SH Spotlight Adventures in Mastering: First album by AMERICA on SACD for Audio Fidelity:

Plus 1

 

They aren't Sony.

 

Finally had a chance to sit down late last night and play this SACD (numbered 0509) straight through with the volume semi-cranked, an adult beverage at hand, and "a pipe to share," as Neil Young sez.

Just fantastically good — it puts my minty green-label Warner LP, as fine as it sounds, absolutely in the shade. Makes my hi-fi system blush with pride at how beautifully it can perform with the finest source material queued up.

This album is a classic guilty pleasure for me on several levels. Not to put too fine a point on it, this was the first music I ever listened to stoned, under the benign influence of some early-70's California skunk weed, and with my head stuck between the speakers it delivered an embarrassingly profound teenage epiphany about how tangible and holographic and ghostly-real a vinyl record can be. Despite the severe limitations of my little Sears suitcase all-in-one phonograph, that was the moment I got hi-fi religion. Even back then, however, I knew that America S/T is several notches below timeless and classic and truly great —some of it verges on kitschy and cornball and hippie-dippy, and of course, as Steve H. notes in his OP post, it's quite derivative of the Beatles, CSNY, and (notoriously) Neil Young, a real time-capsule mash-up of its contemporary influences. But the band steals these styles with aplomb, and the playing and singing is incredibly tight and inventive, and the thing is just recorded so gorgeously.... Acoustic-guitar nirvana.

Anyway, I so glad I purchased this brilliant puppy. It's like getting a letter from my 16-year-old self saying, "Hey old dude, remember how beautiful music sounds?"

 

As do I.

 

I have the Japanese Mini ,and even on my simple system sounds great to me ,and sounds like a great recording to me, not sure I need another version

 

Especially where you live

 

I keep looking at this thread cause it's one of my favorite records ever, haven't bought the CD yet, money is tight but it's 1st on my list. Anyway just thinking about the record has several of the songs running thru my head regularly, like Three Roses which I currently can't escape. Also Never Found The Time has been going around too, and Children. The latter is the perfect song for describing our government shutdown. heh

 

You do...

 

Got a chance to listen to the AF America redbook layer today. Nice sounding but I never noticed how much artificial 'echo' was present until the AF version. A bit distracting but that's the price to pay for being closer to listening to the master tapes perhaps.

 

I just received it today and I'm spinning it now. Sounds great!

 

Does anyone know why the SACD layer is DR9 and the CD layer is DR11 on this release? For comparison I checked the DR on Poco Pickin' Up the Pieces and the CD and SACD layers have the same DR on that release. Seems odd. Very similar RMS but peaks lower on the SACD.

SACD
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DR Peak RMS Filename
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DR10 -3.27 dB -14.63 dB 01 - America - Riverside.aif
DR9 -3.30 dB -13.68 dB 02 - America - Sandman.aif
DR9 -3.68 dB -14.37 dB 03 - America - Three Roses.aif
DR9 -3.33 dB -15.19 dB 04 - America - Children.aif
DR9 -3.19 dB -15.14 dB 05 - America - A Horse With No Name.aif
DR8 -5.32 dB -17.57 dB 06 - America - Here.aif
DR8 -3.86 dB -14.46 dB 07 - America - I Need You.aif
DR8 -3.72 dB -15.45 dB 08 - America - Rainy Day.aif
DR7 -3.93 dB -13.27 dB 09 - America - Never Found The Time.aif
DR9 -3.89 dB -17.22 dB 10 - America - Clarice.aif
DR8 -3.92 dB -15.75 dB 11 - America - Donkey Jaw.aif
DR14 -3.92 dB -21.62 dB 12 - America - Pigeon Song.aif
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of files: 12
Official DR value: DR9


CD

DR Peak RMS Filename
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DR12 -1.85 dB -14.91 dB 01 Riverside.m4a
DR11 -0.76 dB -13.95 dB 02 Sandman.m4a
DR11 -1.65 dB -14.64 dB 03 Three Roses.m4a
DR11 -1.27 dB -15.46 dB 04 Children.m4a
DR12 -0.95 dB -15.42 dB 05 A Horse With No Name.m4a
DR9 -4.04 dB -17.88 dB 06 Here.m4a
DR9 -2.96 dB -14.74 dB 07 I Need You.m4a
DR11 -1.83 dB -15.73 dB 08 Rainy Day.m4a
DR9 -2.12 dB -13.55 dB 09 Never Found the Time.m4a
DR11 -2.45 dB -17.49 dB 10 Clarice.m4a
DR10 -2.22 dB -16.03 dB 11 Donkey Jaw.m4a
DR14 -3.95 dB -21.90 dB 12 Pigeon Song.m4a
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Number of files: 12
Official DR value: DR11

