DALI CD VOL 4

Why Music Matters
Actually being there in the presence of artists communicating directly with an audience must always be the ultimate yardstick by which we measure the experience of listening to electronically reproduced music.

Because of the fundamental nature of human hearing, it is extremely difficult (perhaps even impossible?)for hi-fi listening to ever trick us into believing that we are in the presence of real musicians and singers performing in a real space.

But the depth of our intellectual, emotional and physical response to the musical experience is directly related to the realism of the musical illusion generated by an audio system.

Natural Mood Enhancement
Music stimulates the production of adrenalin and dopamine in the brain, activating the brain’s pleasure centres to create a sense of well-being that is wholly organic and completely harmless.

While great music (as defined by you) played back on a telephone should be preferable to bad music played back on a high end system, the combination of your favourite music in the highest available recorded quality and a fine audio system will create a more profound, powerful and stimulating experience.

Unfortunately, the ubiquitous MP3 file format discards most of the music information so that portable players can store more songs and streaming services can work with low-bandwidth Internet connections. Discarded information is clearly audible as reduced detail, loss of “air” and spaciousness, and reduced vocal and instrumental timbre and clarity.

Some recordings are deliberately manipulated to sound artificially louder through dynamic range compression by boosting average levels, raising the level of quiet passages and lowering the level of the loudest passages. The principle casualty of the so-called Loudness Wars is the natural flow of shifting dynamics, a crucial factor defining the realism of music reproduction.
None of which contributes to the advancement of your listening pleasure.

For Serious Analysis and Musical Pleasure
Music is important to us, too important to allow it to be mangled by MP3 conversion or crushed by dynamic range compression or diminished by inferior playback equipment. That’s why we continue creating the DALI CD’s.

The CD you now hold in your hand is our fourth compilation in a highly praised series. These collections represent our best effort to provide reliable tools to assist you in the effective evaluation and demonstration of the accuracy and musicality of audio components.

This compilation contains a mix of household names and less familiar artists in various genres, recorded, mixed and mastered using different methods. Please give it a spin or two on a quality audio system. Preferably on a system you know well. Chances are that you will hear and appreciate what we consider to be superior sound quality on the majority of the selected tracks.

Don’t expect to like them all! Taste is different! But hopefully we have inspired you by introducing you to one or two tracks and/or artists that you’d never heard about.

Long live great music, great recordings and great audio systems. Long live the good old CD!

Enjoy!