Listening for Sound Quality - The Beginning of a Playlist

Linux and NAS
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Having fun with Audirvana for Linux, and thought I would share some of the tracks I’ve been listening to. Please feel free to make lots of your own additions!

  • Ottmar Liebert: Sand (Apophenia)
  • Peter Gabriel: Shock the Monkey
  • Peter Gabriel: The Court (Dark-side mix)
  • The Shins: 40 Mark Strasse
  • The Beach Boys: Marcella (original 1972 mix)
  • The Rolling Stones: Love in Vain (Stripped version)
  • The National: Crumble
  • Morphine: Dawna/Buena
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Fleetwood Mac: The Chain (2001 Remaster) - Open Qobuz
Always a good track to test your equipment with. (Specifically this remaster.)

Kenny Burrell: Chitlins Con Carne (2012 Remaster) - Open Qobuz
This remaster on Qobuz sounds phenomenal. Excellent dynamic range.

Curtis Counce: How Deep is The Ocean! - Open Qobuz
There are a lot of moments in the entire album, but this track is fairly representative.

blackwave.: GoodEnough - Open Qobuz
Textures, dynamics, another good sound check.

Attaca Quartet: Miserere - Open Qobuz
The dynamic range on this is fantastic. Wait for the high note! Beautiful.

Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Moanin’ (Remastered 2013) - Open Qobuz
A fun song, with good dynamic range and fun stereo.

Pineapple Thief: It Leads to This - Open Qobuz
The album has good dynamic range, and I think this song is fairly representative. The opening track of the album “Put It Right” too, for that matter.

Porcupine Tree: Harridan - Open Qobuz
More fun dynamics, if progressive rock is your taste. This band has produced a lot of interesting listens over the years.

The Dynamic Range Day Award

Also, I found a great blog that highlights new tracks for dynamic range. It may be worth perusing:
https://dynamicrangeday.co.uk/award/

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Thanks for the link - lots of interesting stuff there!

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Pineapple Thief’s Put It Right instantly became one of my test tracks. Some lovely tom work from Gavin Harrison; that floor tom has loads of attack and sounds ‘in the room’.

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Hi, very interesting port to Linux indeed!! How does sound quality differ from a dedicated Windows PC or Mac? Especially with local files (I’m not a big fan of streaming services in terms of SQ despite using Qobuz Sublime myself). Is it better, same or worse? Running headless, I would suspect Aurdirvana to sound even better. Thanks for your feedback

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There’s a large thread on this. :slightly_smiling_face: Here’s my completely subjective opinion:

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Another one for the list from the most recent week’s Qobuz albums: Iron & Wine (Sam Beam), “All In Good Time,” a duet with the wonderful Fiona Apple.