Fly in the SACD Ointment?


Yesterday, I almost got tears in my eyes going through the new audiophile format bin at Tower Records in New York. Spotting some old favourites in the SACD section, I was blissfully imagining throwing my CD player out my 17th story window and sitting down at a new system enjoying the best of analog AND digital. Then, it hit me -- even in the good old days, when I when I wouldn't dream of listening until I had Nitty Grittied my records, carefully cleaned the stylus, adjusted VTA, switched off the phone and dimmed the lights -- A LOT OF RECORDS STILL SOUNDED PRETTY BAD. Not nearly as bad (or as often) as a bad CD, but still pretty bad and ultimately unsatisfying which is what lead to my neurosis with this hobby and a never ending quest for great recordings in addition to great gear. So I am wondering -- maybe a $5000 SACD player and a new collection of software at $25 each is just going to take me back to bad analogue?!?!? Or is Sheffield Labs going to painstakingly remaster every title in the SACD catalogue? Has anyone thought about this or is there some magic to SACD that makes it all worthwhile, nonetheless. Maybe bad "analogue" without background noise and with greater dynamic range is still pretty special, but I really don't want to listen to Mannheim Steamroller in any format. Thanks for your thoughts.
cwlondon

Showing 2 responses by rcprince

I agree with Onhwy61 about being encouraged by the appearance of SACD in a more prominent place at Tower. A few months ago, it was with the minidiscs in the pop section at Tower here in NY, virtually out of sight. As far as Cwlondon's point, I've said it before, SACD (and 24/96, for that matter) gets you closer to the master tape, but be careful what you wish for, because some of those master tapes don't sound so great. As new recordings get made in these formats, this will be less of a concern, but you should be cautious about some of the re-releases. For example, I didn't realize that Billy Joel's "The Stranger", an album I've always liked, was cut at as hot a level as the SACD revealed. Now part of the difference is in the resolving power of my system now vs. then, but it's still clear that SACD has revealed more than I want to hear. But it has also revealed to me just how good the Bruno Walter series of recordings for Columbia are. So for now, a mixed blessing, but I prefer to look at it as the start of something which will be significantly better in the future.
Jkoestner, I think you're right, although I'm certainly hoping that DSD doesn't sound as bad as those early DDD recordings did! Actually, there are a lot of great analog recordings out there which could sound equally great on SACD, there just aren't that many of them, at least for classical, in the Sony/Columbia/CBS catalog. Mes, excellent post; actually, there is at least one pcm based (I think) SACD that sounds stunning, the Delos recording of the Mahler 2, which seems from the literature to be a 20-bit recording but is clearly better than the good sounding CD version, and the Sony Goldberg Variations (the Perihia version) is a 24-bit pcm master that sounds very good on SACD as well. Seems to me the higher bit pcm recordings can translate well to SACD, although the all-DSD recordings I've heard from Telarc and Lyrinx make me hope that more DSD machines will become available and utilized.