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In Reply to: yes, there is a consistent sonic difference posted by jeromelang on March 8, 2006 at 07:57:53:
Your explanation was incredibly detailed and very helpful. Everything you said makes perfect sense to me. I had heard that Japanese SACDs were often made from dupes, but was careful to not make any decisions until I did an A/B myself. This morning, just for kicks, I borrowed my friend's Japanese copy of Norah Jones' "Come Away with Me." The differences were as you stated, and this was before I read your post. The Japanese pressing did indeed sound slower and not as clear and crisp as the American copy (which wasn't a great demo of SACD's potential, to begin with). And the highs were a little "peakier" too. Again, thanks for your great explanation. It saved me a lot of money! :)
Follow Ups:
not many machines and systems are able to reveal the subtle nuances between the 2 layers on this disc. this should be the benchmark disc to bring along for auditions if one's priority is searching for a machine whose circuit design is optimized for sacd performances.
there was a lot of controvery about the SACD layer of "Come Away with Me." Stereophile even bashed it. I'm not sure, but I think it had something to do with the fact that it wasn't recorded in pure DSD. I still use it as a demo disc, but I think the point of the criticism was that it could've been even better than it turned out.
i am not disputing the fact that this disc could have been better prepared for release - transferred from original analog masters to dsd, instead of using pcm masters duped from analog. but the fact that this album wasn't recorded to dsd is perhaps a better thing. there are also some on hi-rez boards who would readily agree that native dsd recording does not necessarily make better music, especially if there are still remnants of pcm circuitries in the current crop of dsd recording/edit/mastering signal chain.in the same regard, this episode brought out a fact that many high end sacd players have been faking it, churning out sacd performance that are sterile in comparison to real sacd players which use true-blue dsd decoding. the denon player that was used in the review of this sacd was one which has its decoder set to pcm as default. was it any wonder that the reviewer was not able to perceive the sonic differences between the 2 layers? yet there had been others besides myself who had written in to say that the sonic differences between the 2 layers are readily audible in their/my systems. this same reviewer also then went on record to say on hi-rez board that there could not be possibly any differences between discs pressed in different countries. but you yourself refuted that claim with your own report on the same sacd. did he spoke too soon without performing the same a/b listening test as you yourself did? or was he simply that inept in his listening abilities?
so it turn out that, despite its less than stellar sacd quality, this disc can be a great diagnostic tool - to silt out the fake players and possibly the tone-deafs and lazy bums masquerading as audio reviewers.
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