Does SACD really have a future? (1 Viewer)

[Phil A]

Actual Rachael, I have. In fact there is a Klingon phrase for SACD translates into superior music and is "moch QoQ.'

 

[Lee Scoggins]

The Mercury Living Presence discs are even better still IMHO.

 

[PaulDA]

Do you mean sonically, or musically? I've looked at their discs on the web and I admit I'm more familiar with the works found on the RCA set. That in no way precludes my sampling the Mercury set, I'm simply curious as to what criteria makes them better in your opinion.

 

[Rachael B]

Oh Phil! I thought it was more "fi nie chi, chaka chaka khan"...?

 

[Carlo_M]

Well after purchasing a new cheapie player (Sony DVP-NC875V) my answer is: I sure hope so!

I've owned a Panny RP91 DVD/DVD-A player for four years (didn't know it played DVD-A until over a year after I bought it!) and have a few DVD-A titles that I've been very happy with: Natalie Merchant's Tigerlilly, Queen's 2 DVD-As, Dishwalla's Opaline, Ryan Adams' Gold & Glen Phillips' Abulum. But for the longest time I had a hard time finding DVD-A titles that appealed to me. I was steeped in classic 60's and 70's rock by my father, and went to college during the grunge years (real grunge, 1990-1995, not what passes for it now) and have matured into a singer/songwriter phase: Aimee Mann, Glen Phillips, Teitur, Jon Brion, David Mead, Dave Matthews (solo and band), etc.

Well my secondary DVD player died and I thought, what the heck, this Sony SACD/DVD changer is $130, I have a 12% off Best Buy coupon...why not? So two days ago I pulled the trigger on it and bought both of Nickel Creek's SACDs, as well as The Wallflowers' Red Letter Days. Being a forward thinker I already owned Norah Jones' Come Away w/ Me Hybrid and Ryan Adams' Rock and Roll Hybrid so those were also ready to go.

All I have to say is: I was so impressed I took the Sony out of my bedroom and put it in the main system so I could hear full 5.1 driven by my NAD T763.

I have rediscovered the music in these albums!

I don't have a horse in the SACD/DVD-A war, I can play both, but I sure do hope the companies do increase output of modern and classic rock on either or both formats. I know there's more stuff out there that I listen to, but it's very difficult for me to find it locally (hit 3 Best Buys yesterday). I'm thinking of driving out to Marina Del Rey (20 minutes) to the nearest Tower Records to see if they have anything. Maybe if I'm lucky they'll have the mo-fi Aimee Mann SACDs.

I like pop-classical music (i.e. the stuff that you hear all the time) but am not a connoisseur. If anyone wants to recommend a great, well-known, well recorded, classical SACD I'd be willing to give it a spin.

I'd like to say that I don't need SACD to become mass-market (look what it's done to DVD quality w/ EE all over the place and special features overtaking audio/video quality), but unfortunately to hear the music I want to hear on it (or DVD-A) I fear the reality is that, for me, I will need one or both to take off. Of course, today's kids just want quick, portable 128kbps MP3s that they can rip and take anywhere. :frowning:

Overall I consider my $130 investment worth it. I needed a new DVD player anyway, which would have cost around $100 (I was burned by the $35 Cyberhome, never again!), so my actual cost to enter SACD was very little. But no matter the outcome of this format, I won't regret it. Not if the smile on my face yesterday, while listening to those discs, is any indication!

 

[ElevSkyMovie]

Carlo,

Is the Wallflowers disc significantly better than the redbook? How is the surround mix?

thanks.

 

[PaulDA]

Check out some of the RCA Living Stereo SACDs. Great recordings (though in two or three channel, as the originals were, not re-mixed) and inexpensive.

If you want the king of "hear all the time" music, there are a number of recordings of Vivaldi's Four Seasons, in both SACD and DVD-A.

I have this version on SACD http://sa-cd.net/showtitle/1480
and there are many others http://sa-cd.net/search/vivaldi+four+seasons'

Here's a well regarded DVD-A of the same: http://www.highfidelityreview.com/re...umber=17202764 Who says classical music isn't sexy?

