SACD
It'll need to be a corker as the WEA pressing for the US market from Matsushita in Japan is a belter.
The Japanese do still release quite alot of great SACD's don't they. As I mentioned earlier, the WEA SACD release of Rumours is excellent, not so sure about some of the MFSL and SHM SACD releases, e.g. Pretenders II on MFSL and Who's Next on SHM-SACD, they've obviously tried to preserve the sound of the original recording, I guess I want to hear as if it were recorded today.
Hi Pete, yes they do. The Yes title on WEA I referred to was redbook CD though and it's a cracker. See also the original CD of The Yes Album. Starship Trooper is a reference track for me.
Who's Next One of my favourites in the 70s, have got it on LP but may buy the cd.
I don't think SACD is dead but think prices need to come down for sales to increase esp. as competition from downloads.
It's had almost 14 years to make an impact, it isn't going to happen, the general public (ie normal people, not us lot) just aren't interested.
I don't think SACD is dead but think prices need to come down for sales to increase esp. as competition from downloads.
Now that SACD's can be ripped on old PS3's I don't think it's inconceivable that cheaper DSD downloads of mainstream SACD releases could be coming soon given the increasing use by consumers of digital music.
Take the Rolling Stones catalogue on HDTracks at 88.2khz or 176.4khz FLAC files, these must have been obtained from the SACD releases of the albums, in which case why can't they make dsf (DSD) files available for download instead of converting them to PCM FLAC files. A dsf or dff file is about the same size on a hard drive as a 176.4khz FLAC file.
I recently listened to the Fostex HP-A8 DAC and was blown away by it. It supports DSD files via USB or SD card. Amazing machine, when I have tge money I will get one for sure!! Here is my review (needs updating because DSD via USB didn't work at the time)...
noblehifi.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/fostex-hp-a8c-review.html
It's had almost 14 years to make an impact, it isn't going to happen, the general public (ie normal people, not us lot) just aren't interested.
Is it ignorance or disinterest?
Been buying SACD for years and can easily continue to do so. If you like classical, or even if you don't, check out Amazon for the RCA Living Stereo titles on SACD. Some are going for about a fiver. Give the Leontyne Price album a whirl, the one with the blue cover. The LSO titles are often quite cheap and I picked up Beethoven's concertos boxset (a six disc set, all SACD) for about £15.
If you like rock, check out Ebay and Amazon and just do a listing based on price and format. Doddle. Heaps out there, just seek them out.
As for a player, spend £100 and get one of Sony's entry level Blu-ray players, most if not all come with SACD as standard. Alternatively, something like Denon's DVD-3930 has it along with DVD-A and HDCD. It's a great sounding unit and you'll pick one up for about £200 or thereabouts. They'll usually be in good nick as they came in around £1000 on release in 2006.
EDIT: See also SA-CD,net for more info: http://www.sa-cd.net/ and have a look at the Steve Hoffman site too. Great forum and a great resource. Plenty of info on there too.
EDIT2: Note: Being on SACD is no guarantee that your disc is the best version of the album available. In other words, it will always come down to the quality of the recording and the skill of the mastering engineer getting it over to a disc. Example: Yes' Close to the Edge is due to come out on Audio Fidelity SACD soon. It'll need to be a corker as the WEA pressing for the US market from Matsushita in Japan is a belter. That came out over 20 years ago now. That version's not difficult to find either, Amazon or Ebay usually or the For Sale boards on the aforesaid Hoffman forum.
You had me excited there for a moment but it turns out it is only a stereo SACD, so I probably won't bother. Given how good the King Crimson 40th anniversary remasters sound in 5:1, close to the edge would have seemed like an obvious candidate for multichannel.
Been buying SACD for years and can easily continue to do so. If you like classical, or even if you don't, check out Amazon for the RCA Living Stereo titles on SACD. Some are going for about a fiver. Give the Leontyne Price album a whirl, the one with the blue cover. The LSO titles are often quite cheap and I picked up Beethoven's concertos boxset (a six disc set, all SACD) for about £15.
