Your Latest CD/DVD/Download Purchase

[Bryn]

Dave, the main deck I use for SACDs is a Cambridge Audio multi-format Blu-ray player. I connect that to my amplifier (with a choice of DSD or PCM) via HDMI, which is a digital link. I have not tried an optical link as yet.

[Mahlerei]

I made it £6.24 from Naxos Direct via Amazon, but it looks as though it might be the CD version. Are you sure it's an SACD? There are SACD (Hybrid) copies but according to the listings they come in at £10 plus from market place people. If I'm right you might want to review your order.

Dave2002

It is most definitely a hybrid SACD. BIS don't do separate SACDs (unless you count a few discs where they've filled the SACD layer with RBCD content, increasing playing time to around four hours or so).

My take on SACDs, which I've been listening to for around five years, they that it certainly have the potential to sound much better than RBCDs. The fact that they don't always sound that way is down to indifferent engineering. Sony, who invented them, lost their nerve quite early in the game, as did Universal (EMI never even contemplated SACDs). The high-res 'war' with DVD-A didn't help either, and even now Amazon and others get confused about CDs and SACDs. Most people I speak to have not even heard of SACDs, and since the vast majority of collectors seem happy with low-res downloads and/or RBCDs the SACD market remains very tiny. Robert von Bahr at BIS has admitted they sell only a handful of the things, and the production costs are higher as well. The hardware manufacturers didn't embrace SACD either, so it was pretty much doomed from the start. A great pity, IMO.

[Petrushka]

Dave 2002 - I'm looking forward to exploring the Glazunov symphonies, which I really don't know. I was attracted to this set by other messageboarders some weeks ago, as well as by the incredible price offered by Amazon. It seemed worth a punt, and I will indeed let you know what I think of it. Thanks for the download info, but I fear I won't be giving those a go, being something of a technophobe and wedded to the CD format.

Thanks for the tip - just ordered this myself. I don't know the Glazunov symphonies either so looking forward to it.

[Barbirollians]

Latest bargain purchases (code for 'charity-shop') have been a sampler for the NYPO's set of historic broadcasts 1923-87 [lots of interesting samples - wish I could afford $150 (original NYPO price) or £250 (UK Amazon Marketplace) for the whole thing] and Pascal Roge's 2-CD set of Ravel piano music (99p for each item). So great joy....

...until I got the latter home and found CD 2 of the Ravel is is in fact Moura Lympany's Best-loved Piano Classics2!!!!!!

So a whole 99p completely wasted!

99p wasted ! I think not , that is rather an enjoyable record as I remember , had it on cassette I think and Dame Moura could still play !

[Ferretfancy]

Le Martin,
Best Loved Piano Classics 1 has a really beautiful performance by Moura Lympany of The Maiden and the Nightingale by Granados, perhaps you should search the shop again!

[Dave2002]

Dave, the main deck I use for SACDs is a Cambridge Audio multi-format Blu-ray player. I connect that to my amplifier (with a choice of DSD or PCM) via HDMI, which is a digital link. I have not tried an optical link as yet.

Bryn
If you've got it working OK with HDMI there's probably no point in even trying optical links - except that you might just be able to run an optical cable further. I think mine has an HDMI output, but I don't have anything to feed it into - except the TV, which would be pointless I think. Your Blu Ray unit is probably newer anyway, and has up to date HDMI standards, and you've obviously got something to feed it into.

I'd bet that if you tried optical it'd cut out on SACDs - as I wrote before, the industry people were really desperate for this not to work!

Mahlerei

Re the Seascape CD, I agree that if the disc is SACD it'll almost certainly be hybrid, but some manufacturers still maintained separate runs for CDs, which was why I thought this could be a CD. It is described as such by the supplier, but as Bryn points out, it is linked from the SACD page. The supplier - Naxos Direct - is quite good, and I've dealt with them before, so now I've taken the plunge myself following all the recommendations.

The only SACD only recordings I really fancied were some early Sony ones of reissues of Bruno Walter, which allegedly were an improvement over the CDs, and as far as I could see they were definitely not hybrids. Not sure if any of those are still available - probably not as I guess Sony pulled out of SACDs. I think some of those Sony SACDs are now very expensive.

I think there is still a market for decent quality audio sources. Re the Glazunov symphonies by Fedoseyev which I've recommended I am serious that I find them preferable to more modern recordings because of the performances, and in their MP3 format they are a bargain, but even allowing for the fact that the original Russian recordings - probably Melodiya, some issued at one time on EMI most likely - were probably rather rough, I'm sure that they must have been better than the MP3s when played through good kit. Suppliers seem to think that no-one really cares about sound quality any more - which might be reasonable for an older recording when maybe absolutely nothing can be done to make it work well - but that's often not the case. In my experience even older recordings do sometimes sound better when given the best possible chance to show what they've got.

