User Details - swestbom

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  Stephen Westbom
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  8

 
 
Reviews
Found: 4

Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 3 - Mustonen        (10 of 13 found this review helpful)
  August 13, 2008

The sonics on this are great, the orchestra plays beautifully, the piano performance is too bizarre for words though. Almost random changes in dynamics, rushed phrasing with empty silences, he basically ignores the sheet music and annotations. The whole 3rd is played staccato and if a half note is ... more
Mozart: Symphonies Nos. 38-41 - Mackerras        (8 of 24 found this review helpful)
  July 21, 2008

I will only comment on the recording quality. If your idea of nirvana is to listen to an orchestra from the first row and your idea of a successful sound engineering job is to push the recording level right up to the threshold of distortion you will like this recording. To me it is recorded like ... more
Mahler: Symphony No. 3 - Zinman          (7 of 13 found this review helpful)
  March 8, 2008

There are better reviewers so besides the fact that I think Zander's recording is the worst of the SACD versions and Tilson Thomas's isn't far behind (his first and fourth are so good), I will only comment on a technical tidbit. This recording is a 4 channel recording (no center channel). Frankly ... more
Elgar: Violin Concerto etc. - Hilary Hahn        (8 of 11 found this review helpful)
  July 26, 2007

Ok, I am a geek, but there are far more eloquent and informative professional reviews of the content. So I will mention some technical things: "Not state of the art sound, but still good as far as the LSO are concerned - although the wiry sound of the violin is unpleasant to my ears, especially in ... more

 
 
Latest Posts

How many of you are - actually - SACD-ONLY buyers???
January 19, 2009
Not true! live music (lots of musicians in my circle) and SACD, I hold out for SACD because I don't want to encourage CD or worse yet MP3. Almost exclusively Classical and some Jazz (no instrument cleaners need apply). ... more
How many of you are - actually - SACD-ONLY buyers???
January 19, 2009
I only buy SACDs, if the BIS productions were RBCD I would not buy them. If you start releasing on Blu-ray (with video please, no reason not to include it) I will buy those as well, heck, I might even finally buy a Blu-ray player :) Once 5.1 DSD or even 96/24 LPCM is available as a download I can burn to a disk or hard drive I will switch to that ... more
SACD / DSD via HDMI-- what's the skinny?
August 28, 2008
805, not the 875, it is identical to the 875 except for a few bells and whistles, an extra HDMI input and of course the lack of the Reon 1080p video processing (none of which affect audio). The new 806 is POC by the way. ... more
Marantz SACD-players: any surround?
January 21, 2008
No Sony receivers in the U.S. can deal with DSD, the STR-DA5300ES is PCM only, the last one sold here that handled it was the 7100 using iLink. ... more
Anybody really serious about using PS3 for audio playback?
July 29, 2007
Has anyone noticed that the new STR-DA5300ES receiver from Sony still has no native DSD support (just like the 5200). No DSD support in the US since the demise of the unlamented 7100. It seems like Sony has truly abandoned the format. I suspect that is why the PS-3 doesn't output DSD natively and probably won't despite the plethora of new receivers ... more