Do any of you guys listen to SACD's. The is nothing out there that compares in sound quality to a multichannel SACD in a good player, its like the difference between a High Definition TV compared to an old broadcast. The only drawback with these disks is that there isn't as many to choose from as the standard CD's.
I have about 250 of them!
Any reccomendations? I have many of them as well. Dire Straits is a fav and numerous Blues. The best place to score I have found is acoustic sounds..Not into Classical.
I have 30 or so SACDs but like all formats their quality varies according to how well the recording engineer made use of the bandwidth and preserved dynamic range.
For outstanding sound quality, I can't say enough superlatives about the Mobile Fidelity SACDs. Highly Recommended for exceptional sound quality;
Patricia Barber: Cafe Blue, Modern Cool, Companion, Nightclub
Ravel Bolero Minnesota Orchestra, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski conducting
Coleman Hawkings: The Hawk flies High
Other high quality SACD issues:
Rebecca Pidgeon: Retrospective
The World's Greatest Audiophile Vocal Recordings
Livingston Taylor: Ink
Wille Nelson: Stardust
Eddie Higgins: Tenderly, Best of Eddie Higgins
Dave Brubeck Quartet: Take Five
Jacintha: Here's to Ben, A Tribute to Ben Webster
Audiophile reference IV
David Sanborn : Time Again
Cecilia Bartoli, Gluck Italian Arias
Superbass 2, Ray Brown, Joseph clayton, Christian McBride
Lesser Quality (Get the regular CD instead):
Roxy Music, Best of
Peter Gabriel, Shaking the Tree
Sheryl Crow, The Globe Sesssions
Eric Clapton, 461 Ocean Boulevard
Monty Alexander, Stir It Up
JK, although the SACD format doesn't automatically guarantee better sound, many SACDs are in fact produced in a superior manner. There're about 2,000 classical SACDs and and totally neglecting them is to unnecessarily miss out on some great music in excellent sound. I'll mention this
Mussorgsky collection , available for about $12 with shipping, this
Gershwin collection , about $17, and a companion disc(about $22) , which I like even better, from
Mobile Fidelity to the fine Ravel collection that John(Jake)mentioned. All this is colorful music which should appeal to most.
John, which SACDs of the Beethoven Symphonies would you recommend? I've been checking either the Karajan, Berliner Philharmoic or Osmo Vanska, Minnesota Orchestra.
I have a small collection and am adding to it.
Guess I had better check out some classical tunes. There are some great blues sacd's. Jmmy Witherspoon, Dietra Farr, Buddy Guy to name a couple. Patricia Barber is 2 channel...well recorded but I find 2 channel music boring now.
John, I don't have enough personal info for a complete analysis, but what I've heard and read would lead me to suggest that the Vanska discs have the outstanding sound quality and at least the 9th is a very high-energy performance that I really like. I'd also suggest that Kleiber's vigorous performances of the 5th and 7th, which are my clear choice on CD, should also be the pick on SACD. Note that Karajan's complete set is from the early 60s performances, and even with the improved remixing and remastering, there's a limit to the sonic improvement(still a bit of hiss, etc.)that's possible, and so the newer Vanska recordings would have the advantage there.
So, Kleiber 5 and 7, Vanska 9.