Been meaning to post this here for a while. I bought an HT a few months ago. Before I got this setup, I used to play music very rarely, like half an hour a week. However, with the new speakers (Taga Azure B-40) giving great sound output, I started playing music more often.
I used to listen to all kinds of music earlier, but with headphones, I mostly preferred listening to English music with female vocals. However, when I started playing music on my home theater, I preferred music which was quieter and melodious. Hence I started leaning towards old Hindi songs, mostly from the 70s. I started noticing that I liked Rafi's and Kishore Kumar's songs a lot. With Rafi and Kishore, the variety in their voice is unbelievable. Initially it was hard to tell that all the songs were sung by the same person in a Rafi collection, he sounds so different depending on the tone of the song. Later I noticed the same quality in Kishore's songs as well.
The Aha moment came when I accidentally played Raat Kali Ek Khwab Me Aayi sung by Kumar Sanu instead of the original. I found myself rather unimpressed and in 2 minutes, I had changed to the original, sung by Kishore. Since then I have listened more closely and I feel that most other singers fail to come even close to the range and versatility of these two. Udit Narayan might be in the running to some extent, but Kumar Sanu and Sonu Nigam pretty much sound the same in all their songs.
I notice the same quality in Lata's voice from the 60s and 70s, but as we get closer to the 90s, her voice started sounding same in all songs. She's still quite pleasant, but her songs from later years are not at pleasant to the ears. Not sure if this is because of her age or changes in recording/editing etc.
And no offence to any singers, there are quite a few other brilliant singers as well. Mukesh, Manna Dey, S. P. Balasubramanian, Suresh Wadkar, Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, Abhijeet, Arijeet Singh, etc. are all brilliant singers in their own right. However, in my personal ranking, they are quite a few rungs below the genius of Rafi and Kishore.
So yeah, I got an HT, and now I'm a huge fan of Rafi and Kishore, two singers I had never thought much about till 3 months ago.
I used to listen to all kinds of music earlier, but with headphones, I mostly preferred listening to English music with female vocals. However, when I started playing music on my home theater, I preferred music which was quieter and melodious. Hence I started leaning towards old Hindi songs, mostly from the 70s. I started noticing that I liked Rafi's and Kishore Kumar's songs a lot. With Rafi and Kishore, the variety in their voice is unbelievable. Initially it was hard to tell that all the songs were sung by the same person in a Rafi collection, he sounds so different depending on the tone of the song. Later I noticed the same quality in Kishore's songs as well.
The Aha moment came when I accidentally played Raat Kali Ek Khwab Me Aayi sung by Kumar Sanu instead of the original. I found myself rather unimpressed and in 2 minutes, I had changed to the original, sung by Kishore. Since then I have listened more closely and I feel that most other singers fail to come even close to the range and versatility of these two. Udit Narayan might be in the running to some extent, but Kumar Sanu and Sonu Nigam pretty much sound the same in all their songs.
I notice the same quality in Lata's voice from the 60s and 70s, but as we get closer to the 90s, her voice started sounding same in all songs. She's still quite pleasant, but her songs from later years are not at pleasant to the ears. Not sure if this is because of her age or changes in recording/editing etc.
And no offence to any singers, there are quite a few other brilliant singers as well. Mukesh, Manna Dey, S. P. Balasubramanian, Suresh Wadkar, Hariharan, Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan, Abhijeet, Arijeet Singh, etc. are all brilliant singers in their own right. However, in my personal ranking, they are quite a few rungs below the genius of Rafi and Kishore.
So yeah, I got an HT, and now I'm a huge fan of Rafi and Kishore, two singers I had never thought much about till 3 months ago.
