News

The Super Audio CD is gaining serious momentum.

With over 650 titles available from many record labels—including some majors—and with several inexpensive players now on the market, Sony Corporation has launched its next volley in what may very well prove to be an all-out format war. At a press conference held August 7 at the Fairmount Hotel in Vancouver, BC, the electronics giant announced its next-generation high-performance disc player and the impending release of almost two dozen SACD remastered recordings from one of the world's most renowned rock bands. The timing couldn't have been better, given that a DVD-Audio conference was scheduled in Los Angeles only two days later. (See Jon Iverson's report.)

Hosting approximately 30 journalists for a day-long event covering new video, home theater, custom installation, and specialty audio products—some of which had made their official debut at Home Entertainment 2002—Sony's conference served as a sort of dress rehearsal for a much larger gathering of the company's ES ("Elevated Standard") Series dealers to be held the next day. The big news for audiophiles was the introduction of the DVD-NS999ES, an advanced DVD player with a 14-bit, 108MHz video DAC, pixel-for-pixel video processing, "Precision Cinema Progressive" video output—and multichannel SACD capabilities.

The single-disc player, which replaces the DVD-NS9000ES, uses frame and beam construction throughout, with a mechanically isolated non-resonant subchassis for the spindle, motor, and optical pickup. The 999 deletes the copper-clad (or solid copper) ground planes that have characterized high-end Japanese designs in recent years. "Environmental concerns" were the official explanation for the design change. Available in October, the DVD-NS999ES will sell for approximately $1200.

The machine was the source for several interesting demonstrations held in one of the Fairmount's large ballrooms—including playback of recently remastered-to-SACD early Rolling Stones recordings. Twenty-two of these discs ("the entire ABKCO catalog") are slated for delivery by early fall, according to Sony's David Kawakami, who informed us prior to the listening session that the two-channel SACD versions present more of the Stones' "essential rawness"—a quality some music lovers might say they already possessed in overabundance. Whether the recordings are actually better than the original analog or CD versions will prove to be a matter of taste—Stereophile editor John Atkinson reports that the SACD sampler he has been playing does indeed sound better than the original vinyl!—but there is no question that issuing the Stones' work on SACD is a brilliant marketing move. The band has literally millions of rabid fans, many of whom feel compelled to purchase every reissue that comes along. "Hear what you've been missing"—Sony's advertising tag for the SACD campaign—may compel these fans and all their friends to come into the high-rez fold.

Much more compelling, from both the musical and audiophile perspectives, was the playback of some unreleased Alison Krauss material by Nashville recording engineer Gary Paczosa. The soft-spoken Paczosa discussed some of the challenges he faced in mastering Krauss's latest recordings for high-resolution multichannel playback, in particular, how best to use the extra channels and where to place the primary vocal in the soundstage. Not a fan of placing the listener in the middle of the band—"That's not natural"—Paczosa prefers to use the rear/side channels for ambience enhancement, to maximize what some engineers call the "proscenium perspective," the sensation that you are witnessing an event on a stage in front of you.

More problematic for him is "how far out into the room" to place the performers. He also confessed to being very uncomfortable with mixing the primary vocal into the center channel. "You don't know how the center channel will be positioned in the home, it could be above or below a video screen, behind it, or even lying on the floor," he explained. In his demonstrations, the center channel carried some instrumentals, but Krauss's voice was funneled entirely to the left and right front speakers, which were spread much farther apart than they would be in a traditional two-channel system. (Sony used EgglestonWorks' Andra II loudspeakers, scheduled to be reviewed in the November 2002 issue of Stereophile, at all positions.)

This mix caused her to appear from the center only for the listener seated directly in front of the center channel speaker, as Stereophile Guide to Home Theater editor Tom Norton was for the first couple of recordings. Seated next to him, I heard Krauss only from the right; Widescreen Review editor-in-chief Gary Reber, on Tom's other side, heard her only from the left. Tom and I swapped seats, and I found that the slightest head movement threw Krauss's acoustic image from one side to the other. We speculated that some beaminess on the part of the Andras might contribute to this phenomenon; I surmised that including the vocal in the center channel, even at a lower level than in the left and right, might have stabilized the image. It would have been instructive to compare mixes done both ways. Despite the imaging anomalies, the demo was otherwise sonically impeccable, with astounding clarity.

Paczosa's demonstration was an excellent reminder that multichannel recording/playback is still in its infancy. It is many years away from becoming a mature technology, but we should expect more consistent results as engineers and performers begin to understand its potential. Paczosa provoked many sympathetic nods when he told us how happy he was to not have to compress Krauss's music for possible radio play, a process that's obviously pained him for a long time. Krauss, a "multi-platinum Grammy winner," in the words of Sony USA's Tracy Martinson, doesn't get much airplay, but still sells records by the millions. Musical integrity and a loyal audience naturally gravitate toward one another, and put the lie to the music industry's myth that spending enormous promotional sums for radio "spins" is the only way to generate sales.