I've got a puzzle that developed in another thread and I think at this point it's worthy of a thread of its own. I recently purchased a dual-layer SACD of Angela Hewitt's Chopin Nocturnes (Hyperion SACDA67371/2). I enjoyed the performance but was disappointed with the sonics. I found that I was having to boost my pre-amp up to 3 o'clock to get realistic sound levels (typically most piano CD's run around 11-12 O'clock for similar volume), and the sound was a bit distant and slightly fuzzy for lack of a better descriptor. It lacked immediacy and dynamics to my ears. In the
other thread there was at leas one person who had the CD-only version of the same performance and was surprised at my impressions. Unfortunately my player is not able to toggle to the CD layer for some odd reason so I brought it over to my friend's system and tried it on his player which is CD-only. The very same issues occurred with his system - preamp at 2 o'clock in his case (norm would be 11 according to him) and sound was distant and not sharply defined. So this morning I burned a copy CD (direct copy burning program that copies a cd from one drive to another) to send to Newbee (who has a copy of the CD-only version) to compare with his disc. I put the copied version of the CD into my player to confirm the burn and lo and behold not only did it play, but it had transformed the sound and seemingly solved the issues!!! I could play the burned CD at 11 o'clock and the sound was more immediate, dynamic and focused. I put the original dual-layer SACD back in the player to confirm that I wasn't off my rocker and sure enough back was the soft and distant version of the same performance. I don't have any issues with the few other dual-layer SACD's I own, so it's not a player issue, on top of which the original dual-layer had the same kinds of issues in my friend's CD-only player. So what gives!!???!!! Can anyone shed any light on what might be at play here?
