Carlo Medina

Nickel Creek SACD owners: a question for you!

Hi All,

I do eventually plan to get a Uni player (eyeing the Yammy DVD-S1500 that's coming out) but I want to start buying some hybrid SACDs so as to "lessen the pain" by spreading out purchases and having content ready to listen to when I buy the player in June/July.

As such, I want to start by purchasing hybrids that I can enjoy on my current CD system and then play when I get the Uni player. I have Norah's debut SACD/CD and the CD layer sounds fantastic, especially compared to the CD only version (which my girlfriend has).

So now my question is: how are the Nickel Creek SACD's redbook (CD) layer? Is it better than the regular CDs? I ask because I already own both Nickel Creek CDs so if there's no improvement I can wait until after I purchase the player to get these SACDs.

However if the CD layer on the SACD is superior to the regular CD version, I will pick these up now.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

Mike Broadman

I don't have the regular CDs, but I would guess that since they're new albums, there shouldn't be too much difference between the SACD redbook and the regular CD.

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Phil A

Unless it was an album you were wild about or your SACD playback quality was much better than your CD playback capability, I would not just toss stuff aside. My friend had the Norah Jones hybrid (he does not have an SACD player but has a high end CD player). He brought it over to my place and I compared the CD layers on a fairly high end system. Yes the CD layer was a hair smoother on the hybrid but not worth getting another copy as the regular CD was an excellent recording in its own right.

Carlo Medina

Hmm, it's been a while since I compared the two, but I could swear there was a noticeable difference between the Norah Jones SACD/CD layer and the plain CD. I seem to remember that the regular CD sounded quite a bit "hot" (i.e. perhaps a victim of compression) compared to the SACD. In fact I think there was a thread on that here, time to search for it...

Ah, here is the old thread. As you can see, my comments there were pre-purchase, and my girlfriend hadn't gotten the CD version yet (free as a gift) so I had no reference to compare at the time, but quite a few people in that thread did.

Phil A

Depends upon what you listen on. If you have a unit that is much better than SACD playback (vs. CD playback as I noted) then perhaps if you really like the album it might be worth it. I mainly listend on my (Modwright Absolute Truth Mod) my modded XA-777ES which is better on CD playback than a good number of units play SACDs. I've had a couple of the Pioneers and cheaper Sonys and the unit sounds better on CD than those did on SACD. I also have a Micromega DuoPro DAC, while not brand new (I bought it used very reasonably), was $2.5k list in its day (5+ yrs. ago?) and combined with a good transport will also be better than many SACD players. CD playback with good software can be quite good. The Norah Jones was smoother on SACD and the CD layer on the hybrid had some of those same tendencies. The CD is still quite good.

Carlo Medina

So back to the question at hand: no one owns both the Nickel Creek CDs and SACDs and can compare the two CD layers?

thanks!

Rachael B

On the other hand Carlo, you might want to pick up the Nickel Creek discs because they may go OOP and you can't presume they'll be available, new, forever or a day, whichever comes first. ???

Rachael, the big disc cat! I used to be looking for Hi-Vision Laserdiscs & D-Theater tapes, now I'm looking for HD-DVD's and Blu-rays.

I survived the AFI top 100 Film Challenge! I've seen them all.

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Carlo Medina

Excellent point, Rachael. And given the fact that they aren't bankbreakers ($14-$15) I may just buy one and use the wav editor analysis in Nero to compare the two versions of the redbook layer. If I find there are differences I'll post them here (with hopefully some waveform data to back them up).