If you like rock, check out Ebay and Amazon and just do a listing based on price and format. Doddle. Heaps out there, just seek them out.
As for a player, spend £100 and get one of Sony's entry level Blu-ray players, most if not all come with SACD as standard. Alternatively, something like Denon's DVD-3930 has it along with DVD-A and HDCD. It's a great sounding unit and you'll pick one up for about £200 or thereabouts. They'll usually be in good nick as they came in around £1000 on release in 2006.
EDIT: See also SA-CD,net for more info: http://www.sa-cd.net/ and have a look at the Steve Hoffman site too. Great forum and a great resource. Plenty of info on there too.
EDIT2: Note: Being on SACD is no guarantee that your disc is the best version of the album available. In other words, it will always come down to the quality of the recording and the skill of the mastering engineer getting it over to a disc. Example: Yes' Close to the Edge is due to come out on Audio Fidelity SACD soon. It'll need to be a corker as the WEA pressing for the US market from Matsushita in Japan is a belter. That came out over 20 years ago now. That version's not difficult to find either, Amazon or Ebay usually or the For Sale boards on the aforesaid Hoffman forum.
You had me excited there for a moment but it turns out it is only a stereo SACD, so I probably won't bother. Given how good the King Crimson 40th anniversary remasters sound in 5:1, close to the edge would have seemed like an obvious candidate for multichannel.
I don't think SACD is dead but think prices need to come down for sales to increase esp. as competition from downloads.
Now that SACD's can be ripped on old PS3's I don't think it's inconceivable that cheaper DSD downloads of mainstream SACD releases could be coming soon given the increasing use by consumers of digital music.
"Ripping SACD" Well I think it is early days with new software and people like me finding out about it. As fro numbers hard to say but think it is more than a few 1,000 if you inc. USA.
"Ripping SACD" Well I think it is early days with new software and people like me finding out about it. As fro numbers hard to say but think it is more than a few 1,000 if you inc. USA.
I was including the USA. The sacd ripping "market" will be considerably small than that for 24bit downloads and that isn't huge. 24bit also doesn't require massively expensive dacs to play it, so really, why would the general public (who aren't even interested in 24bit audio) bother with sacd rips?
I don't think SACD is dead but think prices need to come down for sales to increase esp. as competition from downloads.
Now that SACD's can be ripped on old PS3's I don't think it's inconceivable that cheaper DSD downloads of mainstream SACD releases could be coming soon given the increasing use by consumers of digital music.
just because something is possible it doesn't mean anybody's actually doing it. I'd hazard a guess that there are no more than a few thousand people ripping sacd with this method. That isn't a "market".
I think you're missing my point, if you look on some torrent sites, there are loads of ripped SACD ISO's (google "sacd-r torrent") from which the DSD individual files can be quite easily extracted with a bit of googling.
Most of us want to get our music legit, so why would record companies not want to cash in on this market? If sites like HDTracks are already legitimately using DSD/SACD masters to convert them to 88.2 or 176.4khz FLAC (as opposed to 96 or 192khz which would have likely come from a PCM source), why can't we have the original DSD file instead. As I said earlier, it's no bigger than 176khz FLAC file. There obvioulsy is a market for hi-res downloads, I just don't see why we can't have the DSD original. There are DACs out there that support it and no doubt more would follow if files became more readily available for legitimate download.
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Try
http://www.channelclassics.com/dsd.htmlhttp://dsd-guide.com/free-downloadshttp://bluecoastrecords.downloadsnow.net/blue-coast-collectionhttp://www.cybele.de/downloadsand http://www.2L.no
I'm not a big classical fan, but all this talk of SACD and DSD has got me listening to one of Andrew's recommendations, Bach - The Conductors Transcriptions, sounding great!
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