Ry Cooder & V.M. Bhatt - A Meeting By The River mp3 album

I second The Orb's ringing endorsement of this album. Although I can't exactly call it an "ambient" album, it is most certainly in my top 12 of all time. This is an amazing meeting of two fantastically talented musicians having a light-hearted, joyous musical conversation. To describe it any more in words would be a disservice to the performance. The event was captured perfectly by Tim de Paravicini of Esoteric Audio Research (EAR). The absolutely minimalist recording techniques produce a CD that transports the listener to the performance. It shines compared to other recordings; the sonic equivalent of wiping a layer of grime off a window. And it seems to do so regardless of the playback equipment: headphones, speakers, and even computer speakers (the castrato of the music world) all seem capable of reproducing the event with great fidelity. If you are encoding your music in iTunes or the like, do yourself a favor and make this one Lossless.