Early SACD test pressings and format history

A great intellegent music-thread for a change - thanks !

 

Try to find a copy with a bonus disc, this bonus disc is a sampler with All I Really Want To Do and Cold Iron Bounds in 5.1. I think both are not available on other commercial releases.

http://www.amazon.com/Masked-Limite...=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1258536589&sr=1-2

 

Yes, very cool thread. I wonder if any Sade titles were test pressed? I recall seeing info about a Lover's Rock SACD release and some online stores had it listed but I don't think any ever shipped.

 

Can we make this thread an ongoing sticky? Valuable information here!

 

Not in my opinion, the merger came later, after Lack had taken over Sony Music.

We had done some projects with BMG, and they had pro- and anti-SACD executives like all the major labels. However, there were strong rumors of possible Elvis SACDs at one point, and they have used DSD in re-mastering several Elvis titles.

I don't really know. The 7-track M-ch disc was made for bundling with Sony SACD players, so there were probably several hundred thousand made (as was the case for all such promos used for inclusion in player boxes). The 15-track stereo version, on the other hand, was probably only used for journalists, radio stations, retail, etc. Obviously, a much smaller number is needed in this case.

 

I've got two of those: One is a DMP sampler that later got released, the other a Telarc sampler. Although I know various commercially released Telarc samplers, not this one:



Then there are various SACD test pressings in Philips IP&S artwork. I've got three from the Fonè label and the Jerry Goldsmith disc the way it was bundled with Philips SACD1000 player.




Furthermore I've got this test disc for Channel Classics, which I think matches a commercial title. The two I'm fondest of however are these two:



This is a test pressing of the disc that was also bundled with the SACD1000 (see http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/4487 ) but contains two additional tracks, Ivan Fischer's speeches in between the performances and more applause. I also think the mixing/mastering is a little different, less polished.

1. A. Dvořák: Slavonic Dance op. 72 no. 2
2. B. Bartók: Romanian Folk Dances, Sz 68
3. Z. Kodály: Magnificat
4. Z. Kodály: Zöld Erdöben
5. Z. Kodály: Táncnóta
6. F. Liszt: Hungarian Rhapsody, no. 4 in D minor
7. P. Sarasate: Zigeunerweisen, for violin and orchestra, Op. 20 (Jószef Lendvai, solo violin)
8. O. Ökrös: Cimbalom Improvisation on various melodies by Bach and Liszt
9. Trad.: Hungarian Folk Melody (Laszlo Kiss Gy., tarogátó)
10. Bródy: Ha én rózsa volnék (Laszlo Kiss Gy., tarogátó)
11. M. Ravel: Boléro
12. J. Strauss: Im Krapfenwald’l, Op. 336
13. J. Strauss: Long Live the Hungarians, polka, Op. 323
14. J. Strauss: Peasant Polka, Op. 276

And this is my favourite: an SACD (Maxi?) Single by DJ Jean, with 5.1 remixes of The Launch and Love Come Home.

Apparently. I've got this disc that Philips IP&S produced, ironically titled "So Glad You See It" (probably a play on Kane's "So Glad You Made It" but this disc also contains Jerry Goldsmith's music, not Kane). You have to be glad indeed because it's barely visible on the actual disc and not at all on the scan. The watermark show the fingerprint design covering the lower 3/4 of the disc, and the title and logos above it. Weird detail is the "Compact Disc Super Audio - Hybrid" logo in the style of the CDDA logo family -- especially because IP&S is supposed to guard compliance with the logo regulations.

See the PS3 SACD FAQ.

Correct, but there is no technical relationship between the two features; they both added cost that could no longer be justified. See here.

 

I always hoped for SADe in SAcD! There is 5.1 surround on the video compilation DVD, but pretty cr@ppy DD lossy....almost not worth bothering to listen to. Considering a lot of the other titles that did get released, the Sade catalog seems like a no-brainer.

 

Are you incidentally referring to the multichannel mixes of Michael Jackson's Thriller that Mick Guzauski made?

