CD vs. SACD vs. DVD-Audio vs Vinyl vs...

Hi Garfish and everyone else, I haven't had enough time with all this gear to be 100% certain of my evaluations but I will attempt a short preliminary report. WOW! The sound does not sound like the master in the playback room of a studio, it sounds like you are directly in the same room with the musicians. I know this is a bit general but the best I can say is that the energy of the performance is palpable. I'm not kidding. I know the feeling of playing with other musicians and how there is an unspoken communication that writers call interplay, but there is a certain kind of anticipation that is communicated from musician to musician that tells you what the other player is about to do and with the DCS gear I could actually anticipate the drummers next moves before they happened. I don't have the budget to buy at this level myself yet. A friend has given me access to his system and he is often not at home for extended periods of time. This is why I am looking forward to a universal player that will approach this level of quality between $2000 and $5000. I think this won't be happening for another year or two. As far as software availability, we'll see. One of these new formats will eventually be widely available. When I bought my first DVD player there were only a few DVDs' around. No one knew if the format would succeed. Now I go to Tower Video and rent thousands of titles for $2. I believe that SACD or DVD-A will be as successful. I can wait a while to let the first few generations work out the bugs.

10-4 Bmp, and thanks-- you've further whetted my appetite. And I agree, I'd like to see an upsampling system in the $2000. to $5000. range that you mentioned. As for now, I'm tenetively interested in Bel Canto's DAC-1. They have a good reputation for high quality products, and I've heard nothing bad about their DAC-1-- but it's early. How about anyone else re: the Bel Canto DAC-1?

Bmpnyc: Just curious, how often do you venture off Manhattan Island? (...a theory I have about people in the music industry who live there...) Anyway, sounds like you've done things I've only dreamed of (recording for so many years). Someday, I hope to do mine in LA, or a "ranch" in Marin County. What sort of recording do you do? 128 channel SSL console? Neve? What's your favorite omni mike for minimalist, natural/nonprocessed, audiophile-type recording? Neumann U47?

Hi Carl, I'm lucky enough to have a few friends with second homes and get invited frequently to Upstate NY, The Berkshires near Tanglewood and Fla. I go to London about once every 5 years to see family. I must admit for many, many years I couldn't be dragged off the island of Manhattan, but my fiance` is slowly curing my wicked ways. At 18 I signed with Mercury records to do a few Rock and Roll albums. My first demo was done at Bell Sound studios before it was closed. That is where Buddy Holly did his recording here. I was managed by some of the same people that managed Jimi Hendrix and my second studio experience was in Electric Lady studios in Studio B using Jimis' actual amplifiers (talk about if these walls could talk). I did my first album at Plaza Sound. It is on the top floor of Radio City Music Hall. The Rocketts dressing room was down the corridor.WOW! I drifted into jingle writing and producing for 10 years after that.The spots I worked on won a Cleo and other awards. I had to become adept at different styles of music and my tastes were growing. I once had to conduct multiple tracks of a string section made up of the finest players from the major NY orchestras. I struggled to keep up with them but everything went well. I discontinued producing and began teaching music privately due to poor health. I have been operating at a slower pace for a while now but hope to get up to normal speed again soon. The equipment you mentioned was exactly the type of equipment I used in many sessions. I used to like the older Harrison soundboards a lot. Usually I let the engineers set up a few different mikes for a session and picked the one that sounded best in that particular room. Sometimes I combined mikes. I had my own small recording studio for the lower budget commercials. I chose the Neumann mikes most of the time. I enjoyed growing in experience as a producer but I couldn't continue to sing about potato chips forever, even if the money was good. I have heard and appreciate some audiophile type recordings but I was of the mind that if a $90 mike got it better than a $4000 mike in the given situation I chose interesting sound first. BTW I was at Sound by Singer recently and the head of DCS was there with the president of Straight Wire. He told me that it many ways the design of the Sony SACD players was based on the Elgar Ring technology. He said that the cost to develope the Elgar would have been too high for any other company but that the Elgar was based on the work of the scientists who developed the British intelligence national security system. They started developing the DCS system as an offshoot of their intelligence work. Talk about a NY minute! I hope this bit of background info helps to introduce me to all of the regular participants here. I am happy to be in the same "room" with so many experienced and fun people. Here's hoping to find you all happy and well. Bye for now.

In most studios there are Lexicon Reverbs and Yamaha reverbs,( some even had a plate in the ground or a feed to the hallways). When I bought the Yamaha DSPA-1 (recently sold) I recognized some of the DSPs' as the reverb settings from their $10,000 reverb units! Now you can buy a DSP-A1 fot $1200 and get better sound fields than many studios have. In the same way, I hope the expensive SACD format will become the everyday format in the near future. *Carl, I will try to listen to one of the high end turntables at Singer Sound in the next few weeks if it can be arranged. I saw one in their biggest room that cost $20,000.In that same room I listened to the JMLab Utopias $70,000, with two enormous Krell amps, $120,000 each and although it was impressive in some ways it did not move me at all. The two other people listening with me agreed that they were a bit dull! Can you imagine, over $300,000 worth of gear and it sounded boring. We stepped into the next room and put on Ricki Lee Jones' "Horses" album (DDD,..digital all the way) using almost the same system as described in the earlier post,(DCS, Delios, Purcell,Avalons, Conrad Johnson etc. This was expensive gear but it didn't require a mortgage just a big loan and it blew the doors off of that other system. I guess it takes some serious money to get up to the highest end but it is a lot of fun to try to get as close as possible to that benchmark on a budget, by choosing the right combination of equipment. I wish that I was nearby some of you and could participate in a listening session or two.* Vinyl guys, with the higher end systems you have does record wear present significant problems?