Without any corroborating evidence, I must mention that in the print media I noticed a story that said these bi-discs would have intentional degradation of the sound quality of the old format, another said that the player would degrade the old sound. This sounds somewhere between an ambush on the writer's side so conspiracy on the issuer side. But I do like my Phillips 963 and buy hybrids or straight sacd or dvd. It is rare that I buy a straight CD anymore. I am afraid of the future of my investment past and future in CD for format turnover. Oddly, I feel much safer buying a new LP.
SACD/CD Question
I've got a question for you SACD guys. I don't have SACD, but have a high-quality two-channel system. I recently bought my first so-called hybrid compatible CD/SACD, a Sony recording, made live in the Berlin Philharmonie in 2002, of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto played by Arcadi Volodos, with the Berlin Philharmonic under Seiji Ozawa. I have no idea what this one sounds like on an SACD system, but on my two-channel system the orchestral sound is just conspicuously AWFUL! This was all the more surprising to me because I'd earlier bought the same pianist's performance of the Rachmaninoff Third Piano Concerto, also recorded live, in the same hall, in 1999, with the same orchestra under James Levine, also on Sony (but with a different recording engineer), and this one's NOT a hybrid compatible CD/SACD but a plain stereo CD, and it sounds just fine. Can anyone shed some light on what is going on here? I'm reluctant now to buy any more so-called hybrid compatible CD/SACD discs after getting burned.