(See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)#Reissues_and_catalog_sales )

PS: Thanks for the excellent explanation. I had picked up bits and pieces in the past but never read such a comprehensive history. I can tell that after Sony Music stopped supporting SACD and it became apparent the other majors didn't follow up their pledges for supporting the format either Gerard Kleisterlee pulled all SACD funding, both for Philips CE and IP&S, to stem the losses.

 

A question for Black Elk...

Is there any reason why Sony Music didn't require a multichannel mix to be included on all SACDs? From the standpoint of marketability, multichannel is a very enticing feature (especially prior to the Hybrid SACD).

The average consumer may not be able to discern a difference between a stereo redbook CD mix and a stereo SACD mix. However, anyone can hear (and likely appreciate) multichannel versus stereo.

 

If you ask me I'd say it's because they first and foremost wanted to appeal to traditional audiophiles, by whom multichannel is still regarded with suspicion because of earlier non-audiophile approaches (e.g. Dolby Surround).

 

PS: It's even fair to say that if Sony had developed SACD alone it'd be a stereo-only medium. Philips insisted on adding multichannel because they were not interested in another high-end niche format for audiophiles only but wanted to establish the next-generation mass market sound carrier.

You may know that Sony invented DSD for archival purposes and putting DSD on a 4.7 GB DVD disc was somewhat of an opportunistic idea for creating a new high-end consumer sound carrier. Philips had to come up with DST (Direct Stream Transfer i.e. losslessly compressed DSD) to make a 6-channel mix fit next to the stereo DSD mix on the same layer.

It's also fair to say SACD was introduced not just to fulfill a perceived consumer need or to give artists better possibilities to express their art but also to give the music industry a way to uplift lowering CD prices (I think CD sales volumes weren't flagging at that point in time yet), to provide them with a secure copy-protected carrier and -- perhaps above all -- to give a new lease of life to Philips' and Sony's CD licensing scheme because royalties were projected to go down after the expiration of key patents.

 

SACD was also implimented as a way to have a format to compete with the forthcoming DVD-Audio. Sony was a member of the DVD group the developed DVD-Audio, but saw SACD as a way for them to make more cash with licensing their proprietary format. In the long run, this led to the downfall of both formats.

 

IMHO it wasn't the reason behind the lack of success of high resolution audio on mass market, and actually the idea of introducing Hybrid SACD format was our best chance to succeed on that market. Mass consumers expect convenience and ease of use, the format has to offer seamless experience across multiple playback devices ranging from pure audio hi-resolution setups, old CD players, car audio, to mini Hi-fi systems and boomboxes...

 

This is too simplistic a view. SACD wasn't created to compete with DVD-Audio any more than BD was made to compete with HD-DVD, DVD+RW with DVD-RAM or MMCD with SD. You should know that the DVD Forum is not an organisation where proposals are judged purely on their technical merits but a very political organisation where some of the most important working groups are/were dominated by two companies that were sick and tired of seeing so much royalty money going to Sony and Philips (for CD licensing) over the years: Toshiba and Matsuhita (Panasonic). These were very unwilling to incorporate some ideas by Sony and Philips (and used their political clout to persuade other members to vote against) such as the hybrid disc idea, which Sony and Philips proposed as a way to meet a very specific requirement for the CD Audio successor from the music industry: forward plus backward compatibility. When the Forum didn't pick up these ideas Sony and Philips were left with no other way than to go outside and fight it out on the market (or be totally ignored). This worked out in the end with Blu-ray Disc but unfortunately not so well with SACD. Imagine what would have happened if Warner had put their weight behind SACD the way they did with BD.

 

Imagine what would have happened if Sony Music had put their weight behind SACD In other words imagine what would have happened if they had transferred ALL master tapes from their vaults to DSD on GRIMM AD1 DSD converter and released them on Hybrid SACD format.

 

In case of high-rez music format, it's strange that they could'nt get their act together so they all (big 4 in music) could earn some kind of money from it. Today, not one of them earn money from high-rez digital music. Do they think it's better that way?

 

From their point of view, they see it as a "heavy loss project"; more weight behind SACD, more money to lose.

 

Pink Floyd's DSOTM sold 1,3 million copies, I doubt it was a heavy loss project...

