SACD/Surround Music Listenings and Impressions

[PAT.P]

Woochifer Good review ! I bought the Yamaha DVD-C750 after I read your first review.My two first SACD that I bought are Mozart Violin Sonatas 1781 and Smetana MA Vlast ( london Symphony Orchestra).I bought some Hosa CRA-201 Rca Plug to Plug for hook up for the multi-channel .Im still in the testing stage .I also bought a power conditioner for all hookup and for high power for the sub (not filter) this help a bit the sub.The sub before was set on receiver at 80hz for xover but with the multi-channel its at 120hz.Is yours set at this also?Is your player DVD player also ? how do you compare it to other dvd player.Thanks

[Woochifer]

Woochifer Good review ! I bought the Yamaha DVD-C750 after I read your first review.My two first SACD that I bought are Mozart Violin Sonatas 1781 and Smetana MA Vlast ( london Symphony Orchestra).I bought some Hosa CRA-201 Rca Plug to Plug for hook up for the multi-channel .Im still in the testing stage .I also bought a power conditioner for all hookup and for high power for the sub (not filter) this help a bit the sub.The sub before was set on receiver at 80hz for xover but with the multi-channel its at 120hz.Is yours set at this also?Is your player DVD player also ? how do you compare it to other dvd player.Thanks

My SACD player does not have a video section, it's strictly audio-only and basically the ES version of the $150 Sony CD/SACD changer that you can find at Best Buy. I bought it to replace a CD changer (it has a five-disc carousel), and I already have a Denon DVD player, so the video section was not needed.

I use my SACD player without the crossover active. The bass management on the player is awful and I could never get the sound right. It sounds like the crossover is set to about 120 Hz or higher (the exact crossover point is not mentioned in any of Sony's documentation), which just did not sound right to me. I run everything at full range, and the only time that the subwoofer is active is when the LFE track is used. (Fortunately, a lot of surround mixes engage the LFE channel very actively) I would have preferred a decent bass management setting so that I could run all of the lower frequencies through my sub, because it's equalized to my room acoustics and extends the bass down past 25 Hz. These kinds of quibbles with the bass management had previously kept me from buying a universal player.

The testing and experimenting part was a lot of fun, even though it was somewhat of a pain with how Sony did the level adjustments, and having to match everything with the receiver's levels used with DD and DTS decoding. Since I bought my SACD changer, I've been going on a disc buying binge and just enjoying the music. Only in the past couple of weeks have I started doing some comparison listenings, and that's really where some of my better SACDs have revealed audible improvements (such as with the Mobile Fidelity Gershwin disc).

Have you had a chance to do any SACD v. DVD-A listenings yet? That would be interesting to hear how those versions compare, where applicable.

[paul_pci]

Man, do you know what you're doing? You're encouraging every man here with perhaps only a thimble full of self-restraint to drool over the prospect of running out and buying an SACD player. Man, I attended Mahler's 5th at Disney Hall last fall and to hear you review the SFO's rendition is just too much. I need to be restrained! I need to bury my credit cards.

[Woochifer]

Man, do you know what you're doing? You're encouraging every man here with perhaps only a thimble full of self-restraint to drool over the prospect of running out and buying an SACD player. Man, I attended Mahler's 5th at Disney Hall last fall and to hear you review the SFO's rendition is just too much. I need to be restrained! I need to bury my credit cards.

Yeah, I know I'm evil! But, so long as you're still $150 under your limit, you got enough budget to go SACD with that Sony SCD-CE595, which uses the same Burr-Brown DSD-1791 DAC as the ES version that I have (and is also used on Denon's universal players).

For me, the big trigger was when I started buying the SF Symphony's Mahler discs. The CD layers on those discs already sounded incredible, and then I saw their recording session performance of Mahler's 5th in the fall. (The CD/SACD of that performance is due out in the spring) At that point, I knew I had to hear the surround mixes!

In lieu of burying your credit cards, just listen to me carefully. If you want to avoid the dilemma of buying a SACD player, DON'T BUY THE SF SYMPHONY MAHLER DISCS! What you don't know won't hurt you! There, now I've done my good deed for the day!

Muliti-channel definitely expands the listening experience in the case of good recordings. Your findings are very consistent with my own -- see my post of a while back ...
Am I a multi-channel convert??

Good obversations on your part (and conveyed a lot more concisely than I just did!), well worth reading as well.

Have you noticed Circuit City never really caught on to selling many discs and now Best Buy has eliminated them totally...

Where do you purchase your discs? Online?
I would like to add to the collection but it seems as though the technology is not going to make it. Maybe because of Blue Ray and HD DVD????