 

[Carlo_M]

Kyle, I don't own the original CD so I can't do a comparison. If I have time I can try to compare the redbook vs. SACD stereo later, but not sure when I'll be able to get to that.

Paul, thanks for that recommendation but I already own that CD of Mutters, and I have to say I'm not all that impressed (I know, heresy!) with her style and playing.

I'm actually interested in something more "full orchestra" sound. I like big-movie-soundtrack type of stuff. Lots of crescendoes and power, then soft, melancholy, heart-tuggy passages. Think John Williams score. Any recommendations?

 

[Danny Tse]

Some of the RCA Living Stereo SACDs are now available @ BMG Music Service. Cheap too.

 

[PaulDA]

Carlo,

I've read that the Star Trek: Nemesis score is well regarded and well recorded (SACD). Jerry Goldsmith composed it, so it should be good.

 

[AricB]

Carlo, I think I have the same player. I like that it can shuffle between tracks and different discs, unlike dvd-a.

as far as sacd's go, I'd look for the following(my favorites):
beck-seachange
david bowie-heathen
steely dan-gaucho
joe satriani-strange beautiful music
pink floyd-dsotm
nin-the downward spiral
miles davis-kind of blue
snow patrol-final straw

 

[ChristopherDAC]

I can certainly vouch for the "enjoyability" of the multichannel mix on Gaucho. I only have a dtsCD, but that sounds quite good. It's not "natural" sounding by any stretch of the imagination, but we're talking about the Ultimate Studio Band here; Becker and Fagen give the word "artificial" back its old, positive sense.
Though I don't have much use, from a mathematical or engineering perspective, for any 1-bit digital recording technique, I would like to see lossless multichannel formats, preferably with a higher sampling rate/longer word length than EIAJ, thrive in the marketplace.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Sonically but the performances are stellar too. I am not sure if the performances are better than RCA but on par for sure.

 

[Danny Tse]

In chatting with highfidelityreview.com's Brian Moura via e-mail, he mentioned Hong Kong Sony is looking into building a hybrid SACD manufacturing plant locally. Since HK already has the Viva Magnetics SACD plant, this sounds like there're more demand for SACD. As I understand it, some of RCA's Living Stereo SACDs are made at the Viva plant.

While HK music companies have released a relatively high number of SACDs, almost 90% of those discs, to this day, are manufactured either in Japan or Europe.

 

[Paul.S]

In addition to reviews of the ($250) Samsung DVD-HD841 and ($1,299!) Denon DVD-3910 universal players, there's an article in the new Sound & Vision (January 2005 issue) about the engineering of Telarc's new SACD release of the Berlioz "Requiem"--"Heavenly Surround: Conductor Robert Spano and the Telarc crew turn the Berlioz 'Requiem' into an SACD spectacular."

Writer Robert Ripps addresses the issue that the title of this thread refers to in the concluding paragraphs of the article:

After calling their "Requiem" a thrilling success, Ripps writes:

I guess I could succinctly summarize my position by saying that, as long as Telarc--a label I've been a fan of for 20 years--is doing recordings like this "Requiem" and releasing them on SACD, I'll want to make sure I have a way to hear them as intended in my rig.

What with Blu-ray not supporting DSD (?) and should universals grow scarce after we move deeper into HD, it would appear that there's perhaps a dedicated (Sony?) SACD/CD & DVD-V player in my future . . .

-p

 

[Phil_DC]

I am a big fan of both SACD & DVD-A neither are going to survive unless a couple of things happen. They both need to go portable; I mean they both need to be able to be played in vehicles with surround sound car audio systems, portable walkman type devices with surround sound headphones, laptops with surround speakers and PC’s with surround sound speakers or surround sound headphones.

Second and most important thing; The average Joe can NOT hear the difference between two channel CD audio and two channel SACD or DVD-A audio at least not enough to warrant plopping down the cash for a player. Two channel is NOT where SACD & DVD-A’s excel it is multi channel sound that truly sets it a part from other audio formats. So both the two channel is the only way audiophile purist’s and the average Joe MP3 users will have to stop, listen and embrace true multi channel audio sound.


