Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Favorite 5-10 SACD’s

I am looking to build on my SACD collection and am looking for members to list:

What are your top 5 -10 SACD’s?

If possible also provide links of online vendors that have a exhaustive collection of SACD’s.

I'm new to SACD and DVD-A, so this interests me as well. Any suggestions on DVD-A discs would be welcome as well.

Classical & rock are the two areas I'm most interested in...

Elton John -- Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Pink Floyd--Dark Side of the Moon
I have all the early SACD's of the Stones, but not all of these are recorded that well. Some songs really come out well, others not so good. That is a turkey shoot on those.
Eagles--Hotel California
DVD-A
Doobie Brothers--The Captain and Me
Alice Cooper--Billion Dollar Babies
Fleetwood Mac--Rumours
All of these are very good...

Don't limit yourself to just SACD. DVD-A discs have a Dolby 5.1 track that works on most DVD players. It sounds very good.

Note also there are many stereo SACDs which are simple remasters. They are not remixed, and often don't sound much better than the stereo CD. By contrast any multichannel release is remixed.

Note there's often a huge difference between artistic quality vs technical quality of the surround mix.

I have many SACD/DVD-A albums by great artists I like, but the surround mix isn't very good -- muddy, flat, etc.

By contrast the good ones are so spectacular, it's as if you're hearing it for the first time.

Some recommendations:

Pink Floyd - Dark Side of the Moon (SACD)
Eagles - Hotel California (DVD-A)
Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (DVD-A)
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (SACD)
David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (SACD)
Roxy Music - Avalon (SACD)
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells (SACD)
Dave Brubeck - Time Out (SACD)

There are several very well known albums by famous artists that (to me) have sub-par or downright poor surround mixes. The artistic performance is great, but the technical quality of the mix is poor. In general these are older material so maybe it's a source quality issue. However that's not universally the case.

Re-mixing for surround isn't like a simple digital remaster. It requires a lot of manual artistic decision, and the skill of the mixing engineer can make or break the final product.

Less than stellar surround mixes (IMO):

Peter Frampton - Frampton Comes Alive (SACD)
The Who - Tommy (SACD)
Neil Young - Harvest (DVD-A)
Derek & the Dominoes - Layla (SACD)
REM - Best of REM (DVD-A)
Beach Boys - Pet Sounds (DVD-A)
Fleetwood Mac - Say You Will (DVD-A)

Some good web sites with SACD and/or DVD-A material:

http://store.acousticsounds.com/
http://www.superaudio-cd.com/

Brit and Joe, the beautiful Swan Lake which I've previously suggested would be my first thought in something available in SACD. Others would be this Alexander Nevsky , Copland collection , Ravel Daphnis et Chloe (not multi-channel), and Ravel Ma Mere L'Oye .