Can the Sound on Sacd be improved-very dissatifed with some discs

[spotlightkid]

Can the sound be improved on these super audio cd's.when i first played the sony sampler disc i was not impressed.then i put on the telarc sampler and thought ok this is more like it.it seems that a lot of the sony/columbia discs lack in fidelity.does anyone know if this is so with the counterpart discs out of japan.

[TimB]

Both of those ideas are nondestructive. I will try the matt on some of my SACD's and see if it works!

[MikeT]

Originally posted by spotlightkid
Can the sound be improved on these super audio cd's.when i first played the sony sampler disc i was not impressed.then i put on the telarc sampler and thought ok this is more like it.it seems that a lot of the sony/columbia discs lack in fidelity.does anyone know if this is so with the counterpart discs out of japan.

First of all - for whatever reason - the Sony sampler (I have two different ones) are not the best SACDs to audition a system with. The cuts on the sampler discs do not compare to the exact same cuts on the actual SACDs.

While it is true that the fidelity on many Sony SACDs is questionable, I think it has more to do with the source tape, etc. Sony is, I hope, going back to the original analog masters or the best master they can find. Columbia/Sony being a mass market music distributer, isn't putting fidelity at the forefront when they record/recorded an album I would assume. Hence many of their tapes may have used compression, equilization, etc. to make them more palatable to the mass market.

On the other hand, smaller audiophile labels - as well as re-mastering specialty labels, tend to take great care in presenting the music in the best possible light. Hence the reason you might find Telarc, etc. to sound better.

As far as Japanese SACDs go, the Sony's I purchased don't really have a leg up on quality. They do sound good - for instance - Santana "Carvarnserai" is superb - yet I read a post on www.audioasylum.com that the majority of the Japanese Sony SACDs made from American master tapes are actually mastered in DSD in New York by the same engineers doing the domestic releases (even when the SACD may be one released only in Japan). So it really is questionable whether a specific Japanese SACD would on the face of it be better.

You may not find the music to your liking, but some of the best sounding SACDs I have are on the Audioquest label and the Opus 3 label. You might want to search them out.

[AudioGirl]

Can the sound be improved ???

Have Steve Hoffman master them!!! :p

[Gary]

.......... so what we are saying here is even though we have a very revealing, superior high rez format with players and software, the engineers are still living in the past? This gives me chills....... like my Beatles SACD nightmare where the master tapes are no noised, compressed, super EQ'd and sterilized. The end result is a very clear copy of............. *shudder*

.......the horror........ the horror.......

[RicP]

spotlightkid:

Most of Sony's discs so far have been less than stellar. Try any discs from Chesky, FIM (especiallu their Audiophile Reference IV disc) and DMP.

Secondly, you don't say which player you have or what it's hooked up to? All of this is important in trying to get the best sound from SACD.

Have you listened to the James Taylor - Hourglass SACD? Ironically, it was recorded in hi-resolution PCM and converted to DSD, yet it's one of the best sounding discs that Sony put out.

[spotlightkid]

Ric p-i have a sony scd-777es and yes i have the james taylor
disc and i agree it is one of the best sony has released so far.

[GregM]

I've been extremely satisfied with SACD compared to CD. No contest. Until you address power and isolation, you're not going to get as much out of digital as you can, particularly SACDs. Other tweaks and modifications will yield further improvements.

I scratch my head whenever people lament about the poor remastering that will happen with the Beatles on SACD. It's this type of thinking that will leave us doomed to CD and (worse) MP3 and other compressed crap. The first step is just to get to the point where labels will issue their top-selling titles on the format. Then we can worry about how it's remastered, though as for that I'm very happy with 99% of what I hear on SACD.