The Police on SACD!!!

Exactly. I've been burned one too many times by immediately buying the latest/greatest remaster without getting some indication as to the sound from others. At the very least, I will hold on to the originals until I have A/B-ed them with the new SACD versions. If they over-compress, jack-up the high frequencies (or perform mid-range suck-out) on the SACD, I will immediately dump it... 'Nuff said.

 

Re: Karajan Beethoven 9 from the 80's on CD

It's not the same recording. The SACD is a 1970's recording. I've never seen/heard that Hogwood version, I might have to check it out. My favourite versions to date, as I stated before, are the period instrument performance by John Elliot Gardiner w/ Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on Archiv and the Harnoncourt w/ The Chamber Orchestra of Europe on Teldec.

 

I thought I started this thread about The Police on SACD?

 

Sorry David, I didn't mean to thread-crap. Things just sort of, for some reason, ended up being about the Beethoven/Karajan SACD. I'll quickly get back on topic:

I strongly hope that The Police SACD's are from new Analogue-->DSD masters and not remastered to DSD from PCM masters.

 

Good gracious! I'd hope they'd know the difference. I hope there aren't any mastering engineers that think high-res PCM is as good as DSD. Just ain't the same ball game.

 

Well, gang, it's like this...got an E back last nite from Red Trumpet, and the discs are single-layer stereo, as I suspected. Why these aren't being done hybrid, under the circumstances, who knows? Makes no real sense, since guys without SACD won't be able to play them. Whatever else I might say about the Stones SACD's, they got the idea right, if stereo(or mono)is all we're gonna get. That should have been done here, too, but looks like one layer is it. As much as I want to pre-order the whole bunch, I think I'll try one first...probably GHOST, or REGGATTA. Choices, choices...

ED

 

Remasters went out already for the Police. If they choose to do things differently for SACD, IMHO, they deserve to be seperate entities from the Redbook Cds.

I don't think a single layer SACD is a bad thing.

 

But that means that I can't play them in my car

So if I want both redbook (for car) and SACD (for home) I have to spend $25 + $12. Ick. Not to mention it takes up twice the space. Double Ick.

HZ

 

I think of hybrid discs as a sales tool. If someone already owns SACDs (like everyone that bought the Stones discs) then they'll be more likely (curiosity?) to buy an DVD/SACD player.

 

So these will be Stereo only releases?? I'm usually not a big fan of going back over Stereo catalog reissues and making them MCH, but the second side of GITM would be pretty cool in MCH. I might actually break down and take the plunge on buying three extra speakers and the associated amplification.

 

Since it is for your own use you could legally burn a CD-R copy from the analog outputs of the SACD player.

 

Exactly! My Stones collection made me much more interested in an SACD player than I otherwise would have been. It gave me an instant SACD collection but didn't FORCE me to get a player. It's a brilliant idea and it's short-sighted of labels not to release more of them...

 

Not exactly. All the Universal SACD so far have been selling from anywhere between $13.99 - $17.99, with most single layers going for $14.99.

So in truth you would only have to spend $15 + $12. Still I agree that why not give us hybrids if possible. The issue is that hybrids cost more to manufacture - and unless Universal is creating the SACDs as replacements for the current redbook issue, then I guess they see no reason to release hybrids.