I agree with Raquel. I bought 10 XRCDs in the last years, each one of them was outstanding, artistically and sound-wise, so I don´t really care what Mr. Pearson has to say about his disappointment in the past.
New XRCD's get'em QUICK
People,
sorry for the 'alarmist' title - but this is important. You look at my past and you'll see that I only get excited about once every 3 years.
I read Harry Pearson's article in the current Absolute Sound about 3 new XRCD's. The gist of his article was that in the past, they sucked, but now they have a new recording engineer, and his new XRCD's are Incredible. But then he continues that it is a great shame that the label was going out of print (??). And then, only because 2 of them (Holst "The Planets" and the Carmen Fantasie for Violin) were music I really liked, and that I agreed with him that all of the XRCD's I had bought in the past were severely disappointing, did I buy the same two.
I put in the Carmen first and literally, the 1st words out of my mouth were Holy S***. And it was recorded in 1959 ! (BTW, I have SACD capability with many of the remastered Sony recordings AND Living Presence AND Living Voice and none of them compete with these XRCDs). Then I played the Holst (1971) and it was also awesome. I did not buy the other one. (side note, I have 7 versions of the Planets and one of the Bizet).
Please, get these disks quick, listen to them, and if you agree we need to keep this new engineer in business. I don't want to "hype" any more - get the disks and see what you think. Perhaps we can write JVC and tell them to get back in the game if it is true that the XRCD's are going away.
Lastly, and I have been trying to keep this realistic - I thought I was listening to a different system when I heard these disks...
sorry for the 'alarmist' title - but this is important. You look at my past and you'll see that I only get excited about once every 3 years.
I read Harry Pearson's article in the current Absolute Sound about 3 new XRCD's. The gist of his article was that in the past, they sucked, but now they have a new recording engineer, and his new XRCD's are Incredible. But then he continues that it is a great shame that the label was going out of print (??). And then, only because 2 of them (Holst "The Planets" and the Carmen Fantasie for Violin) were music I really liked, and that I agreed with him that all of the XRCD's I had bought in the past were severely disappointing, did I buy the same two.
I put in the Carmen first and literally, the 1st words out of my mouth were Holy S***. And it was recorded in 1959 ! (BTW, I have SACD capability with many of the remastered Sony recordings AND Living Presence AND Living Voice and none of them compete with these XRCDs). Then I played the Holst (1971) and it was also awesome. I did not buy the other one. (side note, I have 7 versions of the Planets and one of the Bizet).
Please, get these disks quick, listen to them, and if you agree we need to keep this new engineer in business. I don't want to "hype" any more - get the disks and see what you think. Perhaps we can write JVC and tell them to get back in the game if it is true that the XRCD's are going away.
Lastly, and I have been trying to keep this realistic - I thought I was listening to a different system when I heard these disks...