Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo SACD's....don't jump on the band wagon....just yet

They all had "engineers"...... I stand by my, un-official, un-scientific, un-authorized, poorly titled, inadvertent, SACD bashing, test results.

Larry....hope you didn't take offense to my post.

I was just saying that some engineers are better than others, and that mixing SACD's and DVD-A's definitely shows it.

Of course not!.........in fact, I'm already busy with my next, less controversial post, titled: Monster cables.."how they help with speaker break-in".

LOL....oh Monster.

When I was at CES, I was on the monorail with some Monster reps. I wanted to ask them questions....but I held back.

Curtis
That was once in a lifetime chance.
I can just imagine that conversation.

Hey!
Wait a minute!
Monster Cables don't help break in your speakers faster?
The kid at Radio Shack told me that if I Tri-Wired my M60's they would be broken in in a Third of the time!
And, as for me, I'm waiting to upgrade to the SACD thing when they release the Who's Live at Leeds in the special 4 disc set (I think I've only owned 4 different versions of this one so far!)because the 4th disc is going to include 68 minutes of Keith Moon puking backstage before AND after the show!
;-)
TjB

In reply to:

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Out of all the SACDs I have (20 or so) FCA is by far the worst, and I don't think it represents SACD as a whole. The best in my collection would be Elton John Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Pink Floyd Dark Side of The Moon..

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AMEN!!! I was terribly disappointed by the FCA SACD. It is very poorly mixed. It was the worst classic SACD until I got Layla, which is even worse. Note this is not an artistic judgment, but solely the acoustic quality of the mix.

It's not the high sample rate, it's the mix quality that makes the difference. Of course quality of the original master tapes is a factor -- you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

It's a good idea to test using familiar material. However when that material is below a certain quality, it can work against you.

In addition to the above albums, these are great high-res multichannel albums: Eagles - Hotel California (DVD-A), Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (DVD-A), Roxy Music - Avalon (SACD), David Bowie - Ziggy Stardust (SACD).

What do you benefit from SACD that you do not from a standard redbook? Is it surround sound? Or is it remastered to sound excellent in stereo?

The short and simplistic version of the answer is that some SACDs are in surround sound, while others are in stereo. All are mastered at higher sample rates, etc, than redbook CDs, for improved fidelity.

Surround can be great, or it can be gimmicky and done poorly. The best ones are immersive, the less impressive ones just pull out bags of tricks by, for example, having lead vocals bouncing around from speaker to speaker for no real reason (occasionally this can be effective, but usually not). I have not listened to any Stereo SACDs as of now, but I plan on picking a few up, as I know they'll have better sound than the redbook CDs I have.