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As the year draw to close, I thought it might be interesting to analyze my hi-rez collection (SA-CD + DVD-Audio).Current size of collection: just under 400 titles. This breaks down to about 40% classical, 30% jazz and "the rest". Of these, around 70 are DVD-Audios (including a handful of DualDiscs) - the rest are SA-CDs.
The first title was bought in late 2001 and was a DVD-Audio (Pat Metheny Group Imaginary Day). This was followed by a few SA-CDs in late 2001 (first one was So Real by Warren Bernhardt).
Interestingly, nearly 75% of the titles feature a multi-channel audio track, so it was definitely worthwhile investing in m-ch playback. This was a much higher ratio than I would have guessed.
Total spent to date: nearly A$10,000 (in 2006, around A$1,300). Biggest spending was in 2003, when I bought around 110 titles. Last two years I have been averaging around 50-60 titles per year.
PS - all these statistics are provided courtesy of Catraxx, which I have been using to catalogue my discs.
Follow Ups:
I'm speaking strictly SACD. I'm sure many early adapters to the format bought titles to try the format. Therefore, I have a number of Sony titles that do not include MCH nor a CD layer for that matter. Most everything I buy now includes all three layers and while there are some Sonys I have thought to back fill, I have avoided in doing so up to this point.Robert and I have been having discussions about multichannel and the utilization of the center and rear channel. Some recordings do not include the use of the center and very subtle use of the rears. I have a Denon 3803 AVR and that component neeeds all the help it can get with multichannel listening. I fall back to two channel with my Rogue tube amps when all channels aren't utilized up to par so to speak.
The Living Stereo recordings are a very good example for which I much rather listen to these in 3 channel where applicable. I agree with you about those being much better than just listening in two channel.
I seem to be able to notice more prominently the lack of center channel usage on recordings much more so than Robert. Perhaps it is my system more than anything else.
My hi-rez collection has 385 SACDs, of which 50 titles only SACD layer, while the rest are hybrid discs. No dvd-a, nor dual disc at all.
OK, I'll play.I just checked my list. I have 487 m/c out of 895 SACDs - that's 54%.
And I don't have a multichannel player. ;-)
(statistics provided courtesy of 'grep | wc -l' on a simple hand-written HTML page posted on geocities - I'm such a geek).
Regards,
Geoff
If you have a multi-channel playback system that can (and probably does) influence the type of SACDs you buy, even if sub-conscientiously. Given sufficient choices a music lover with a multi-channel system may lean toward multi-channel software, especially since multi-channel software costs no more than two-channel software. I believe Christine was a fairly early adaptor of multi-channel and that might have had an influence on the software that she has chosen, especially in the last few years.In addition, Christine has 70 DVD-As, about 18% of her collection. I can't say for sure, but perhaps because DVD-A had multi-channel in the specs from the outset (it was a secondary decision for the SACD inventors) a higher percent of DVD-A may have been multi-channel.
In any event, it is just about impossible to purchase newly recorded SACDs today, especially classical or jazz that are not multi-channel. I would wager that if you continue to buy SACDs at the rate you have in the past that your percentage of SACDs that are multi-channel will approach 75% in short order.
I've been counting them as m-ch (and yes, I exclude the ones that are genuinely 2ch only).As a large percentage of my collection are Living Stereos (I've been diligently buying almost every title) they boost the m-ch ratio up. Indeed, the Living Stereos are good examples of the advantage of using m-ch to reproduce 3ch recordings - the m-ch versions sound so much clearer than the 2ch "downmixed" versions it's not funny.
And you're right - in the early days, my purchasing bias was definitely towards m-ch (and hybrid) if possible.
But I stopped when I realised there weren't enough titles for me to be picky, and stereo sounded pretty good.
But lately, the titles have been almost always m-ch. Indeed the last stereo only titles that I can remember were purchased from Japan.
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