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March 7, 2009 - 3:01pm
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Ah. You are getting to the issue. Most folks don't care about sound quality for any number of reasons and that, coupled with the failure of the various commercial interests to bring SACDs to the attention of those who might, accounts for the commercial failure of the medium.
Kal
I guess I can see that I mean how much sound quality can be improved with rap music and Brittany Spears? When I people hear my system the most often remarks are "wow that sounds awesome". It just seems to me that since more people are spending time at home their is an opportunity to use marketing to let them know what they have been missing. Miles Davis Quartet sounds awesome in SACD as does Stan Getz and Stevie Ray but then it requires time to really sit and listen..
I don't know how old you are, Rich, but there are some great hip-hop albums that sound fantastic, that are produced by people who definitely know what they're doing. Trust me, I listen to my Mahlers or Wuorinens or free jazz greats, etc., but I also enjoy a great deal of hip-hop.
That maybe true but the vast majority of the public has come to accept the music quality of iTunes and doesn't listen to the kind of music that would sound better on SACD.
I have the AYRE C5-XE player and using it I find that the SACDs sound only marginally better than some of the best regular CDs of the same original performance. It can be confusing, however, because some of these classic recordings (for example, the CBS Symphony/Bruno Walter Beethoven 6th Symphony) have been re-issued and remastered over and over, so what the heck are you really listening to?
Another one that has been re-issued and remastered at least 3 times is "Sketches Of Spain" by Miles Davis. On that recording, the SACD is unquestionably the best.
In any case, the BIG variable is the entire original recording process; venue, miking, recording gear, and engineer (not to mention the performance itself!!
Well put!
I haven't heard the AYRE C5-XE but like you Commsysman I've found the improvement with a borrowed Sony SCD-XA5400ES player over my Meridian 808.2 CD player, on most recordings, not worth the extra investment. You've tempted me though by referring to 'Sketches of Spain' but to invest in yet another format that may soon be killed off (by Blueray or high resolution downloads) for a few recordings still doesn't make sense to me.
One thing I don't like about all the SACD players I've so far auditioned is the ridiculously long load times. Why does it have to take that long?
I am not commenting on the program content as some of the reissues are greatly improved and a few are outstanding. OTOH, if you are only listening to old recordings, the sonic advantages cannot compare to new and well-made recordings.
Kal
I agree. Some of the Rudy VanGelder remasters for example are pure sonic excellence but I have also found that some older recordings sound really good on SACD. I compared, for example, Miles Davis Kind of Blue SACD with a regular CD and found that the SACD has more sonic depth than the regular CD. Remember there aren't a lot of us who can afford a $6K CD player
I've heard some comments re loading time, but it seems to be the same for both CD and SACD on most players I have worked with; some are just slow.
On my Ayre, it is about 4-5 seconds from the time you start the tray moving in until it is ready for play (same for both Cd and SACD).
In my (finite) experience, regular CD players always start playing CD music much quicker than any players that also have SACD or DVD capability. The "regular" CDP's don't have to figure out which format the loaded disc is in..