PS: MickyD - I'm serious that it''s worth getting the Fedoseyev MP3s. You may well have a CD player which can do those, and all you need to do is to copy the tracks onto a CD. My car player works fine that way. I thought that the more modern recordings were better, but then I found that my feet tend to tap more with the Moscow recordings, so the modern CDs tend to stay in their boxes. What is really needed is a very good modern recording with the same level of intensity as some of the earlier recordings, and there aren't many of those - Serebrier comes closest in some.

[Dave2002]

...
until I got the latter home and found CD 2 of the Ravel is is in fact Moura Lympany's Best-loved Piano Classics2!!!!!!

So a whole 99p completely wasted!

FisherMartin? Are you sure CD2 isn't Joyce Hatto?

Actually Moura Lympany might be worth at least 99p. She was really rather good.

[LeMartinPecheur]

Barbirollians, ferretfancy, Dave2002: looking back I see I may have slightly exaggerated my disgust for dramatic effect!

I might well have bought the Lympany if it had been properly cased and bookleted, but for pete's sake I'm a COLLECTOR, which has little if anything to do with LIKING or even LISTENING to music, so the bare CD is zilch to me...:cool2:

[Mahlerei]

dave2002

Seascapes has only ever been released as a hybrid SACD and this just confirms my suspicions about sloppy marketing that tends to confuse rather than inform. I'm finding the same with Blu-ray Audio; sites just don't distinguish between audio discs and video ones. Naxos are also cavalier in other ways: in reviewing one of their discs recently i discovered the wrong track information had been supplied in the booklet and on their website. I alerted them to the fact early in December but they've done nothing to rectify the problem.

[Bryn]

With cunning Royal Mail efficiency, my package has now travelled from Beds. to the National Distribution Centre in Notts., then to the South West Distribution Centre in Bristol before being sent back across country to Bracknell Forest. No wonder it's expected to take 2 days to get from Bedfordshire to here. Apparently it's all in the name of efficiency and fuel saving.

Latest:

27 Jan 2011 05:35:30 AM Bracknell DO Out for delivery
26 Jan 2011 10:25:46 AM Swindon Mail Centre Arrival Scan
26 Jan 2011 12:33:44 AM South West Distribution Centre Arrival Scan
25 Jan 2011 12:10:11 PM National Distribution Centre Arrival Scan
25 Jan 2011 08:55:00 AM Ridgmont Bedfordshire UK Order has been handed over to the carrier and is in transit

Tenterhooks currently preventing feet touching floor.

[amateur51]

Mine arrived 20 minutes ago, Bryn. 'Tis the real deal

Tenterhooks should be relieved very soon

[Bryn]

Off the hooks, not only re. The Real Chopin but also re. my new RAID enclosure which was in the same box. Actualy I could not help but see that first, and I thought I would still have to wait for the Chopin to be delivered. Amazon omitted to mention the two had been sent together. Now I just have to wait for the drives which were supposedly sent a day earlier, though by an Amazon markerplace supplier, not by Amazon itself.

Concerto No. 1 currently spinning here. :)

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

Mine arrived 20 minutes ago, Bryn. 'Tis the real deal

Tenterhooks should be relieved very soon

And here, where my set has just been redelivered.

Credit to Amazon for honouring these orders. I see it has now changed the description on the page to 1-disc, although it still has the incorrect title and picture.

[vinteuil]

Mine arrived 20 minutes ago, Bryn. 'Tis the real deal

Tenterhooks should be relieved very soon

... the same delight and relief here too. I didn't have quite the tenterhooks experience, as mine wasn't "tracked", so I didn't have to watch the laborious journey around the country - but such joy to have it safely here!

[HighlandDougie]

Re Dave 2002 and Sony SACDs: these are/were 2-channel only. I bought a Sony SCD-1 player when it first appeared and, via business trips to the USA, some mail order and finding a few in the UK, managed to acquire about 20 of them. The sound quality achieved on recordings from the 1950s is pretty astonishing in some cases; the two Szell Schumann symphonies released in this format (2&4) are a good example as is Szell's Mahler 10 Adagio. Everyone goes on about RCA Living Seal (rightly) and Mercury (hmm... mostly rightly) but these CBS SACD remasterings are significantly better than the standard CDs. I've noticed that some are still available on amazon.com at sensible prices (the above-mentioned Szell - my absolute favourite Schumann symphony cycle; Copland's LSO Billy the Kid et al) and some - Stravinsky conducting the Rite of Spring - at silly prices. I have since invested in a 5-channel system (first Primare, now Arcam) and whenever possible buy SACDs as the sound quality, subject to good engineering, can be quite thrilling. My small exposure to Blu-ray (Abbado's Mahler 3 and 4; 9 in the post - I would never admit to Toy Story 3 on this forum) has shown just how good that is as well.