http://analoguefellowship.com/2021/06/03/lyn-stanley-her-jazz-mavericks-live-at-studio-a-blu-ray/
Take your front-row seat and watch Lyn and her Jazz Mavericks' dynamic LIVE audience Julie London tribute show recorded at Capitol Recording Studio A.
The Special Limited Edition packaging contains three discs - Part One of the show on Blu-Ray (about 36 minutes), Part Two of the show on Blu-Ray (about 45 minutes) and also an SACD hybrid stereo audio disc (about 70 minutes of music). This edition is limited to 300 units.
This rare concert video on Blu-Ray offers surround sound (5.1), Stereo 192/24bit, and 1080 video quality for an up-close experience as you watch this live performance recorded on June 1, 2019. The SACD, mixed by Allen Sides, Mastered by Bernie Grundman and was authored by Gus Skinas, DSD engineering guru of the Sonoma converter.
The foundation of the ultimate sounding SACD recording is 192/24bit-high res offering 5.1 surround sound, single DSD and 16.44000 wav files. Here you have one of the finest sounding SACDs available on the market. Most 5.1 surround sound SACDs are based on 96/24bit. They cannot compare.
Plus this album was engineered by two of the most famous audiophile engineers on the planet, Allen Sides (recording and mixing) and Bernie Grundman (mastering). The musicians are Los Angeles' finest jazzbos who have worked with the best in the industry. This is Lyn's live show at the world-famous Capitol Recording Studio A. Some of the finest music of all time was recorded here. You will have an audiophile's dream - perfect location - with attentive engineers and fine performers to create a keepsake album you'll want to pull out to show off your system or just enjoy the music and get lost in a live performance.
Gus Skinas worked with Bernie Grundman studio to author the SACD. It's perfection. The music had to be mixed twice - once for 5.1 surround sound and another time for the traditional mix. Everything post-production had to be passed by twice and the sound was checked by both Allen Sides and Bernie Grundman before pressing.
Not to mention, this album is probably Lyn Stanley's best singing - where she gets to interact with the audience - and deliver an outstanding performance.
The album comes with a 20-page booklet with liner note contributions by Neville Roberts (UK-audiophile writer) and Lyn Stanley.
"Regular readers may have gathered that I'm unlikely to be found listening to jazz. Which is why I've surprised myself this month by sitting down with a new live music recording with more brushed hi-hats and walking double basslines than you can shake a saxophone at.
The release in question is Live at Studio A, from award-winning vocalist Lyn Stanley and her Jazz Mavericks backing band. This features a tracklist ranging from As Time Goes By and Route 66 to Let There Be Love and Every Time We Say Goodbye. My cat gave me some quizzical looks, wondering what had happened to Aerosmith.
What caught my eye about this release is its multi-format approach. Stanley and her production team have set out to deliver a recording of the highest quality, which means that in addition to the expected 16-bit/44kHz CD, there's also a hybrid SACD version (including 5.1 and stereo options), and a Blu-ray platter, which adds video footage of the 2019 session at Los Angeles' Capitol Studios to DTS-HD MA stereo and 5.1 versions - and Dolby Atmos.
The decision to include the latter dovetails with what my colleague Steve May discusses elsewhere in this issue - the growing realisation that Dolby Atmos and music can work well together. Here, of course, it's accompanied by visuals, but in truth this is a disc that encourages you to close your eyes. Both the multichannel presentations deliver that in-the-room feeling, and the Atmos track really sells the connection between you, Stanley and her players.
Beyond this, each iteration stands out from plenty of discs in my collection by virtue of the sheer sense of fidelity. Percussive tings and tocks seem to hang in the air, bass notes have plump volume, and Stanley's fluid, smooth and sassy vocals pour from the speakers.
It's demo-grade stuff, and had me suddenly worried that I'd been missing out on a whole secret underworld of Atmos jazz recordings. Perhaps I have, but it also transpires that Stanley is a bit of an outlier, being both a musician and a technophile. Two years ago she told our sister magazine Hi-Fi Choice that she grew up in a house with McIntosh separates, TEAC reel-to-real machine and Technics turntable; more recently she's experimented with recording both to 24-track 2in analogue tape and digitally at 32-bit/192kHz, mixing up the formats on the same album.
And Stanley's ethos is 'what you put in you will get out,' reasoning that well-recorded content will sound grand even on 'modest' systems. That's a point of view I can get behind. I'm not denying that a high-grade system will - most of the time - outperform an affordable rival, but what you play through it will be the final arbiter. (More so with music perhaps. In the home cinema arena, we're fortunate that there's been a clear progression in some aspects of movie soundmixes, with modern blockbusters typically more expansive, dynamic and immersive than their 1960s counterparts).
The danger, of course, is that the pursuit of demo-worthy material, content that's recorded, mixed and mastered with care, leads you down a rabbit hole of listening to any old nonsense. Yet Stanley's platter doesn't fall into that category. I've been humming her arrangement of Pink Cadillac all week. Dolby Atmos jazz - who'd a thunk it?" - Mark Craven, Home Cinema Choice, www.homecinemachoice.com
