CD vs SACD in STEREO

On the Brothers in Arms CD: I agree, it is NOT an audiphile masterpieces, just a MUSIC masterpiece. I don't like how BRIGHT the mixing was done.

And now looking back 45 years when my friends and I were really into music equipment (built our own active crossovers using low noice OP amps, built amps (for our active 3 way speakers, etc) made our printed circuits, dragged the speakers into the backyard to MEASURE with fancy microphone, having BLIND A-B setups, etc), I am reminded why we listened to CLASSICAL MUSIC (on CD). NOT because we liked the music, but because the MATERIAL (recordings) were excellent. While pop/rock was playing with their multitrack and mixing it to death. 

@Richardbrand Brothers in arms was mixed in analogue on an SSL 4000 and transferred back to digital. 

But 32 bit floating point is not particularly new - I've been mixing with it with on Pro Tools 12 it for quite a number of years now. 32 bit floating point mixing is in Pro Tools since version 10 - late 2011 introduction.

@yoyoyaya 

It would help if the liner notes were more informative.  The original CD is labelled DDD which implies digital mastering, but I was not there.  Then there is the scandal that most analogue records have been digitally mastered!

Best practice these days for DSD mixing seems to be to use a multi-bit format at the original very high DSD sampling rate, thereby avoiding lossy conversions to PCM and back again. I am guided by Morten Lindberg of 2L.no - see:  Merging Technologies - Use Cases   2L packages often include every digital format known to man - well, hybrid SACD and Pure Audio with several multi-channel high res versions and Dolby Atmos.

To complete the discussion, I've just found out that Brothers in Arms has been released in Dolby Atmos!  I think I'll stick to 2L's immersive recording of Percy Grainger playing Grieg in 1921 ...

@richardbrand - and followers of this thread more generally...

The majority of commercial digital recordings will go through a few a/d and d/a conversions. This is because most studios use lots of analogue outboard gear - so at tracking the signal will be converted to digital. At mixing it will go a/d to the outboard gear the d/a back to the computer. At mastering, it will go through the same process. 

There are studios and mastering houses which operate entirely "in the box" i.e. do all the mixing and mastering using the computer alone. But it's still a minority.

Back to Brothers in Arms - the DDD means that it was recorded digitally, mastered digitally and output on a digital storage medium.

But that cannot be taken as a guarantee that the signal was never in the analogue domain during either the mixing or mastering process.

The state of computer technology at the time would not have made it feasible to mix it digitally, and it wasn't recorded to hard disc in the first place anyway.