Strange experience with the Esa-Pekka recording of Mussorgsky, Bartok & Stravinsky

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Posted by Chris from Lafayette (A) on September 1, 2021 at 00:56:14

You know the one: Moussorgsky's original instrumental version of Night on Bald Mountain (with no help from Rimsky!), Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin Suite, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. IIRC, it derived from concert performances with the LAPO and came out on SACD in 2006. I was surprised to see it reappear as one of those "Pure-Audio" blu-ray audio discs recently.

I had been somewhat skeptical of the SACD (which I bought as soon as it was originally released), because the "totality" of the sound didn't seem right, with all these details from the spot microphones suddenly appearing in a very incoherent way - especially near the beginning of the Miraculous Mandarin Suite, when the organ bass pedals and low brass come in. I thought this section was SO overdone - I even posted about it here at the time.

Nevertheless, I did gingerly fork over some additional money for the new blu-ray version ("remastered for Dolby Atmos"). I've had it for two weeks and then finally listened to it yesterday. Wow! What a transformation - everything sounds coherent now and when those organ and brass parts come in in the Bartok, they sound proportionate and realistic. I still don't have my Dolby Atmos height channels working (possibly that will be corrected tomrorow), but even through regular 5.1, it's astounding how much of an improvement there is. It's almost as if the SACD had some kind of processing fault, which nevertheless wasn't bad enough to get the customers and critics up in arms. But the new blu-ray sounds extraordinary in comparison. Weird.

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Topic - Strange experience with the Esa-Pekka recording of Mussorgsky, Bartok & Stravinsky - Chris from Lafayette 00:56:14 09/01/21 (12)

RE: Strange experience with the Esa-Pekka recording of Mussorgsky, Bartok & Stravinsky - Russell 00:56:28 09/02/21 (5)

Russell - I'll try to listen to a couple of the 2Ch tracks too and give you an opinion - Chris from Lafayette 01:20:46 09/02/21 (4)

Thanks!!! (nt) - Russell 11:37:39 09/02/21 (3)

So I'm going to start with the disclaimer. . . - Chris from Lafayette 01:36:36 09/03/21 (2)

Good info; you've saved me some $$! Thanks again, Chris! (nt) - Russell 18:48:24 09/03/21 (1)

The funny thing is that, this morning, I DID find my SACD incarnation - Chris from Lafayette 18:44:26 09/04/21 (0)

check the CD/SACD player settings - oldvinyl 10:14:19 09/01/21 (3)

This was a one-of-a kind problem - usually, my SACD's sound great - Chris from Lafayette 11:18:26 09/01/21 (2)

player settings - oldvinyl 11:51:21 09/01/21 (1)

What you say could be true, but not in this case - Chris from Lafayette 14:49:04 09/01/21 (0)

Sample Rate Conversion? Processing? - Todd Krieger 01:13:01 09/01/21 (1)

I'm pretty sure the master is PCM, despite the original issue on SACD - Chris from Lafayette 01:21:40 09/01/21 (0)

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