Post by Beagle August 6, 2012 (51 of 83)
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+1
--Or perhaps it is a Probability Cloud, such as defines the location of an electron around a nucleus: the electron MIGHT suddenly appear near Alpha centauri but it MUCH MORE PROBABLY will appear very near the nucleus (i.e., the disc you purchase might be filled with wikileaks from the Pentagon, but it probably has a professional performance of thorough-composed music professionally recorded, packaged and shipped).
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I'm not volunteering to enter review scores into Minitab and run a statistical analysis. :-) Instead, I'm asking the editorial board to more clearly identify their top choices.
In the 5 years since getting a first SACD player and joining this forum, I've collected/purchased about 120 SACD's and jettisoned 15-20. There are reviews from my earlier days on this forum that I'd be pleased to see disappear. There are discs in my SACD collection that are dull compared to some RBCD's I've kept for years. I perceive new SACD's as more consistently recorded now then they were in 2007. Disc players are much more accurate for the money now. My second SACD disc player is much higher quality than the first and makes many RBCD's sound nice. With more experienced ears, more live music experiences, and better equipment, I would re-calibrate my past reviews.
If this were your first day on SA-CD.NET where do you start? Are the Top Recommendations still valid in terms of 2012 quality? How many of those are now for sale only in a secondary market for the price of a cheap tablet computer?
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krisjan said:
I would expect the performance and sonic ratings of SACD's to be much closer to a Poisson's distribution.
Sounds fishy to me.
First, the Poisson has an infinite right tail, whereas sa-cd.net only allows a top mark of 5.
Second, if X ~ Poisson(lambda):
a) if lambda is small, the distribution would be skewed to the right (meaning that most SACDs would score 0 or 1 ... which is exactly the opposite of what is observed), so that doesn't work, and
b) alternatively, if lambda is large, the Poisson tends towards a Normal, which is what you are arguing against, so that doesn't work either.
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Post by abind August 7, 2012 (55 of 83)
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Zeus,
Please don't change anything. I like the current system exactly as it is.
More information is always better, and right now there are three different sources of information: The numbers of recommendations, the reviews with their star ratings, and the discussion. Each of these offers information, and I find that by reading all of those sources, I can usually get a fairly good idea of the quality of a particular disc.
Reviews of all kinds, whether of music, movies, or restaurants, need to be read with some skepticism. One must take into account the reviewer's point of view, and experience, and taste. Nonetheless, I find that the current system works very well for me.
Yes, there might be an over-enthusiastic review with 5 stars. But if, for example, the numerical recommendations are only 14/19, then I know there might be a problem with that particular disc. I understand that some people might object to the 5 star rating, and some might feel that 14 / 19 is too high a rating for a poor recording. Nonetheless, if one has been reading a variety of reviews over time, he can interpret what those numbers mean.
The number of stars is all relative. Complaining about the number of stars that others give reminds me of the guitarist in "Spinal Tap" who made his amplifier louder by changing the numbers on the volume dial.
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Post by hiredfox August 7, 2012 (56 of 83)
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krisjan said:
I would expect the performance and sonic ratings of SACD's to be much closer to a Poisson's distribution
Usually in shoals? But that's three dimensional...
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hiredfox said:
Usually in shoals?
Black-Scholes presumably...
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Geohominid said:
I have found that the standard of performance and engineering is significantly higher with SACD than RBCD, partly because of the extra work and cost of production, and the desire of some artists and engineers to represent their output in the best way presently available.
This may be the principal advantage of SACD. What distinguishes the SACD market is fussiness about the sound. Poor or mediocre recording technique is unlikely to sell many SACD's. Unfortunately, many superior performances continue to be available only in RBCD, as the majors quickly exited SACD. I'm not sure that production costs provided an entirely rational economic justification for the move away from hybrid SACD's. It has, however, provided opportunity for smaller labels to show off their stuff.
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Euell Neverno said:
Unfortunately, many superior performances continue to be available only in RBCD, as the majors quickly exited SACD.
That's a rather contentious statement IMO and one not backed up by the proportion of awards that go to SACD supporting companies cf the number of releases; SACD companies punch far above their weight even when re-releases that dominate "majors" schedules are ignored...
I mean apart from poaching the odd starlet (like J Fischer), what do the majors do? Put out a couple of discs from the latest "hot" talent (and they do have to be highly photogenic) before ditching them unceremoniously a few years later + a couple of token efforts from the elder generation. That's it. Compare them to the likes of BIS, Linn, Channel, Pentatone & Chandos (who don't even release all their excellent discs as SACDs) and there is no comparison. Really & truly, the discs that I miss from the majors each year are approaching single digits alarmingly quickly - I would love for Hyperion to return to the hi-res fold though!
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Post by wehecht August 8, 2012 (60 of 83)
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Polly Nomial said:
Really & truly, the discs that I miss from the majors each year are approaching single digits alarmingly quickly - I would love for Hyperion to return to the hi-res fold though!
There's an ever smaller number of releases by the "majors" that I wish were on sacd (the Higdon violin concerto with Hilary Hahn on DG for instance) so that by and large they've become irrelevant. I too regret the loss of Hyperion and Ondine, and I wish that cpo were consistently issuing sacds because they do so much interesting repertoire. For the same reason I really wish there had been a more enthusiastic response here for Toccata's first sacd, the Reiner cello concerto. That's a label I'd love to see doing sacds regularly. As for the "majors", who cares.
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