Thread: CD, SACD, DVD-A Comparisions

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Post by Edvin March 24, 2007 (81 of 89)
tailspn said:

Edwin, what's with you and that book "Classical Music in America"? It's the second time you've used it to denigrate an American contributor here. Getting a little old, isn't it?

Tom

It´s a good book, read it. But I really can´t remember quoting from it before. When did I do that?

Post by Edvin March 24, 2007 (82 of 89)
I agree completely with Dave Raffells and I actually loathe the "elitist" (read narrow-minded) views of some contributors. Among my friends are composers, musicians and conductors. Not one of them has a listening setup even close to mine. Most of their stereos are quite crappy. What does this say?

I asked a conductor friend why he didn´t invest in equipment of higher quality, or even a surround system. He said that he is so familiar with how an orchestra sounds that he didn´t need it.

I have said it before and I repeat myself: I would rather listen to a great performance in not so good recording quality than a goodish one with Pentatone quality. And there are a lot of very good sounding RBCD´s out there!

Post by Daland March 24, 2007 (83 of 89)
Edvin said:

I agree completely with Dave Raffells and I actually loathe the "elitist" (read narrow-minded) views of some contributors. Among my friends are composers, musicians and conductors. Not one of them has a listening setup even close to mine. Most of their stereos are quite crappy. What does this say?

I asked a conductor friend why he didn´t invest in equipment of higher quality, or even a surround system. He said that he is so familiar with how an orchestra sounds that he didn´t need it.

I have said it before and I repeat myself: I would rather listen to a great performance in not so good recording quality than a goodish one with Pentatone quality. And there are a lot of very good sounding RBCD´s out there!

I don't know what is elitist or narrow-minded about preferring music in decent sound. You can't separate the music from the sound.

The idea of a great performance in poor sound did not exist before music was recorded. So it is only natural for music-lovers to expect the gap between the quality of the performance and the quality of the sound to be narrowed as much as possible.

Apparently, the SACD can achieve this while the CD cannot.

I actually loathe people who tell us: "Among my friends are composers, musicians and conductors."

Post by Edvin March 24, 2007 (84 of 89)
Why can´t you separate the music from the sound? Does it mean that we can only enjoy music played by the super best performers in the world? Stupid!

You say that "the idea of a great performance in poor sound did not exist before music was recorded." No, how could it?!!! But the idea of a great performance in bad sound is still alive and will be alive as long as people appreciate really great music making. The sales of historical re-releases on RBCD are far greater than the sales of SACDS.

Post by Julien March 24, 2007 (85 of 89)
raffells said:

No......totally wrong.....

I totally agree with you, and was just disagreeing with the person who said that Windsurfer's attitude was more about loving sound than music. To me that means nothing.

As I wrote in what you call "elitist", I don't hope that everyone thinks or hears the way I do, and of course my opinions change all the time. Otherwise I wouldn't try to rewrite my reviews!

I just want everyone's choices to be respected, saying that for some people 400 might be enough. And of course you can have as much appetite as you want.

Post by Julien March 24, 2007 (86 of 89)
Edvin said:

I agree completely with Dave Raffells and I actually loathe the "elitist" (read narrow-minded) views of some contributors. Among my friends are composers, musicians and conductors. Not one of them has a listening setup even close to mine. Most of their stereos are quite crappy. What does this say?

I asked a conductor friend why he didn´t invest in equipment of higher quality, or even a surround system. He said that he is so familiar with how an orchestra sounds that he didn´t need it.

I have said it before and I repeat myself: I would rather listen to a great performance in not so good recording quality than a goodish one with Pentatone quality. And there are a lot of very good sounding RBCD´s out there!

Dear Edvin,

I basically always had opinions similar as yours, and many times on this forum I raised the subject of prefering a great performance on a bad system.

For me many of my deepest emotions while listening to music, apart from playing, have been as a child listening on 100 $ stereo or less.

But as I said, musical pleasure is such a complex thing, everyone hears differently. And you and me have changed, since we all have good equipment now and listen to SACDs.

So, your choice is to listen to all the good performances, with also the best sound possible. Windsurfer's choice is to combine the closest sound to live he can find with good performances.

I hope we are not trying here to define who loves and understands music more.

Post by TerraEpon March 25, 2007 (87 of 89)
Julien said:

I just want everyone's choices to be respected, saying that for some people 400 might be enough. And of course you can have as much appetite as you want.

I agree, 400 can easily be enough for some people, it just seems odd to escew things on that basis, when CDs give perfectly ok sound in most cases -- certainly there are plenty that do, even if "most" don't. I've heard things like "CDs make me tired" (huh?!) or "CDs sound artificial" (I can believe that), but I guess it comes down to be kinda annoyed that the music I've spent 1000s on over the years, dedicating a large percentage of my waking hours enjoying "should" be rederered worthless by a somewhat pidly selection of (potentially) better quality discs.

