Kutyatest said:

I know I’m not alone (particularly on this forum), but every so often when I listen to a CD, I end up thinking to myself , “I wish this was available in a hi-res format”, or, “Why can’t I find a hi-res version of this music/album?”.
...
Another CD that my wife bought for me was The Buena Vista Social Club. Absolutely wonderful music, and not the sort of thing that I’d have bought myself - or would have even thought I’d have liked.
...
Music by the aforementioned artists spring to mind, but also Andreas Vollenweider, Kitaro and Tomita. I could go on and on.

The Seventh Taylor said:

You may be interested to know that Buena Vista Social Club's album has also been released in high-resolution on DVD-Audio.

Kutyatest said:

Jó napot kívánok Róbert!

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m not only new to this forum, but to SACDs (and hi-res music) also. I’m also unfamiliar with your record label, and Channel and Penta. I have to be careful not to take this posting way off-topic, but I suppose my lack of knowledge is a lot of what makes this “journey” for me so interesting. Since having my Arcam DV137 and AVR350, I am making a big effort to widen my musical repertoire and discover new music. There are lots of albums and music out there that I know I like, but there must be so much more that I don’t have a clue about. In short, I don’t know what I don’t know.

Just like mwagner1962, I salute you also for releasing hybrid SACDs only! I will take the time to familiarise myself with your catalogue. Funnily enough though, earlier this week, my wife bought for me the SACD of "Soliloquy at Cold Mountain Temple" by the Chinese National Symphony Orchestra. I only noticed yesterday that it’s on the Channel label. It’s beautifully played and recorded.

I have absolutely no understanding of the way in which the music industry works, and I suppose it’s very easy though for us enthusiasts to get carried away, and bang on about why record labels don’t do this or that. I suppose such postings don’t make the most interesting reading, but it’s so easy to feel this way. I’m rather stating the obvious, but if enough albums are not being sold, and enough money is not being made, labels will stop producing SACDs.

bissie said:

Hello, Kutyatest,

just to familiarize you: BIS is at this time the world's 7th biggest Classical label, if you count available titles.
We do not only release SACD:s, but, if we have recorded them in surround, we only release SACD Hybrids - we don't bother with CD:s. Since we price the SACD:s and CD:s alike and absorb the extra manufacturing costs, there should be no reason whatsoever for a customer to reject a BIS SACD.
At this time I would hazard a guess that about 50% of BIS's output of new material is in SACD form, which means about 3 a month or so.

www.bis.se will tell you more.

You're right in that it is indeed easy to tell others what to do and how to do it. The test in the end is: can we sell enough many copies of our products on an average to be able to pay the bills or not. We at BIS believe in Surround for Classical music and therefore we support the only practical system there is in presenting it today. We're not married to SACD. If Bluray should prove better, we might go for that instead.
For us the main thing is that we want to present the music and musicians in the best possible light at a price that everyone can afford. It really is as easy as that.

Yes, I know some Hungarian. The reason for that is a very long and humoristically tragic story.

Best - Robert

Arthur said:

I worked in record retailing until about two years ago. It was extremely frustrating for me (and my customers) that in a small market like mine where we might only sell 3 or 4 of a serious classical release, the vendors (Harmonia Mundi USA, in particular, but Universal and others, as well) would release CDs only, then after three months when our only consumers for these products had bought them, they would release a hybrid SACD. The customers who had bought the CDs were exactly the ones looking for the SACDs!

When I took this issue to my sales rep, he said the company "feared losing the CD market"!!! Personally, I bought the CDs, then sold them to used vendors after the SACDs came out. After a while, I revolted: if it wasn't released on SACD, I simply wouldn't buy it. After a year, if I still really wanted it, I might relent and buy the redbook. Another example of how industry shortsightedness lost them another customer!

Kutyatest said:

Arthur,

Yes, I can imagine that was frustrating, and I agree with your comments regarding what appears to be short sightedness in parts of the industry. This relates a bit to my earlier thread, where I mentioned that the public and many retailers appear completely unaware of SACD or DVD-A. The Seventh Taylor in an earlier post thought that the knowledge level of shop floor sales staff in Europe was probably higher than in the USA. I am unable to comment on this, but it really is a sad reflection on the lack of information being passed to staff. This reminds me of a situation I was in about 3 years ago, when I visited central London. I discovered, purely by chance, just around the corner from Charing Cross railway station, a music shop specialising in classical music. It gave a very good impression from the outside, and even on entering, I got the impression of a well stocked, orderly and well-run shop. One well known record label – Naxos – was particularly conspicuous, with loads of posters and banners evident around the shop. I approached one of the shop staff, and asked if they had any DVD Audios. Immediately a slightly puzzled look came over the face of the assistant, several seconds passed, and then I was shown to a display that housed DVD-Vs of Deutsche Grammaphon New Years Day Concerts! I don’t particularly like going in most high street music retailers anyway, having given up buying in shops about 6 years ago, but I did make the same enquiry at a Virgin, HMV and Tower Records on the same day. The only shop that knew what I was talking about, was the classical department of Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus, that had about half a dozen over-priced DVD-As. One such example was the Telarc Tchaikovsky’s 1812 for GBP 35.00. An online article I recently came across, mentioning the amount of effort required to educate the public about SACD/DVD-A, meant that it was proving difficult to justify continuing the production of them – or words to that effect!

Kutyatest said:

The only shop that knew what I was talking about, was the classical department of Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus (that had about half a dozen over-priced DVD-As).

The Seventh Taylor said:

... which sadly has disappeared since. Even more disappointing to me, most of my beloved record shops down Berwick Street have closed their doors last year.

> My association with Hungary [...] and my knowledge of the language is thanks to my wife.

So is mine.