r/audiophilemusic

Listening to this on Qobuz. Absolutely beautiful and well recorded

Walk On the Mild Side explores the gentle side of contemporary music, where indie folk, ambient pop, soft electronica, folktronica and modern jazz meet. This carefully curated playlist blends intimate songwriting, warm acoustic textures, subtle grooves and atmospheric soundscapes.

Featuring artists such as Tunng, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Four Tet, Arooj Aftab, Leifur James and Nala Sinephro, the playlist moves between contemplative folk, dreamy electronic textures, spiritual jazz influences and alternative pop sensibilities.

Designed for relaxed listening, quiet evenings, meditation, creative work or peaceful walks, Walk On the Mild Side offers a calm and introspective musical landscape where melodies unfold slowly and atmospheres breathe.

H-Music

Hello,
With The Night Watch (Live at the Rijksmuseum), Sting delivers an intimate live album recorded in the heart of Amsterdam’s famous Rijksmuseum as part of the Sounds Like Art project. Accompanied by guitarist Dominic Miller, he revisits a selection of iconic tracks from his career, blending classics from The Police with solo hits.
The recording highlights the museum s exceptional acoustics, whose natural reverberation fully contributes to the listening experience. Far from a spectacular production, this performance favors closeness to the artist and the authenticity of the interpretation.

Available in both stereo and Dolby Atmos, this recording is a particularly interesting reference for assessing the ability of an immersive mix to reproduce the unique atmosphere of a truly singular venue.
The concert is available on ARTE s YouTube channel.

For this review, you will find 2 versions tested:

• Ed 1: Tidal MAX – 2026
• Ed 2: Tidal Dolby Atmos – 2026

This intimate Sting album is beautifully showcased by the recording quality. However, the limited dynamic range of the stereo version compromises the naturalness of the presentation compared to the Dolby Atmos version downmixed to stereo. Given that this performance was recorded in a museum, it deserved to preserve the full authenticity of both the recording and Sting’s outstanding performance.

Link to the waveform graphs.

This Dolby Atmos mix does not employ any moving sound effects on the music. Instead, its goal is to faithfully recreate the acoustic environment by using the surround channels to reproduce the venue’s natural reverberation and the audience’s applause. To fully appreciate the benefits of this Atmos mix, it should be compared directly with the stereo version. The added sense of the room’s acoustic space becomes immediately apparent, while the intimate front soundstage is preserved. This approach enhances the realism of the presentation, creating the impression that Sting is performing right in front of the listener. Although the dynamic range is well preserved, the overall presentation lacks a touch of refinement due to the lossy Dolby Digital Plus encoding (with 7.1.4 channel).

Link to the immersive 3D video on youtube

This album offers the opportunity to discover Sting in an exceptional setting, presented in an intimate atmosphere with historical instruments. The recording reveals strong sonic potential, unfortunately not fully realized in the stereo version due to dynamic limitations that also reduce the natural feel of this intimate performance. It is the Dolby Atmos version that best conveys the realism and immersion within the Rijksmuseum, thanks to a mix that faithfully preserves the concert’s atmosphere. However, the absence of a lossless Dolby TrueHD Atmos edition is regrettable, as it would have allowed for an even higher level of fidelity to the original recording.

You can find all of the measurements and graphics here (link).

Enjoy listening,
Jean-François

 

Hello,
Muse The Wow! Signal is the tenth studio album by the British rock band Muse. Conceived as a concept album, it revolves around the themes of cosmic mystery, extraterrestrial intelligence, and human connections, drawing inspiration from the famous 1977 radio astronomy event known as the Wow! Signal.

The album continues in Muse s signature style, blending epic rock with electronic and orchestral elements, while venturing further into science-fiction storytelling. Through its tracks, it explores the idea of potential contact with something beyond Earth, using space and extraterrestrial communication as metaphors for emotional and existential questions.

Unsurprisingly, this album suffers from extremely heavy dynamic range compression, just as we already observed when the first single was released. Some will argue that this is simply a characteristic of this style of music, which is expected to sound loud and powerful. However, with an average DR value of 4 (ranging from DR3 to DR5 depending on the track), the processing is clearly excessive, resulting in a completely squashed sound.
A comparison with the Dolby Atmos version shows that it is perfectly possible to preserve Muse’s signature sound while allowing for significantly greater dynamic range.

