I've posted before that I believe the SACD to be the ultimate playback medium, though not all SACD's live up to that capability. This really isn't anything new: even in the 60's, when record labels ("Command," in particular) realized that using 35mm film resulted in far superior recording capabilities than 1/2" magnetic tape, some labels still produced some horrible sounding records made from 35mm film.

While the SACD layer on all of my SACD's sounds better than the CD layer, not all of the SACD's sound better than some of my redbook CD's. Even Telarc, my favorite label, has some SACD's that sound decidedly inferior to much older, "ordinary" CD's. That, I discovered, is the result of someone at Telarc depending too heavily on a particular microphone that provides lush, sonorous qualities of certain instruments, but which lacks high frequency detail, resulting in recordings that sound flat out dull.

I recently ordered 5 new SACD's from ArkivMusic.com, a wonderful site for classical discs. While one is a Telarc (another recording of "Pictures at an Exhibition"), all of the others are on varied labels. Two recordings, one of the famous Saint Saen's "Organ" Symphony, and the other of Beethoven's 9th, are editor's picks as the best of their lots, so they should be pretty exciting to hear.

The discs were shipped from three different locations (for reasons unknown to me), and will start arriving at my house tomorrow. I'll listen to, and report on all of them once they're all here. Hopefully, it will be another rousing endorsement for the SACD medium. Then again, who knows?