The Persuasions: Sing the Beatles on SACD...very nice recording (1 Viewer)

[Justin Lane]

Last week I picked up The Persuasions Sing the Beatles on Chesky SACD on a lark after seeing it on the rack at Best Buy. The disc has left me surprisingly pleased, filled with great a cappella performances of some of the fab four's standards. My two favorite tracks on the disc were Octopus's Garden and Yesterday, which really show off the group's vocal talents. SACD may have been a bit overkill for a pure voice recording (bandwidth of human voice is about 100-4kHz), but surely didn't hurt anything.

My only minor complaint revolves around the multi-channel track supplied on this disc. Because recording was done with only a single mic, they were left with doing a Silverline-like reverb for the surround track. A different recording technique could have provided stunning results in surround, not to take anything away from the excellent stereo track. Also, the redbook layer was not readable by the CD player in my truck, the first disc where I ran into such compatibility issues.

That being said, I still highly recommend this title to any Beatle's fan, especially those looking for material in Hi-res.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Thanks for the review Justin. I have the redbook and I really like it. Now I will pick up the Super Audio version.

I think what David and his team did was include room tone on the surrounds. This is in line with David's philosophy on purist miking.