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Is there any consistent sonic difference between Japanese SACDs and their U.S. counterparts? I know there was/is with vinyl, but I really can't hear much of any between Japanese redbooks and U.S. versions--at least consistently. What do you hear in comparing the SACD versions? TIA.
Follow Ups:
z
speaking as someone who owns multiple copies of us and jap pressings, on both sacds and lps of many recordings available on both media, yes, there is consistent differences between jap and us sacds, played in my system, with sony sacd players. (i can't say the same for a meitner based system. emm lab combi is notoriously good in rejecting word clock jitter, which might explain why you don't hear the differences that somebody do)specifically on sacds, imho, the sonic differences are due in part to:
1. dsd master duplication process
2. optical disc chemical composition
3. pitch shift arising from ac power supply differences1. take example, sony sacds. among the titles which has been pressed in both us and japan, off hand that i remember i own: satch play fats, toto iv, abraxas, the stranger, thriller, can't stand the weather, we are in love, carol king(stereo), kind of blue(stereo), she's so unusual, divas live, mariah carey's the ones, bernstein's rapshody in blue, bernstein's new world symphony, bob dylan's blonde on blonde(stereo), star dust,... and many more. mostly mastered in new york. dupe copies of the dsd masters were made for japanese pressing plant for the japan market. the dupe processes created sonic differences. you might describe the sacds made from the dupe master as sounding diluted in flavour. this adverse effect has been described by joe harley in the hi-rez forum. make a search. the same problem is also noted on emi titles - like pink floyd's dark side of the moon, and norah jones' debut album. both jap copies sound extremely diluted when compared to their european sonopress(DSOTM) and Crest National(NJ) equivalents. another example also experienced is helmut lotti's my tribute to the king and pop classics in symphony, both which were first released on the emi label, then subsequently re-released on umg label. the later releases sound diluted again. both releases were all made in sonopress, germany. go figure.
2. the optical disc chemical composition for both us and japan sony pressings are different. the jap sony pressings have a "hot" flavour. basically you may describe the character as "harsh" or 'peaky" on trebles. in many cases, with many of the titles mentioned above, i often get a ringing fatigue after a relatively short listening period. this harshness has been noticed consistently across the many sony titles i own in both us and jap pressings. you may be able to reduce the fatigueness by treating the discs in certain ways - like cyrogenic treatment for example, which i had done. subsequently i went and made re-purchases of the jap pressings that went through the cyro treatment and i was able to compared both. while i prefer the non-treated discs, i like the us pressings even better. they are more analog sounding.
3. pitch shift arising from ac power supply differences. japan is 100v country vs 110v for the us. that's the main reason i feel why the sony sacds from japan run at slower speed and thus giving me lower pitches. ask christine tham. when i played toto iv in her system, she noticed the pitch differences immediately. interesting, i also notice this pitch problem on sony's rbcds and lps too. for instance, i own multiple copies of wham's make it big and billy joel's the stranger on lps, rbcds, and sacds. both jap lps and rbcds are lower in pitch compared to german, uk and us pressings. the jap sacd has the same pitch as the other jap lp and rbcd. the wham!title was not released in us market.
i would say: buy us first pressings whenever you can. but for you, maybe it doesn't matter with meitner sacd combos. even the jerome syndrome which i often described here is virtually imperceptible on meitner. that's how good they are.
hope that helps.
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! :)
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.
But you already know that.
Regards,
Geoff
i prefer to call them japs for the short studs most of them are.. :- )
Try asking this question over at Hi-Rez Highway, they'll probably let you know what's what...
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