Quote Originally Posted by frenchmon
Not to hi-jack the thread, but gotta ask one question of you Woo. How is the concord Jazz series SACD stuff? While I like my SACD's from Terlarc and Chesky which I think are great recordings, my Diana Krall SACD's from Verve don't impress me in the slightest. I've seen the Concord stuff but never bought any.

frenchmon
Some really good stuff on that label. As mentioned, the stereo tracks on most of Concord's releases were heavily processed during the mixdown. Back then, I thought they sounded pretty good. But, the new SACD mixes really reveal just how artificial those original stereo mixes actually sound by comparison. Most of these recordings date back to the 1980s, so the source recordings might sound a little bit dated. Also, because the original tracks were not intended for multichannel playback, some of surround mixing overly segregates the instruments into specific channels. But, the fidelity of the 5.1 SACD tracks are a huge improvement from the original versions.

The jazz titles from Telarc (on their Heads Up label) are very aggressively mixed in the surrounds, and were intended for 5.1 from the start. Some of it I like, some of it I don't. But, it's very different from the more minimalist approach they use with their classical titles.

I really like Chesky's production quality and the Swing Live! SACD is a great test track to use for optimizing your surround speaker placement. Get the placement right, and that recording puts the listener right in the middle of that jazz club.