Everyone have their RCA LIVING STEREO SACDs yet? Better grab 'em! Leontyne Price...

Concerto for Orchestra was certainly issued as an SACD (http://www.sa-cd.net/showreviews/2348). But like several others from the series (Traviata, Mario Lanza, Anna Moffo) the SACD is either out-of-print or only available at premium pricing ($26 from Amazon direct, $20.49 from 3rd-party sellers).

 

http://livingstereo.alongthehall.com/discography.html

CD
BARTOK-CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA;
MUSIC FOR STRINGS, CELESTA & PERCUSSION; HUNGARIAN SKETCHES
Chicago Symphony Orchestra/Fritz Reiner, cond.
09026-61504-2

SACD
Bartok: Concerto For Orchestra
Fritz Reiner
RCA 61390 SA

 

As it happened, the Concerto for Orchestra CD (see my previous posts in this thread) turned out to be defective. It wasn't worth it to return it online, so I went to a local B&N store. It wasn't easy: explaining that it was a CD, not the SACD. The clerk looked at me like I was from Mars, had no idea what an SACD was, and referred me to Customer Service, who had to speak with the manager! Finally I was given credit in the form of a card for in store or online. I asked if they had a music department, and was told " we don't carry music". So I walk a few feet into the store and there is a small display of vinyl! I decided to just use it online!
So, does anyone know when they have their annual sale? I read earlier in the thread of an annual half price sale in September. Do they still do that? I want to get whats left of the rest of the SACD series before its gone.

 

Will they be doing a September sale again in 2015? I want to pick up what I don't have yet.

 

I'm hoping they are doing this again next month. I guess it's an annual event?

 

I have the whole set of Living Stereo SACDs, and I'm trying to figure out which LPs they represent. It's confusing because, while many of them combine a couple of LPs in a straightforward way, some omit selections that were on the originals.

The other confusing thing is that Analogue Productions are releasing new Living Stereo SACDs. The contents of these seem to be exact reproductions of what was on original LPs, and what I want to know is which of these releases are things that haven't been on SACD before. The new masterings may be amazing, but my priority is to buy things that I don't already have on SACD first.

Are there any references out there that could help?

 

Try this for reference:
http://livingstereo.alongthehall.com/discography.html

http://www.shadeddog.com/

http://www.discogs.com/label/220313-Living-Stereo

 

Thanks. I also found this site, a big help with the Fritz Reiner recordings:

http://www.stokowski.org/Fritz_Reiner_Discography.htm

 

Apologies if this has already been covered. Is the mastering on the CD layer the same as the big box set of CDs?

 

As I understand it, the exact same remasterings that were done by Soundmirror for the CD layer of the SACDs are used in the Living Stereo Volume 1 box set. There were 54 titles which equal 60 discs in the box set (several operas on two discs). They also are the same couplings as the SACDs.
Volume 2 is not from Soundmirror and they revert to the original album program per disc, so many discs have less than 50 mins. I've heard the sound is great and quality control is good for the most part.

 

Thanks for that

 

Wow I tried all three methods of contacting Barnes and Noble to ask about the annual classical cd sale and no one could answer this simple question. It was as if I was speaking in a foreign language, as they responded "is that a nook title?" Or "yes, I have a cd of Classical Music for Relaxation on sale for 1.99. Incredible!

 

Arggh. This is discouraging. I've been wondering about the annual sale myself. There are 10 or 12 Living Stereo SACDs that are still available that I'd like to pick up, if I can, for $5 or $6 each.

 

Earlier in the thread, it was said that they thought it was usually around Sept 14th. Lets hope - my cart is overflowing with the Living Stereo SACDs, as I only have three so far. I don't have SACD playback yet, but if these go on sale I'll grab what's left. If not, I may just get the Living Stereo I box with all 54 titles from Soundmirror in the CD only format for $100.00. Bonus with that route is you get the several titles that are out of print on SACD.

 

Looking back at my old email confirmations the Barnes sale some years starts in Sept, and some year in Oct. I see in 2012 I place a Classical sale order on Oct 28, 2012, the day before Sandy hit.

In fact they shipped them the morning of the day Sandy struck - hit my area early afternoon. I've no recollection when I received them as it would have be a non factor in the wake of the destruction around me. Personally I was very lucky and suffered very light damage. A very short distance [less than 1 mile] from me was devastated.

Here was that order:

Product Description Quantity Ship Date Price
Puccini: Turandot [Hybrid SACD] 1 10-29-2012 $9.59
Berlioz: Requiem [Hybrid SACD] 1 10-29-2012 $9.59
Dvor?k & Walton Cello Concertos [Hybrid SACD] 1 10-29-2012 $5.99


BTW for CD if you can't find the "Soundmirrors" then go for the 1990's LS remasters. Everything after Sony stopped using Soundmirror for Living Stereo IMHO is Dynamically challenged garbage. So the 1st LS box is safe the second is caveat emptor

 

Excellent info but wait - there are three versions to compare, are there not? We have the SACD layer of the SACDs, the CD layer of the SACDs and the CDs. You're saying the last two are the same mastering but are all three the same mastering? I think they are but would be interested to hear what you think.

