I was listening to a few cuts of Dylan's Blonde on Blonde SACD today and was impressed with the sound quality. I then listened to the regular CD pressing of 'Desire' and found it also very enjoyable listening. This set me to wondering how good Desire would sound if it were mastered for SACD as I suspect it to be a very well recorded master tape. The question this brings up is how does Sony (or any other large catalogue label for that matter) decide which titles they are going to bring out on SACD? Is it the popularity of the titles that prompts their choices? Is it the sound quality of the masters? Somehow I doubt the latter as they have come out with some pretty wretched sounding stuff on SACD. Why they do that is beyond my comprehension. Does anyone have an insight as to how these selections are made? I've never seen much discussion from this perspective on the subject and I am interested to try and understand why and how they pick the titles that they do.
I don't have a clue, Khorn. If they hired me to run their SACD release scheduling, you would already have: The complete catalogs of Simon & Garfunkel BS&T Santana Byrds Dylan Thelonious Monk Dave Brubeck Charles Mingus Myles Davis Carole King and countless other top-notch CBS talent I can't think of right now on - now get this - limited edition two-fers transeferred to DSD from the original master tapes using Sony's best engineers. The retail would have been $18.99 all along, and they would have been single layer only (no need to reward cheapskates with such a generous offer if they won't buy an SACD player). The two-fers (probably limited to 10,000 copies worldwide) would have been an incentive/reward for those who adopted the format early; when they sold out, they would be reissued as hybrids but not as two-fers. I know, I'm a dreamer.
Right. What I was suggesting earlier was that the early adopters of the format would be rewarded, but that later on, those who insist on having hybrids (personally I don't really see the need for this), they could have them in the reissue hybrids, but they would get only 1 album for their money, not two.
I think in Sony's case, they went for the most popular titles, not sound quality, judging by some of the lackluster sounding titles they have issued in SACD like Aerosmith and Mariah Carey. The same thing happened when the CD was first released. They went for the most popular, or recognized titles. Except, back then, classical music was the very first issued because the idea was that most audiophiles listened to primarily classical music and that it was the only music that they felt took advantage of the full dynamic range the CD had to offer, despite the many pop titles being recorded with digital at the time.
That may be true. Also I think that classical music appealed to music lovers in many different countries, whereas some pop acts were more localized. It could also have had a lot to do with the convenience of not having to turn the record over to listen to the third movement of a symphony. This was a big selling point. So was the absence of surface noise which was probably more obvious in classical music, because classical music has many low level sections where the volume of the recording could not mask the vinyl noise. Convenience was the number one reason CD took off. Regards, Geoff
I have a feeling that the record companies have released some SACD versions of their product like they released cassette tapes in the old days. "Oh, a new format. Lets throw a copy on tape... err, I mean SACD. Now people with tape players.... errr, SACD players can buy and hear our music". Yep, missed the boat!
From what I see, Sony uses those monkeys in the Mastercard commercials to make their choices on what discs to release.
This is all part of what each person here likes. Obviously, some here don't care for popular titles. I notice most of Sony's SACDs are of 60s, 80s, and 90s music, hardly any 70s titles. Hmmmm, maybe the people picking the titles are twentysomethings or people in their 50s who have no fond recollections of 70s music...
Bob Dyan's management has shown more interest in putting out mono vinyl albums than anything else. They went out of their way to hire SUNDZED to issue such disks. Blond on Blond should be out next month. Perhaps 8 tracks will be next.
SGB, Love those jazz titles. Check out the APO titles coming out of Chad's place in Kansas (Acoustic Sounds). Some very good classic jazz. I also look for their LP ads in The Absolute Sound, as they usually proceed the SACD releases at APO... Lee
