming platforms are the only ones listed in CD format too. Hope this helps :)

From their profile: The Sense World philosophy is simple, produce the highest quality product with deep artistic consideration. This award winning record label focuses on the rich musical heritage of India with the world’s greatest Indian classical artists being recorded both in the Sense World recording studios in India and at the famous Saptak Music Festival. Sense World Music brings together many of the great talents from the global music community, we wish to nurture the music of our world culture, and in turn this helps to give our lives a deeper significance. Enjoy!...We are talking Sense.
 
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If keen on old Bollywood titles, look for the PMLP series. These have Made in England marked on them. Couple of them will have Made in Switzerland or South Korea. Those are also good. Made in USA is inferior.

The series starts from PMLP 5001. All titles upto PMLP 5650 are fine. After that it could be a bit of hit or miss.

These were all made between 1987 and 1992/1993
Hi Prem
PMLP refers to a name of a record label or HMV series number ?
 
Albums recorded and mastered by Daman Sood are excellent. Though they are not as natural sounding as those mentioned here, but are nevertheless a treat to listen to. I’ll list a few ones from 1987 onward that I’ve listened to and liked, from his catalog

Ghazals/Sufi/Poetry:
Beyond Time - Jagjit/Chitra Singh - 1987
Gulzar’s Mirza Ghalib - Jagjit Singh - 1989 (I’m not sure if this was recorded digitally)
Hazir - Zakir Hussain/Hariharan - 1992
Face to face - Jagjit Singh - 1994
Marasim - Jagjit Singh/Gulzar - 1999
Soz - Javed Akhthar/Jagjit Singh - 2001
Samvedna - Jagjit Singh/AB Vajpayee - 2002
Kabir - Abida Parveen - 2002
Saher - Jagjit Singh - 2002

Classical/Fusion:
Sound scapes - Zakir Hussain/Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia - 1993
Elements - Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia/Bhaskar Chandavarkar - 1995
Ode to Ganga - Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia/Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - 1995

Hindi OST:
Drishti - Kishori Amonkar - 1990
Lekin - Hridaynath Mangeshkar/Gulzar - 1990
Maachis - Vishal Bharadwaj/Gulzar - 1996
Sarfarosh - Jatin Lalit - 1999
Devdas - Ismail Darbar - 2002
Close to my heart - Jagjit Singh - 2003
Veer Zaara - Madan Mohan/Javed Akhtar - 2004
Leela - Jagjit Singh/Gulzar - 2006
 
I’d add Ninaad music label (Indian Classical) to this. I don’t suppose they exist now, but try your hand at old CD market.

Albums recorded and mastered by Daman Sood are excellent. Though they are not as natural sounding as those mentioned here, but are nevertheless a treat to listen to. I’ll list a few ones from 1987 onward that I’ve listened to and liked, from his catalog

Ghazals/Sufi/Poetry:
Beyond Time - Jagjit/Chitra Singh - 1987
Gulzar’s Mirza Ghalib - Jagjit Singh - 1989 (I’m not sure if this was recorded digitally)
Hazir - Zakir Hussain/Hariharan - 1992
Face to face - Jagjit Singh - 1994
Marasim - Jagjit Singh/Gulzar - 1999
Soz - Javed Akhthar/Jagjit Singh - 2001
Samvedna - Jagjit Singh/AB Vajpayee - 2002
Kabir - Abida Parveen - 2002
Saher - Jagjit Singh - 2002

Classical/Fusion:
Sound scapes - Zakir Hussain/Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia - 1993
Elements - Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia/Bhaskar Chandavarkar - 1995
Ode to Ganga - Shiv Kumar Sharma/Hariprasad Chaurasia/Vishwa Mohan Bhatt - 1995

Hindi OST:
Drishti - Kishori Amonkar - 1990
Lekin - Hridaynath Mangeshkar/Gulzar - 1990
Maachis - Vishal Bharadwaj/Gulzar - 1996
Sarfarosh - Jatin Lalit - 1999
Devdas - Ismail Darbar - 2002
Close to my heart - Jagjit Singh - 2003
Veer Zaara - Madan Mohan/Javed Akhtar - 2004
Leela - Jagjit Singh/Gulzar - 2006

Glad to see I have almost 90% of these. I shall look for Samvedna, Saher, and Ode to Ganga to complete this collection. :)
 
Hi , Have listed a few recording labels which in my experience have shown consistency all along [since Sachin referred to timelines]
Have listed as per the music if that helps further
Jazz - ECM / Blue Note[+ RVG remasters] / Telarc / ACT
Rock - MFSL Remasters/Reissues
Other noteworthy are Water Lilly (mostly acoustic if im not mistaken), Chesky - in the modern era , they have binaural recordings too , though i don't know if the tech was a big success
Cheers!
 
On specifics of modern to fairly modern recordings
[ECM ] Nik Bartsch's Ronin - Live
[Blue Note] Patricia Barber - Premonition Years
[Telarc] Jaques Louissier Trio play Bach
[ACT] Esbjorn Svensson Trio (E.S.T)
hope this helps, happy listening!
 
Sangeet Sartaj series released in early 2000s from Music today are excellently recorded. I remembered about this after posting about same on the Carnatic music thread. I've heard U.Srinivas (the prodigy who is no more) on Mandolin and Shiv Kumar Sharma albums.

These series can be confusing for a collector as many a times they are same performances regrouped and/or relabelled. I have a few such duplicates. Another thing they do is cut a raga performance, especially the aalap and vilambit sections to fit in many performances/ragas into one CD. That’s really bad as nothing’s comparable to listening an entire khyal performance over an hour in one sitting. Not talking about Sangeet Sartaj in particular, but classical CD series overall.
 
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