Classical music round up 2015

Another bright sunny day so why not get this post written so I can chill a bit later on as after that rotten migraine I need the rest.
Anyway as several of you know I have had a long liking for what is termed Classical music  stemming from actual childhood having had my own meagre record collection from around the age of 8 of my favourite pieces.
Over the years I've added recordings to them, changed formats  as the years have seen the availability of and advent of recordings new media has changed and I've written a bit in the past on the blog about them.
The music of Ravel was one of the first composers I encountered and recently this recording by the distinguished American conductor  Leonard Slatkin, whose career I've followed over the years. The playing by the French orchestra is superb and I can see this and  it's second volume that I also purchased gaining a few awards at the years end.

Bela Bartok's Concerto is a fine example of twentieth century classical music, indeed many have said it has some of the boldness associated with American composers that period so it's fitting this is performed by an an American orchestra and a remarkable female American conductor Marin Alsop who has conducted in many countries including the 2013 Last Night of the Proms in England.

How many of us just loved watching Disney's Fantasia and can remember that series with Mickey Mouse getting in trouble as the Sorcerer's Apprentice?
 
Well that was written by by France's Dukas and is featured in this excellent modern recording that has plenty of character.

 Finally and fittingly back to Catgut Music (tm) and a violinist I first encountered way way back in 1992 in a program of french Sonatas for violin and piano.

One thing technically all these recordings I purchased have in common is that although they are available on regular cd, I bought these as better than cd quality 'High Definition'  24 bit downloads which can be played on a computer.
I play them using my Fiio x3 digital audio players line output through my hifi system as well as on headphones where the smoothness and lack of the low level artifacts that even the best cds have is noticeable.

School girl tech

Every modern young lady I ever met had some interest in music  whither or not it was just about the look and fashion of the artists, just singing the songs and usually some way of playing our favourite music.
Obviously with changing times, what it is we have changes as some products come to the end of their lives and others replace them and so while I was infatuated at one time with reels of tape, also I was an early adopter of the Japanese craze of the MiniDisc although that technology has come to something of a dead end with the discontinuing of recorders.

I have had personal digital audio players using either downloaded albums or home made copies, not least the Sandisk Clip Zip of which there is a feature on this blog but they didn't quite match the best of my portable MiniDisc machines as modern players are designed more about maximizing running time between charges rather than fitting the best possible  sounding electronics and that still left the question of playing music on them through a regular stereo a bit messy.
Like why would you want to fire up a computer to just play something?
I had considered a number of ways around this over the last year and very recently I obtained what is proving to be the answer.

Enter the Fiio X3.
It's a digital audio player for sure but it is designed from the ground up to sound really good starting with using the same chip to convert the zeroes and ones of digital to analogue sound  as a £400 separate cd player and a very high quality headphone stage that cures at the outset the problem of not enough of and the failure to reproduce fully, the sound even from iTunes or better quality Mp3 albums.
Then there is the fact it also plays not only regular 16 bit lossless (Flac) downloads and home copied files equalling the full quality of a cd, it plays 24 bit better than cd ones too (192/24 being its limit) and it sounds on headphones better than many separates.
In the UK you can by cd and better than cd  quality downloads from Presto who do Classical music and 7Digital as well as the French Qobuz company for much else like Rock.
Compared with the ClipZip, the display has much better resolution, nearer a cellphones and isn't as restricted to the maximum number of pixels as that player is when it comes to artwork.
It has 8GB of internal memory but you can use upto 128GB micro sdhc cards too that might be pre-assembled by genre just like I did for the Clip Zip and its cards worked straight off the bat on it.
The kicker though is it for once has a proper line level output just like a cd player rather than relying on a crummy headphone stage with it's built in restrictions, so armed with lossless files it sounds equal to or actually better than a dedicated cd player.
Throw in the ability to play from a charger while charging and you too can be listening in really high quality to all those files while being portable enough to carry around with you.
Finally I have that not just can equal but now surpasses my MiniDiscs!