Personally, I am a total convert and prefer multi channel audio over everything else, true some of the early re-mixes were not that hot but some of the new stuff is fantastic!

Just yesterday I picked up Mannheim Steamroller meets the Mouse DVD-A and it is one of the best multi channel audio discs I have ever had the pleasure of hearing.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

That's just your opinion but not supportable by any real evidence one way or the other. I think what is really happening is that there is not enough marketing for one to feel compelled to actually hear the benefits of hirez.

 

[Phil_DC]

Ok let me rephrase that;

Where the average Joe hears SACDDVD-A two channel audio they can NOT tell the difference between it and CD quality two channel. Most people hear SACD or DVD-A for the first time inside places like BestBuy or Circuit City at one of those little display stands with two speakers and a player. The sound they hear does not justify them spending the money on a player or disc's

The only way without actually buying a setup and taking it home to hear real difference is to go to a highend audio store, one that has a good sound room and play some hires discs vs. CD's. Even then I do not believe many will hear enough difference to make a difference to them. However if you fire up some good multi channel hires audio vs two channel CD audio(even outing with prologic to 5.1) the average Joe would be blown away by the hires multi channel.

The problem is how many average Joes are going to venture in to highend audio stores, not many that’s for sure.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Mr. Scoggins, that last comment causes me to wonder if you know anything about psychoacoustics, or the cheapskate nature of the ordinary man.
Yes, marketing can induce many people to buy things they have no real necessity for; but look at it this way. MP3s with lossy compression, or Phillips cassettes with a 15kHz bandpass, Dolby-B, and a low S/N ratio, are high enough fidelity to satisfy the ears of most listeners most of the time. They are designed that way. These formats are particularly satisfactory if the content is more or less free [swapping/"bootlegging"], and/or if the hardware is something cheap or which they own already.
Most people do not experience "ear fatigue" from listening critically to music for hours on end, because they don't do it. In point of fact, although amplifiers have gotten better in the past 30 years, most home audio systems are really not capable of providing full fidelity to an ordinary CD -- and it would not matter if they were, as the recordings of most popular music fail to exploit the dynamic range and frequency response available from EIAJ.
And don't tell me what people "should" do, or "would" do, because the point is that, even on the slim chance that they would, they won't. Not until and unless there is no additional expense, capital or continuing, involved [and CD players last a long time!], or they are offered something percieved as a real added value, e.g. surround music.
For all the fringe audiophile community may try to deny it, psychoacoustics is a remarkably well-understood area of perceptual studies. If you look up the relevant charts and graphs, you will want the 50th percentile set in order to model the response of the "average Joe", you will be able to see exactly what the difference between EIAJ, DSD, and high-speed LPCM is for most ears, and it's not much. For someone whose lifestyle revolves around intensive music listening, it's a big deal; but just as most people don't have dedicated home theatre rooms, darkened and boasting 9" CRT front projectors and 100" screens, most people do not have dedicated, sound-baffled music rooms with 12 Wharfedale sand-filled infinite-baffle speakers and a 500W amp driving each one. They listen to music while jogging, or in the car, or while cooking, or whatever, just as "background noise", just as they turn the TV on and don't watch it.
I also remain unconvinced by "surround headphones", but that's another story.
Sorry, but that's my rant and I'm sticking to it.

 

[PaulDA]

As much as I personally wish all music was released in hi-res hybrid formats, so we could all have what we want, I'm afraid ChristopherDAC is quite correct in his assessment. Almost all my friends and family "glaze over" when I talk about how great hi-res music can be and why I went to the trouble of placing my speakers "just so", instead of recessed out of the way (typical comments--What are those doing so far from walls? Aren't they in the way?) and when I tell them I like to listen to music (not do anything else while listening) I get: "Don't you get bored?", "That would just put me to sleep." or my favourite, "What a waste of time." (that last one comes from a relative, not a friend--you know what they say about being able to choose).