Columns Retired Columns & Blogs |
Seeing new SACD releases all the time. Have bought lots of great ones. Prefer lots to CD. DVD-Audio releases are few and far between. Wish there were more.
High-resolution audio has gone quiet in recent months. Or has it? What do you think has happened to SACD and DVD-Audio?
Classical music on SACD is a wonder, but it does expose the limits of speakers and other equipment. If you've got the right stuff, and enjoy listening, it's the only way to go. I recommend some of the old stuff being re-released on SACD, including anything by Bob Dylan and the old RCA Living Stereo series.
Two years ago I set out to buy a SACD player and I ended up with a turntable instead. I was really hoping that SACD recordings would sound more natural, less like electronic reproduction of music. This is what I found LPs sounded like. I get tired of digitally reproduced sound in about 30 minutes. I can play LPs all day long and not feel tired of the sound at all.
When people pay $1 for an FM radio quality song, why bother with hi-res formats? The art is getting lost in the digital compressed world of music production and distribution. Lo-Fi is in. Is it the consumers fault? I don't think so. The whole industry puts quantity above quality: too many substandard releases. Then the 5.1 hype: Buy 5 bad speakers for the price of two good ones. It's a big mess and the consumer is confused and drowned in crap.