The graph here compares the spectrum of the Tidal MAX – 2026 (white curve) with the spectrum of the Colored vinyl record – 2026 (blue curve).The two spectral curves almost perfectly overlap across the entire frequency range, with only a slight boost in the vinyl above 10 kHz, varying between 1 and 3 dB.

With its dynamic and lively mix, the Dolby Atmos version makes full use of all available channels, as illustrated by the spatialization visualization video.

With The Wow! Signal, the immersive Dolby Atmos version stands out as the best way to fully experience the album, delivering a more dynamic and enveloping sound. For stereo listening, the vinyl edition offers a more enjoyable experience than the digital version, it’s a bit more “dynamic” with a sound that’s slightly less muffled.

The full review with all graphics and analyses is available here (link).

Enjoy listening

Jean-François

Hello,

At Baker’s Keyboard Lounge is a live album by the Oscar Peterson Trio, released in 2026 by Verve Records. It brings together previously unreleased recordings made in August 1960 at Detroit’s legendary Baker’s Keyboard Lounge. The trio Oscar Peterson on piano, Ray Brown on bass, and Ed Thigpen on drums delivers performances of remarkable intensity throughout the recording. Originally intended for a commercial release, these concerts remained unreleased for more than sixty years.

Are the editions released worthy of the exceptional musical quality of this Oscar Peterson Trio album?

For this review, you will find 3 versions tested:
Ed 1: SHM-CD JAPAN – 2026

• Ed 2: Tidal MAX – 2026
• Ed 3: Vinyl record – 2026

The waveform of the SHM-CD JAPAN – 2026 version shows an average dynamic range that seems acceptable with the DR10. However, it is noted that many tracks exhibit a DR of 8 or 9, indicating the use of a dynamic limiter, as confirmed by waveform analysis (red zones). Such processing is regrettable for a jazz album.

This vinyl edition, The Complete Recordings, includes three LPs and features the complete set of 27 tracks from the album. A single-LP version is also available, containing only nine tracks.

The graph here (link) compares the spectrum of the Vinyl record – 2026 (white curve) with the spectrum of the Tidal MAX – 2026 (blue curve). The two spectra overlap almost perfectly between 150 Hz and 5 kHz. Below 150 Hz, the vinyl’s level is up to 4 dB higher in the 60 150 Hz range, whereas it drops a few dB below 60 Hz. Above 5 kHz, both curves follow a similar general trend, though the vinyl exhibits a boost in the high frequencies between 12 and 20 kHz, peaking at 4 or 5 dB. The high-resolution spectrum shows parasitic frequency peaks around 30 kHz and 50 kHz, which have no impact on the perceived sound.

Listening to the vinyl, one immediately notices increased presence in the low end, the double bass is more prominent, providing a more pleasant listening experience while maintaining detail in the high frequencies. This aligns perfectly with the spectral analysis, suggesting that this 3LP edition is likely the best sonic representation of the album.
The album beautifully captures the atmosphere of the concert hall, immersing us right in the heart of the action alongside the musicians. You can even hear Oscar Peterson’s whisper.
However, despite the higher DR, it remains difficult to discern whether we are hearing a truly dynamic master or simply a less compressed version of the digital masters. This phenomenon regarding dynamic shifts is explained in the article: Does analog media force a dynamic on music? or Does Analog Media increase the dynamics?.

I cannot hide my disappointment. After receiving the Japanese SHM-CD edition and comparing the album across various formats, the conclusion is bitter: this jazz album has fallen victim to the Loudness War.
This is a concerning warning sign for the genre, and it is not an isolated case; we see the same trend in more recent recordings, such as Stacey Kent’s latest album, A Time for Love. All we ask for is sonic fidelity.
A jazz album is not a rock record that needs to sound ‘loud’ for marketing purposes. Jazz productions seem to be succumbing to this race for volume, and Oscar Peterson would undoubtedly be horrified by the treatment inflicted upon this recording.

Enjoy listening,
Jean-François