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Erich Kunzel, Paavo Jarvi and Telarc

Posted by Teresa on February 14, 2007 at 08:18:51

Hi all I fully expect some of you to tell me I told you so.

Several months ago I thought about upgrading my DVD-Audio player to a universal one that decodes DTS for better sounding movies and SACD as well.

I wanted SACD playback I missed my Erich Kunzel and Paavo Jarvi recordings and most of them are not available on LP, Reel to Reel or Cassette. Even though I have tons of Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops on RCA Living Stereo Reel to Reels and LPs and love them dearly, they don’t have Michael Bishop’s nifty sound effects that make the Erich Kunzel SACDs so much fun.

One might ask why I didn’t go all analog for Movies the way I went all analog for music. Simply reason is Videotape does not have enough resolution, and while the quality of LaserDisc can be very stunning I can no longer rent them. So I am keeping the DVD video format because there are rentals everywhere.

OK so back to the Universal players, I researched players for TOC reading issues and Denon looked like the best in this regard based on my research and others. And Sony and Marantz had the most reported problems. I used to sell stereo equipment at the Good Guys and to me Denon’s have always sounded cold. I much preferred the “warm” sound of Yamaha’s to even the Sony ES we sold. So after much research I purchased the Yamaha DVD-S1700.

I am not truly back to SACDs as a group but am only after the Telarc SACDs for now. I have discovered that Circuit City has lowered their price of Telarc SACDs to $13.99 each with free shipping so I can buy them back for around a dollar more than I sold them for. Thank you Circuit City! Plus there are many new Telarc SACDs I have never heard before.

I also made a truly stunning discovery: regular Telarc CDs sound excellent on this player. As reported by me over the past 14 years most Telarc CDs didn’t produce the painful headache producing strident string tone common to other CDs but they still sounded too cold to be enjoyed. Well Yamaha performed some sort of miracle because Telarc CDs sound almost as warm as Telarc SACDs and get this they have much of the “midrange magic” of the Telarc SACDs. Still Telarc SACDs have more extended, airy and feathery highs and more impact and realistic bass. Because of the excellent performance of CDs on this player and lack of any of the CD nasties I can get all of Erich Kunzel’s recordings!

I have all of my favorite analog recordings in their analog form, now it’s time for Telarc. For me 2007 will be my year of Telarc.

SACD performance is a notch below my old Xindak SCD-2 but it is way better than the unmodded Sony 9000ES. It is still stunning, exciting and has a lot of the “tube” warmth of the Xindak, with just slightly less intricate detail in the highs.

This is my third time to try SACD and I hope it’s a charm.

The first time I had SACD only at home and Cassettes for the car.

My second trip into the SACD waters, SACD had to share playtime with first LPs and later Reel to Reels.

This third visitation SACD will be sharing playtime with LPs, Reel to Reels and Cassettes as I can now play cassettes at home as well when I bought a Nakamich cassette deck for $39.50 at the Salvation Army. It works perfectly and all I had to do was adjust the azimuth!

I figure SACDs and CDs will be only getting about 15%-20% of my playtime. For example I listened to 3 Reel to Reels, 1 Cassette and 1 SACD yesterday.

Also to create more storage space I sold a lot of duplicates for example before selling my SACDs players last time I had Gould’s Latin American Symphonette on Vanguard SACD, Analogue Productions LP and Barclay-Crocker Reel to Reel. I just sold the Reel to Reel and will be keeping the Analogue Productions LP version only.

I also had two versions of Sheffield Lab’s “The Missing Linc” one on Direct to Disc LP and one on Nakamichi Reference Series pre-recorded cassette duplicated in real time on TDK Metal tape, and in every possible way, especially the deep bass, imaging and fullness of the midrange the little cassette is the one to listen to.

No longer will I buy recordings in multiple formats. If Telarc Analogue made 180-Gram LPs or pre-recorded Reel to Reel tapes I would not have cared if my new DVD player played SACD or not. But the lure of Telarc’s superb engineering along with Erich Kunzel’s fun and exciting recordings and Paavo Jarvi’s fresh new brilliant definitive views of modern classics became too hard to resist.

"Music is love"
Teresa

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