Now, I said before that I have many many CDs that will probably never be issued again in any form musically. I wasn't just being overdramatic -- a healthy portion of my collection is of soundtracks, not just from films but from games and anime and so forth (though I'm sure a lot of audiophiles would spit on the fact that some people listen to 8-bit waveforms in three channels, I happen to like a lot of it. I'll leave that part of it at that).

While I can see perhaps, to give an example of something many here might know an enjoy, Princess Mononoke one day getting a better quality release (it's already an HDCD, at least the US one is, though I own the Japanese one) -- or perhaps a much more well known example, the original Star Wars Trilogy, controlled by Sony and recorded in analog -- and in both cases even large rerecording could happen. But in most cases I just don't see any later release, ever. There's still hoards of LP soundtracks that never got CD releases.

But what of classical music, that gets recordings of the same pieces over and over. Well sure, but even there, right now, one can't listen to a lot of great pieces in SACD. But getting away from the "core", there's plenty of examples of much less known stuff.
Take stuff on the BIS label. I have MANY discs of Sibelius, a lot of which not only is the only recording, but much of it was never published. Even if we discount larger works like Scaramouche or Everyman (two of my favorites), there's a good four discs of "youth production" music that I can't imagine will get recorded again any time soon. Or Lecuona's piano music.

Or yet, people are talking about ballet music in another thread. Tchaikovky and Delibes are all good (Swan Lake is one of my absolute favorite pieces of music), but what about J.P.E. Hartmann's The Valkyrie? Lovenskiold's La Sylphide? And so on.

I could keep going. I have a ton of favorite peices which as far as I know have gotten no more than two recordings. Villa-Lobos's Forest of the Amazon. Peterson-Burger's Romance for Violin and Orchestra (and his piano cycle, Flowers from Fresno). Novak's Pan (orchestal version). Schoenfield's Four Parables and his Vaudville. Offenbach's Concerto-Rondo. And it goes on.

So tell me, why should someone still to listening to SACDs?

-Joshua

Post by RedFox March 25, 2007 (88 of 89)
i am citing your earlier message:

You know, I've just been a lurker here for almost a year, never posting mainly because I don't have an SACD player yet. But even though I don't know how much better SACDs actually sound, I have to say that is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard.

this sentence is from your last message:

So tell me, why should someone still to listening to SACDs?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

let me reply in one sentence. because sacd is much better than the traditional
CD (if the recording is good). in other words it is much closer to the living
music than the older formats. this does not mean that you have to get rid of
your cd collection. keep them, enjoy them with a good player such a one which
is good independently of the format it plays. i have a marantz sa15-s1, though
its big brother marantz sa11-s1 is said to be much better. you can more justly
decide whether it is worth gathering sacd-s (or not) if you give it a try. the
proof of the pudding is in the eating you know.

i also have a collection which contains 346 traditional cd-s and 58 sacds. i
enjoy both, however if possible i buy sacds only. remember the traditional
cd appeared in 1985 (unless i am mistaken), and the new format, i.e. sacd in 2001. i am optimistic and sure that in 10 years the pieces of music available
on sacd will be many more than it is today.

Post by raffells March 25, 2007 (89 of 89)
Daland said:

I don't know what is elitist or narrow-minded about preferring music in decent sound. You can't separate the music from the sound.

The idea of a great performance in poor sound did not exist before music was recorded. So it is only natural for music-lovers to expect the gap between the quality of the performance and the quality of the sound to be narrowed as much as possible.

Apparently, the SACD can achieve this while the CD cannot.

I actually loathe people who tell us: "Among my friends are composers, musicians and conductors..
Tell me what has that got to do with this thread ?..
Would you get upset if somebody then posted ,,I loathe people who loathe other people etc etc...
To me anyone who just regards music as food for their deepest feelings is missing an awfull lot.Fun relaxation and enjoyment amongst the list.

Ive cringed at some performers who try to turn a musical event into a theatrical self perpetuating performance..Lennie was such a performer...

The Beatles at the Cavern sounded awfull but anyone will tell you that it was an overwhelming experience.Trying to recreate it in hiQ surround is rediculous.Even if you added Julie Fischer on violin Bass Lead guitar and drums..Similairly I have seen student orchestras and bands that totally gave everything in a performance and were consistently more entertaining (YES THATS THE WORD) than some of the boring great star performers...I once tried to count how many time Simply Red repeated the same line (Oasis are the same)It was very similair to the effect of counting sheep but some others in the audience were close to an orgasm..I wonder what they would have done if he had tried singing to Bolero...nevermind...
Often wondered at some reviews of live music sacds that the person has EVER attended a live concert...

I also still consider people who can ONLY listen to THE BEST performance (In their opinion) as Elitists..Thats just MY opinion and probably most of the population of the planet who can listen to Mp3 and ipods.

Buying Cds for me is rarity..Only works not available that I want to hear and then usually moved on via Ebay or my local dealer.The major factor is storage space...Dvdas also have other problems due to the non standardization of this format.

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