SACD Hybrids played back on 44/16 (or 20)
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| Posted on April 23, 2020 at 14:32:59 | ||
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More of a commentary than a question. COVID19 put my front-end upgrade on hold, so I am still window shopping, but in the last couple of months I went on an Ebay binge (of sorts) & started buying (with reservations) a few SACD hybrids. I bought MFSL "Blood On The Tracks", MFSL "Whites Off Earth Now" (Cowboy Junkies), MFSL "Excitable Boy" (Zevon), the "Cafe Blue Unmastered" (which was Premonition, not MFSL, a Japanese Fleetwood Mac "Rumors", MFSL Carly Simon "Hot Cakes", & MFSL Patricia Barber "Smash." (There may be a couple of more, but those are the ones that are coming to mind right now. Over the years I have bought quite a few "remastered" gold CDs (MFSL, DCC, MCA, although not remasters Chesky, & a few other labels/brands) & I have learned to be often disappointed. Overall, either many of them sounded flat-out bad or certainly (I thought) did not live up to the hype or price associated with them. & yes, there were several exceptions to my disappointed feelings, & I guess that's why I continued to buy them. So alluding to this batch of SACD hybrids in the first paragraph of my post: I was hoping for more from the Japanese "Rumors", but I have only listened to it once, & maybe I was having a bad night (so I will have to give that at least another spin). "Excitable Boy" & "Blood On The Tracks" both pleasantly surprised me. I have some nits with The Cowboy Junkies WOEN, but these nits are not about the sonics of the recording because there are aspects I find sonically incredible. (However, with that last sentence typed, I always thought my aluminum WOEN CD had pretty good sonic attributes as well, so maybe this CD is not a great comparison.) I already owned the Premonition HDCD gold "Cafe Blue" & I have a lot of appreciation for it, & I believe I like Premonition's hybrid ". . . Unmastered" better. MFSL (I think 2013) "Smash" (which I purchased from Music Direct) also by Patricia Barber sounds pretty good. I have a feeling that the original (Blue Note/Premonition?) digital press probably sounded decent, so again, probably not the best comparison, but it was on sale by Music Direct, so wth. But the real surprise for me was (on sale from Music Direct) MFSL Carly Simon 1974 "Hot Cakes"! I wasn't expecting much, but as opposed to sounding wooden or brittle or stiff or flat, this sounds full & solid & I thought that the separation of instruments & vocals is good. Regardless, getting back to my (hopefully soon) front end upgrade, considering how good I felt the red-book layer of these hybrids sounded, maybe I should think about upgrading to a mid-priced SACD player.
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