 

I'm not sure if I can answer that accurately. Soundmirror mastered both layers of the SACD issue. Whether it would technically be a different mastering for each layer, I can't say. Maybe someone else can clarify that. But earlier in the thread, I mentioned that I bought what appeared to be the SACD of the Bartok Concerto from B&N. It turned out to be a CD version in virtually the same packaging as the SACD series (same artwork with the record spines in the background) but no SACD symbol or mention of SACD anywhere on the package. It did say that it had been produced from the DSD remastering by Soundmirror. It was pretty confusing, even B&N had no clue and was listing it as an SACD. What I believe is that these CDs in the SACD art packaging (the Bartok is the only one I'm aware of so far) and the ones found in the Living Stereo Box 1, are the same DSD mastering by Soundmirror found on the CD layer of the SACD.
Can anyone confirm this?

 

Interesting. I think in all likelihood all three are the same but I'll try to do some tests in the next few days and report back.

 

OK, I experimented on two disks released at different times in the SACD series: one is the Beethoven 5th Symphony/6th Symphony (Munch) and the other is the Rubinstenin/Wallenstein/Symphony of the Air.

I took one track from each - the last movement of the 5th and the last track from the Wallenstein - and compared three different versions: the SACD, the CD layer of the SACD, and the CD.

Of course, I couldn't rip the SACD so I played it back through the SACD player and recorded the analogue output from the SACD player in 16/44 to make for fair comparison with the CD versions. This means that the SACD was converted from digital to analogue and back to digital again as well as being downsampled before it could be compared.

Result: as you'd expect, they're all the same. The CD and the CD layer of the SACD are digitally identical. So far as it's possible to tell, the SACD is also identical - the waveform looks exactly the same after volume matching and I also tested the EQ using Voxengo CurveEQ and the EQ comparison is virtually a flat line, the only tiny variations being easily explained by all the processing the SACD version went through before I could compare.

Since all three were mastered by Soundmirror, it would have been very weird if the mastering for any one of them had been any different. But it's nice to have it confirmed.

I suppose I'll have to do this for the Mercury Living Presence titles as well, now!

 

I couldn't stop myself - I did it with the Mercury Living Presence SACDs too. And I'm glad I did because I made an interesting (to me, at least) discovery.

Same procedure - two different discs, picked at random.

Result: the CD in the box set is the same as the CD layer of the SACD. BUT the SACD is a definitely a (very) different mastering. One thing that leaps out immediately in the software EQ comparison is that the SACD has far less top end. Since some of these Mercury CDs are terrible ear-bleeders (unlike the RCAs), this is all to the good. The bad news is that I'd been ripping all the Mercury CDs on the assumption that they were the same as the SACDs, and now I'm going to have to delete them all and start all over again, recording the SACDs via the analogue output from my SACD player instead. It's lucky there's only about 20 of them!

 

You have done a great job on this and I thank you for the time and effort that went into your research.
So it seems that as far as the RCAs are concerned, if you only require CD playback, that the box set is a viable alternative and a unbelievable bargain!
Last I saw, it was $96.00 for the box of the entire 54 titles (60 discs) of Soundmirror remasterings, about $1.60 per disc!

 

Transfers are the same for both layers of the Living Stereo's as you determined. I could be wrong but I think SH mentioned somewhere in this long thread the feeds were split. Now some might say that the types prep involved for Red and Scarlett books constitutes a different mastering. While that that is probably nitpicking minutia it's not an unfair statement to make.

As for sounding the same, internal "circuits" for the 2 layers differ in playback gear. Either format could sound better but probably for the majority the Redbook will have an edge due to many systems suffering from the affects of SACD "thin sound". From an old post:

.....comparing SACD to CD is nearly always Apples to Oranges due to the different playback channels involved. Regardless of cost of ones gear the SACD channel oftimes is less mature than the CD.

A decade back I learned about Analog Bass Management as it applied to DVD-Audio and SACD. Without it both those formats often sound thin and puny. For me an Outlaw ICBM was the answer. Even today there is much gear that cannot perform bass management on their analog inputs, however there is gear that has Propitiatory or HDMI inputs in which Bass Mgmt (Digital) can be applied - or even better they pass DSD from transport to AMP without a PCM conversion. For those lucky enough to have that no ABM (Analog Bass Mgmt) is required

For SACD I mostly use my Denon reference transport direct DSD via Denon Link [Propitiatory] into my amp so Bass Mgmt (Digital) is applied. On my Oppo analog enhanced player I send the 2.0/5.1 outputs through my Outlaw ICBM thus able to control every aspect of the bass/low end (in the analog domain) to my liking.

The whole SACD bass thing is not easy to figure out which IMHO is one of the myriad of reasons the SACD format did not succeed for the masses.

 

But only after conversion to PCM.

 

Thanks, Vinylfindco, but it was you who prompted it! I agree that the CD box set is a bargain. As ricks rightly points out, there may bes differences between a CD player and an SACD player, and of course the SACD is playing back at a higher sampling rate and bit depth than the CD, but other than that, the mastering, by which I mean the EQd tape or digital file from which both CD and SACD were made, is the same. That's for the RCA Living Stereo - the Mercury Living Presence are another story and there, the SACD is a different mastering with different EQ.

 

No conversion. Apologies but for any further responses on this tangent please post to the thread in the hardware sub-forum. Thanks.