Actually, I bought a lot my SACDs at Best Buy. They have not eliminated the format, but their high res sections at the stores in my area have not been restocked in a long time and I doubt that they will be. Too bad because their SACD prices were the lowest. (e.g. The Police SACDs cost only $12, while most other major label SACD releases sold for $15 or less)

Otherwise, I've been thumbing through the SACD bins at Fry's and Tower Records. Tower was the first retailer to carry SACD and has probably stocked the best selection, but they too seem to have dialed back their SACD selection. For one thing, they no longer have a separate SACD section, and now place the SACDs in the same bins with the CDs. Only with classical titles do they still separate the SACDs.

I plan on going over to Amoeba Music soon to locate some additional titles. They took a while before they started stocking SACD and DVD-A, but they went deep catalog on both formats and I've found a lot of obscure high res discs there in the past.

I have the SACD/DVD-A bug and there's no turning back. I just wish both formats weren't at a standstill right now. I have all of the titles I am interested in that are available, with a few exceptions.

From a major label POV, the formats are basically dead. But, with independent labels (Concord Music Group in particular, in addition to owning the Fantasy, Prestige, and Concord labels, they just acquired Telarc International), they are still moving ahead with issuing CD/SACD hybrid releases. And I think that trend will hold true with these specialty labels. Mostly good news if you're into jazz and classical, but not so good news if you're still waiting on high res multichannel versions of your favorite pop, rock, and hip-hop albums.

DualDisc has already been well received in the market, and will get some additional multichannel mixes into the market. But, most of those 5.1 mixes will unfortunately be in the compressed DD format.

Thanks Wooch! I've been eying the Mahler's. Do you have some picks from the cycle for adventuresome tastes?

Mahler's 7th is a mysterious and elusive piece, so it probably qualifies for adventuresome. But, this was probably not the SFS' strongest performance in this cycle. Among the ones I've bought so far, I think their performance of the 6th is another very high caliber stunner. (I made a mistake earlier -- THIS was actually the perfomance that they did immediately after 9/11) This disc won the 2003 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance, while the SFS recording of Mahler's 3rd repeated that feat in 2004.

[shokhead]

Yeah, I know I'm evil! But, so long as you're still $150 under your limit, you got enough budget to go SACD with that Sony SCD-CE595, which uses the same Burr-Brown DSD-1791 DAC as the ES version that I have (and is also used on Denon's universal players).

For me, the big trigger was when I started buying the SF Symphony's Mahler discs. The CD layers on those discs already sounded incredible, and then I saw their recording session performance of Mahler's 5th in the fall. (The CD/SACD of that performance is due out in the spring) At that point, I knew I had to hear the surround mixes!

In lieu of burying your credit cards, just listen to me carefully. If you want to avoid the dilemma of buying a SACD player, DON'T BUY THE SF SYMPHONY MAHLER DISCS! What you don't know won't hurt you! There, now I've done my good deed for the day!



Good obversations on your part (and conveyed a lot more concisely than I just did!), well worth reading as well.



Actually, I bought a lot my SACDs at Best Buy. They have not eliminated the format, but their high res sections at the stores in my area have not been restocked in a long time and I doubt that they will be. Too bad because their SACD prices were the lowest. (e.g. The Police SACDs cost only $12, while most other major label SACD releases sold for $15 or less)

Otherwise, I've been thumbing through the SACD bins at Fry's and Tower Records. Tower was the first retailer to carry SACD and has probably stocked the best selection, but they too seem to have dialed back their SACD selection. For one thing, they no longer have a separate SACD section, and now place the SACDs in the same bins with the CDs. Only with classical titles do they still separate the SACDs.

I plan on going over to Amoeba Music soon to locate some additional titles. They took a while before they started stocking SACD and DVD-A, but they went deep catalog on both formats and I've found a lot of obscure high res discs there in the past.



From a major label POV, the formats are basically dead. But, with independent labels (Concord Music Group in particular, in addition to owning the Fantasy, Prestige, and Concord labels, they just acquired Telarc International), they are still moving ahead with issuing CD/SACD hybrid releases. And I think that trend will hold true with these specialty labels. Mostly good news if you're into jazz and classical, but not so good news if you're still waiting on high res multichannel versions of your favorite pop, rock, and hip-hop albums.

DualDisc has already been well received in the market, and will get some additional multichannel mixes into the market. But, most of those 5.1 mixes will unfortunately be in the compressed DD format.



Mahler's 7th is a mysterious and elusive piece, so it probably qualifies for adventuresome. But, this was probably not the SFS' strongest performance in this cycle. Among the ones I've bought so far, I think their performance of the 6th is another very high caliber stunner. (I made a mistake earlier -- THIS was actually the perfomance that they did immediately after 9/11) This disc won the 2003 Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance, while the SFS recording of Mahler's 3rd repeated that feat in 2004.

BB just mixes in the reg and multi-channal together now.

[gorilla196635]

Supicious.