 

Remember...it's what they think about things, that what counts!
What the future may have been if they did that and that...no one realy knows.

 

That's what we call in management jargon a "cowboy mentality" - I'm a new CEO with "better ideas" and I will change everything It certainly doesn't help establishing and realizing long term strategies.

 

Just to clarify that a bit, Lack's hiring was quite controversial, as he had previously been a (less than successful) head of NBC and as such was a music industry outsider.

This is a time (the beginning of the widespread broadband era) in which record companies were seeing the decline in the limitless profits of CD selling, plus struggling with the whole idea of "synergy" with other forms of entertainment media.

The music industry was always filled with tremendous executive egos, and as such many of them (who in Sony had been from the Mottola/ Donnie Ienner "boys club"; Mottola of course was a career music guy who kept a very high profile having been married to Mariah Carey) didn't want to answer to Lack who was perceived as a bit of a stiff and bean counter

here's a good article about his struggle:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/20/business/media/20sony.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&8dpc&adxnnl=0&adxnnlx=1140431401-YIWfi6QEER1yZ8Cf9mfjrg

 

It would've sold that much if it were a CD-only release. How many of the 1.3 million were purchased for the SACD layer? You can bet not many.

Sony realizes the extra sales they receive by releasing a hybrid disc doesn't justifuly the extra cost. Otherwise every release would be on a hybrid disc.

 

This is how I imagined it:

Press Release: Warner to support SACD exclusively

 

The Goldsmith disc was initially made with green packaging for use at shows (see images below -- apologies for the weird blue lines, they are caused by the cellophane on my sealed copies).

As for Fone, Mr. Ricci behind the label is quite the character, and has a beautiful villa near Pisa where the transfers from his analog masters were done.

It does, this one: http://www.sa-cd.net/showtitle/40

Wow! I don't remember seeing that particular version. There was a blue on yellow version with the extra tracks made initially for use at shows. Then it was decided to edit out the dialogue when it came to make copies for bundling. Both green and picture copies were made (see below).

With regard to changes in mixing/mastering, I don't recall anything being done other than the editing (by Hein Dekker) is different. This is a true live recording of a one-off event. The orchestra gave a special concert at the Italian Institute in Budapest for its sponsors. It was a light-hearted event, as the version with dialogue shows. There were no rehearsal sessions recorded that could be used for patching edits, and some of the material recorded did not make it on to either disc version. Everything was recorded live to 8-track DSD: 2-tracks for the stereo mix, 5-tracks for the multi-channel (5.0) mix. Both mixes were created live by the balance engineers.

That's a disc I haven't thought about in a long while. I probably have a copy in a box somewhere.

I guess Philips IP&S had another crack at it. I've never seen that disc, and it has a different watermark to my copy. A very nice artifact to have.

My understanding is that the chip that was dropped was used to do DST decoding. There was also the issue of the SACD decoder that is needed in the drive mechanism to allow decryption of the PSP-encoded signal on the disc.

 

It would have been much better if either company had agreed to go with either DVD-A or SACD. However, from what I've read (and I may be wrong), Sony was originally on board with DVD-A (in the early stages), but decided to bail because they could make the players and the discs themselves for their own format, and at the same time get paid royalties from other manufacturers who made SACD players and labels who released SACD discs. The prospects for $$$$ outweighed the greater good of the marketplace.

It's not a bad business decision, just a decision that killed a potential rebound for surround music. It happend with quad (CD-4, SQ, QS), and then again with SACD and DVD-A. Even with early stereo digital media (DCC-MD).

The whole HD-DVD/Blu-Ray deal has shown that the marketplace needs ONE FORMAT for a particular niche. SACD and DVD-A both had advantages and disadvantages, yet together they basically confused that crap out of the marketplace and the retailers. The DualDisc was the final knife in the back.

If Sony would have hit it hard after the Rolling Stone issue instead of switching to DualDisc, maybe they could have convinced WB/Rhino to go SACD. In fact, if you look at the Rhino site, there is still a link to DVD-A/SACD. Maybe with Sony, UMG, BMI, they could have turned WB just like they did with Blu-Ray.

Of course, we'll never know......