When I purchased my Marantz SA-8001 SACD player, I purchased it primarily for its highly rated playback of redbook CD's, and regarded its SACD capability as an added frill that I probably wouldn't use much. Now that I've had the player for a while, and have had the opportunity to listen closely to CD's and SACD's, and compare the two, I have to state that the sound of a well engineered SACD is second to nothing else out there.

That's a pretty bold statement, but one that's also shared by the folks at Telarc. I've been enjoying a running dialog with one of their current engineers (in addition to continued dialogs with ex-Telarc exec, Jack Renner), and he's made it very clear that Telarc is steadfastly committed to the SACD format because they believe it's the best thing out there. (Their website makes it very clear that, whie they have a few DVD-A recordings available, they've abandoned the format in favor of the SACD.) When I asked him why some Telarc SACD's sounded a bit distant, "soft," or even outright dull, he responded by stating that a certain microphone (the Sennheiser MKH-800, for a staggering $3,000 each!) is the culprit. While that mike is capable of making things sound lush and full, it lacks upper end detail, which is why a handful of Telarc discs sound decidedly lackluster when compared to others. The Beethoven's 9th, conducted by Donald Runnicles, for example, is probably the worst sounding Telarc disc I own, and is easily eclipsed by a much, much older "ordinary" CD of the piece. The culprit: The Sennheiser MKH-800.

Fortunately, not all Telarc SACD's use this mike, and the remastered Soundstream discs certainly don't, because the mike didn't exist when they were first made. And, it is those remastered Soundstream recordings that continue to amaze me: the audible difference between the older, "redbook" CD of such a recording, and the newer 2-channel SACD transfer is nothing less than extraordinary. Anyone who owns some of those older discs, and now has an SACD player, has no idea what he's in store for by replacing those discs with their newer counterparts. The differences, and this may sound trite, are as different as night and day

Many of the Soundstream remasters are also very good values: often, two older discs are combined onto one new SACD. Tchaikovsky's 4th and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," for example, are now on one disc, and there are a number of other combinations available too.

The transfer is an exceptionally tedious and time-consuming one, but the sonic results, at least to me, are well worth it. I haven't yet received my $600 from the government, but when I do, I intend to load up on some more Telarc SACD's, and in particular, those Soundstream transfers I don't already own.