Last time I went to Best Buy they told me they will not be carrying them anymore and had none even on clearance...
Oh well. Hopefully online.
I do want to sample some symphony stuff.
I will try what you suggest not to on the count of addiction
Thanks Woochifer..

[PDK]

Thanks for the excellent review. I will look for several of those to broaden my collection and musical horizons. I've had the functionality for a couple years but have only recently started buying SACDs. Where I'm now living, BestBuy is the only place they are available locally. The stocks are pretty thin- what was several dozen titles a few weeks ago is down to about a dozen now. However, two that I bought yesterday were very inexpensive ($12 or $13) and had been re-priced down. I remembered them being a few dollars more when I first began considering SACD. When I peeled the pricetag off the Police's Regatta DeBlanc, I noticed that it was covering one that was a few dollars more. Same for Thelonius Monk's Straight, No Chaser. In fact, I bought it because it was cheaper than I remembered it being- I have no knowledge of TM so this disc will be my introduction to him.

As far as comparing CD to SACD versions, this is something that I have not yet tried. I have several (Oasis, Police, Krall, Steely Dan, Gary Numan) that I will be flipping between to compare but simply haven't had the time- yet.

[PAT.P]

My SACD player does not have a video section, it's strictly audio-only and basically the ES version of the $150 Sony CD/SACD changer that you can find at Best Buy. I bought it to replace a CD changer (it has a five-disc carousel), and I already have a Denon DVD player, so the video section was not needed.

I use my SACD player without the crossover active. The bass management on the player is awful and I could never get the sound right. It sounds like the crossover is set to about 120 Hz or higher (the exact crossover point is not mentioned in any of Sony's documentation), which just did not sound right to me. I run everything at full range, and the only time that the subwoofer is active is when the LFE track is used. (Fortunately, a lot of surround mixes engage the LFE channel very actively) I would have preferred a decent bass management setting so that I could run all of the lower frequencies through my sub, because it's equalized to my room acoustics and extends the bass down past 25 Hz. These kinds of quibbles with the bass management had previously kept me from buying a universal player.

The testing and experimenting part was a lot of fun, even though it was somewhat of a pain with how Sony did the level adjustments, and having to match everything with the receiver's levels used with DD and DTS decoding. Since I bought my SACD changer, I've been going on a disc buying binge and just enjoying the music. Only in the past couple of weeks have I started doing some comparison listenings, and that's really where some of my better SACDs have revealed audible improvements (such as with the Mobile Fidelity Gershwin disc).

Have you had a chance to do any SACD v. DVD-A listenings yet? That would be interesting to hear how those versions compare, where applicable.

I do have 4 dvd player ,and left the JVC still intact on system (wife use this one when I not home) she likes to listen music in stereo .Bought the Yamaha at a great price around Xmas from an audio store that supply my toys and always gives me a layaway .The reviews were good for the multi-channel and for the over-all audio/video format.BTW is the SACD format better than DVD-A .Any body here make any test on these formats?

[shokhead]

My SACD player does not have a video section, it's strictly audio-only and basically the ES version of the $150 Sony CD/SACD changer that you can find at Best Buy. I bought it to replace a CD changer (it has a five-disc carousel), and I already have a Denon DVD player, so the video section was not needed.

I use my SACD player without the crossover active. The bass management on the player is awful and I could never get the sound right. It sounds like the crossover is set to about 120 Hz or higher (the exact crossover point is not mentioned in any of Sony's documentation), which just did not sound right to me. I run everything at full range, and the only time that the subwoofer is active is when the LFE track is used. (Fortunately, a lot of surround mixes engage the LFE channel very actively) I would have preferred a decent bass management setting so that I could run all of the lower frequencies through my sub, because it's equalized to my room acoustics and extends the bass down past 25 Hz. These kinds of quibbles with the bass management had previously kept me from buying a universal player.

The testing and experimenting part was a lot of fun, even though it was somewhat of a pain with how Sony did the level adjustments, and having to match everything with the receiver's levels used with DD and DTS decoding. Since I bought my SACD changer, I've been going on a disc buying binge and just enjoying the music. Only in the past couple of weeks have I started doing some comparison listenings, and that's really where some of my better SACDs have revealed audible improvements (such as with the Mobile Fidelity Gershwin disc).

Have you had a chance to do any SACD v. DVD-A listenings yet? That would be interesting to hear how those versions compare, where applicable.

And i've been going back and forth between dig and analogs with my DTS Discs not being able to decide which way sounds better. I a real test to the hearing. After listening to cds,switching to something like the Police SACD,its just so tight and clear and more lifelike. Kinda like its being thrown in your face. I'm really enjoying the DTS of PT,Don Henley, Donald ***an nighrfly. I think i'm off to Fry's this weekend to look for some SACD.

[noddin0ff]

Thanks Wooch! I've been eying the Mahler's. Do you have some picks from the cycle for adventuresome tastes?