Early SACD test pressings and format history

I know there was a Leonard Cohen SACD title listed at US Sony Music's SACD website before they closed it down. Was it "Leonard Cohen - Live At The Isle of Wight"?

 

One of the best threads I've seen on this forum, this is fascinating stuff. So much potential...

 

I bought my first 15 SACD's (all Sony singel layers) direct from Sony Music Norway, no record shop had them. This was June 2000. They even gave my a special price.

 

Mine Carpenters SACD is in a super jewel box.
I have played that disc twice, I hate that it! (But I don't hate Carpenters, not at all...)

 

Let's see if I can make this concise and cogent.

I think SACD was a victim of changing corporate culture both within Sony and Philips. Establishing and launching a format is a lot more difficult than introducing an upgraded version of an existing product. You have to get a lot of ducks lined up in a row, and you need strong management (at the highest level) that supports the endeavor to keep all parties in check.

In the case of SACD you had the involvement of:

1. Research - for the development of lossless coding, encryption, etc.
2. Disc technologists - to solve the problems of making hybrids and including physical encryption and watermarks
3. Disc manufacturers - to make the discs
4. Disc manufacturing equipment suppliers - to make the test equipment to verify discs on the production line
5. Pro audio equipment manufacturers - to provide the converters, recorders, mixers, editors and effects needed by studios
6. Record labels/artists/producers - to provide content
7. Player manufacturers
8. Key module suppliers - to supply transports, disc decoding/decryption modules, etc.
9. Semiconductors - to supply ICs
10. Packaging companies - to manufacture the Super Jewel Box
11. Sales and distribution - for both discs and players
12. Patents + Licensing - to create/define the standards (Scarlet Book ) and recoup development costs through the licensing of SACD technology

Of course, the same had been true for CD, but both companies had been very different back then. Philips had always been run by career Philips people, while Sony had Akio Morita to decide on policy and Norio Ohga to implement it. Unfortunately, SACD lacked champions high enough up in both companies to force things through. Jan Timmer, who had been Philips' driving force behind CD was head of the company when SACD started, but he would soon make way for Cor Boonstra (an outsider, i.e., no previous Philips history). Initially we thought this would be great, when, during a demo for Boonstra using music conducted by Valery Gergiev, we found out he was a sponsor of the Kirov/Mariinsky. However, Boonstra was very much a modern executive and had no sentimental attachment to any division or group. Faced with constant arguments between PolyGram and the CD-R parts of Consumer Electronics about ripping/burning, he decided to sell PolyGram to Universal in 1998 (for $10.5 billion!!). This was one year before the launch of SACD, and removed a large potential source of software.

At Sony, Morita was incapacitated following his stroke, and Ohga was moving aside for Nobuyuki Idei. Idei did not have the sheer force of personality that Ohga had. Sony was also struggling as a company at the time, and, like all big corporations, had its fair share of internal power battles (with the profitable divisions like Playstation demanding more influence and more of the company's resources). While Idei was a fan of SACD, he was not prepared to push it through at any cost unlike Morita + Ohga had been able to do with CD.

So, SACD had to compete against all the other projects and divisions in the two companies, all of which felt that they needed funding and would return profits if supported.

As you stated, it seemed like SACD had started to reach a tipping point when suddenly things started to fall apart. What changed? The leadership at Sony Music.

Over the years I did demos for Philips CEOs Jan Timmer, Cor Boonstra, and Gerard Kleisterlee as well as Frits Philips (former CEO and son of the co-founder), and Sony's Norio Ohga, Tommy Mottola and most of the top management at Sony Music. The CEOs all loved it, and supported it as best they could. Ohga, an opera singer and classical conductor, LOVED it. Mottola and the Sony Music management seemed disinterested, but did not stand in the way of title production -- and it should be noted that attempts were made to get some of Sony Music's biggest titles on SACD, some failed after test pressings had been made due to artist's refusing release permission, while others failed because artists' managers wanted high royalty rates (after feeling that the labels had ripped them off with too low royalty rates when CD had been launched).

Figuring that all we could do was to keep plugging away, trying to convince as many artists/producers/engineers to use DSD/SACD as possible, it seemed like things were finally starting to break with the introduction of the Stones SACDs, the Dylan catalog, Elton John, The Police, Pink Floyd, etc.

Then Sony replaced Tommy Mottola with Andrew Lack. I never met Lack, so I don't know whether he was just against SACD, didn't get it, was preoccupied with illegal downloads, or what, but very soon virtually all SACD projects in Sony Music were stopped (including the second phase of Dylan titles). This decision especially angered Sony Electronics who, along with Philips Consumer Electronics, had invested huge sums to get players in stores at all price points (remember we went from $5k stereo-only players to sub-$400 M-ch home-theater-in-a-box systems within a few years). If that was not bad enough, Lack then decided to commit Sony Music to the development of Dual-Disc, which contravened Sony's own disc standards, and which Sony Electronics refused to support.

So, all the money that should have gone into developing SACD titles suddenly went into Dual-Disc, and some titles that were scheduled to be released as SACDs eventually appeared as Dual-Discs. Dual-Discs, of course, turned out to be a giant dud.

Sadly, the failure of Dual-Disc did not lead to to a resurgence of SACD. Also, despite the suggestions of Sony Electronics and the SACD Project Office that Sony Music always do a DSD transfer when re-mastering any Columbia/Epic/Legacy title, this did not happen.

With Sony Music not producing titles, it was more difficult to get other labels to continue producing titles, and we find ourselves in the situation we are in now.

Making matters worse, the majors continue to refuse to license premium titles to re-issue companies like Audio Fidelity and MoFi. So, they won't issue them themselves, and they won't let anyone else issue them either (even in limited numbers).