==============================================================================================

 

I took a look at the wave forms and it appears there is some peak limiting on the SACD that is not on the CD. Top is the SACD, bottom is the CD in these two pictures. There are just a few spots in the track where the volume hits these level so it would be subtle beyond belief for anyone to notice. It is actually amazing to me how identical the waveforms look except in those peak spots.

 

I just received America SACD AFZ 167 #353. The album and the sound are fantastic. Right off the bat, I must apologize to Steve Hoffman, I bashed his last few YES SACDs, I just did not feel they delivered the SACD experience. I've come to realize that one can not polish a turd, you do the best you can with the tapes handed to you. This America remaster is easy to listen to. The vocals are up front and clear. (The lack of which was my complaint on the recent YES albums. i.e. Awaken.) This is a very listenable remaster, thank you Steve. Thank you AF for the good fight of bringing us hi-res.

A WORTHY SACD BUY!

 

Upfront, clear, good, no disappointments. The music rings.

 

One more comment...to those that have issues receiving their purchases. I pre-order on Music Direct or Acoustic Sounds, and its expensive. I pay up to 37 dollars for a new AF disc. However, its shipped fast, I get the CD within 3 days of release, and low limited edition numbers. I understand, its 10 plus dollars cheaper on Amazon, and I have gone that route once or twice. Its simple..."they" get the product to those that commit early, at a premium price. Then sit back and relax, because the release date wont be happening, count on a few months extra. But, you will get it as soon as it is released. I found out, one needs to buy these when one can, or five years from now you pay 3x the price for the good ones..used. ( Still looking for reasonable priced Alan Parsons DVD-As, Dead Can Dance SACD Box set, Lamb Lies Down on Broadway SACD.....forget about it.) And, that's why some wont be getting that Roger Waters release. But, you know that album was Engineered right, even on CD, which was Q sound by the way. So, on SACD, this album has the highest of expectations. Simply because the CD is great, the SACD is gonna shine....and if you want it you will need to order it now. Its like Beck Sea Change, you cant buy a ****ty version of that engineering masterpiece. Try buying a reasonable priced SACD of that......preachin to the choir?

 

If anyone else wants to try to look at this, this is from Sandman at exactly 01'16"351. The previous post times might not be exactly accurate as I had pasted the two waveforms into one document and done some trimming to line them up. This image is just the left and right channel of the SACD (converted to PCM 24/88.2). As can be seen a couple of posts back the CD layer does not chop off the peak of the right channel. I checked a couple more Audio Fidelity SACDs and I do not see this issue on Hemispheres or Pickin' up the Pieces but I do see it on Going for the One. I'm curious if it is a DSD->PCM conversion issue or something in the mastering. It is curious.

 

^^^ What pre-amplification setting (if any) are you using for your DSD-to-PCM conversion?

 

None. At least the "gain" setting in Audiogate says "0.0" if that is what you mean. I tried with -3 and while quieter, the waveform still looked the same, with the peak clipped off.

 

Well, it looks like right channel clipping may be in DSD stream then... As mentioned in another thread peaks of SACD audio should not exceed +3dBFS (which will be -3dBFS PCM equivalent). Could it be that they somehow exceeded that level in DSD mastering? Have you tried another DSD-to-PCM converter (say, foo_input_sacd plug-in for foobar2000) by any chance?

 

I was hoping someone could try Saracon or something. I am on a Mac but do have foobar in a Windows setup under Parallels, I may take a try with that.

[update]
Got foo_input_sacd to work with foobar2000 and it looks exactly the same.

 

Interesting graphs - thanks.

 

Have you considered getting these directly from Audio Fidelity as a club member?

 

Oh well, seems like a possible issue with DSD audio on the disc...

 

Mine has finally shipped from Amazon, very excited for it to arrive. Next up for me, Warren Zevon.