Of course, re-mixing to M-ch is a costly undertaking, and it quickly became clear that the cost could not be justified for every title, and was better suited to new recordings where stereo and 5.1 mixes could be created at the same time. This was another of the intractable issues: the electronics divisions wanted M-ch titles because any consumer could hear the difference between M-ch SACD and CD, while the labels weren't eager to spend big sums re-mixing everything with original engineers.

So, in my opinion, we can blame big egos and intra-company competition and lack of a high-level champion who could demand, and get, what s/he wanted. Of course, I was not privy to all the data that the CEOs had when determining funding levels, etc. I'm sure we all imagine all the things we would do if we were the boss, but faced with all the data and expert proposals we may end up doing completely different things.

I remember seeing the same thing, but if it did get to the test pressing stage, I never saw it, and I would have been looking for one if I knew about it, because I really like that particular album.

As I wrote earlier, Sony Music was set up relatively early with DSD gear, and several of their mastering engineers used it extensively. In principle, they could have run every Legacy re-mastering project through DSD, but whether they did....

 

Fascinating post Black Elk

Thanks for the detailed insight

 

Great thread, thanks for posting it!

 

Black Elk,

Thanks for sharing that. I always had a feeling the inner workings of SACD's demise played out like you described, but now it is fascinating to learn the specifics, and the timeline.

Seriously, you could write a book about this topic.

 

Thanks for that response, Black Elk. I could never understand why Sony would back away from SACD at the worst possible time, and instead turn towards DualDisc, which was the DVD-Audio's camp attempt at making the DVD-A more like an SACD.

All along, the SACD **WAS** the PERFECT "Dual Disc". It's so crazy, it makes one want to scream!!

"*****************************"

 

Innocent Man in the paper slipcase is pretty common. The one I received from tower.com about 6 mos. ago was in the paper slipcase, and there's one sitting in a local store still and it has the original slipcase also.

 

Great insight into the demise of SACD. I bought lots of titles used at my local shop figuring I would eventually get a player and be able to listen to them properly. I found David Bowie Ziggy Stardust for $5.99 and snagged it up. I was surprised a used copy was going for a minimum of $70 on Amazon. That price is just plain crazy! Glad I found it cheap.

 

No, definitely not. The only two Cohen albums even rumored were "The Future" and "I'm Your Man". And when I say rumor, they made appearances as catalog listings at one point. Several famous albums by Sony artists had albums listed that obviously never made it to market because of the swift change in approach to SACD. There is no present information available if they even started work on transferring them to DSD. Oh what could have been...

That is fascinating stuff you posted on SACD, Black Elk. Turn it into a book and you would have at least one buyer in me.

 

Just amazing stuff, Black Elk. Thank you for the insight!

 

Great photos!

 

Bowie on SACD was extremely common not much more than a month ago. I guess Virgin put all the SACDs out of print. Roxy Music too. Looks like Scary Monsters is still available on amazon, but probably not for long. Amazing how quickly these all disappeared from websites and stores. Like overnight almost.

 

Thanks Black Elk for the information. Fascinating stuff!

This must explain in part why we did not get the other Elton John SACD titles. Like “Don't Shoot Me I'm Only the Piano Player,” “Caribou” and “West of the Rockies” that would have filled in the running order of EJ titles that were released. Do we have a list of the second set of Elton John SACD titles that were presumably completed, but not released?

On the Bob Dylan SACD sampler CSH 55838 the first track “All I Really Want To Do” (in both Stereo / Multi-channel) the liner notes claim “from the upcoming album The Bootleg series Vol. 6.” This track AFAIK is not available on any of the Bob Dylan SACD releases. Do we have a list of the second set of Bob Dylan SACD titles that were not released? Thanks.

 

Very interesting stuff!

Carl

 

Akiba 2009-11-13

and Sony still supports the format, SCD-XA5400ES is selling like hot cakes, Sony Music should stop sleeping and bring those Dylan SACDs

PS here are the pics from Sony yesterday's presentation of stereo and multichannel SACD players

 

If that is true, I am thinking there are going to be a lot of disappointed people when they try to find some new syrup and want something other than classical syrup.

Chris

 

Black Elk, thank you very much for sharing this great information.

I always suspected Sony Music had played a vital role in the demise of SACD.

Shame on you Sony Music.

 

Columbia-Sony already had in some vault a 4.0 mix of Rocks - it was released in quaraphonic back in the days - and had already refitted other quad mixes to SACD (O'Jays, Isley Brothers etc) so it could had been a easy thing to do.
No need to create a C/S channels pair, listen to Mike Oldfield Tubular Bells 4.0 mix on SACD and there's nothing missing by using only 4 channels instead of 6.
The EJ second batch reached the Test Pressing stage or remained just a studio run-through?

 

that's probably the reason they later came out with DSD CDs and not SACDs :thumbsdn::thumbsdn:

http://www.icon-collectibles.com/YoYo-Ma-30-Years-Outside-the/A/B002IC10Y8.htm

 

I kinda suspected you were an SACD insider. You know way too much about the technical aspects of DSD/SACD to be out of the loop. When an SACD thread gets out of hand, you've usually been able to reel it in with your technical knowlege and I thank you for that. SACD and DSD processesing seem to be horribly misunderstood by the general public. I think we should rename this thread "Black Elk Speaks".

 

Yea, I think the only SACDs in print now are the MFSLs and Analogue Productions. Sony, EMI and Virgin seem to have suddenly just recently discountinued all theirs. Most titles anyway.

 

That is odd, I have never seen those two titles in anything but Superjewel cases.