I did a direct compare of the Sony and MFSL SACD releases of “Another Side” last week. The MFSL was a definite improvement.
Because it’s mono, or better remastering ?
I tend to prefer mono with Bob’s albums up to Highway. Stereo from Blonde onwards.
Remastering - I have the stereo MFSL and the stereo Sony. I passed on the mono releases.
n.b. - I see the mono releases of “Another Side” and several others are still available.
Re. the monos, the MFSL’s are, as usual, expensive. But the Sony mono box, if you can source a copy, is really excellent and more cost effective !!
Believe it or not, Amazon had one new copy (NOT third party), so I grabbed it.
And remarkably, the price was not jacked up. It was actually discounted from purported “list.”
Edit - found an even better price. Looks like they’re not that hard to come by.
Good stuff
Thanks for the heads-up.
I know they can be quite expensive so trying to be careful too.
The SACDs bought only cost £15 each in mint as new condition.
Looking forward to playing them.
My birthday’s coming up and I’ve made a request for several of Dutton Vocalion’s excellent remasters of 70s quadraphonic releases on SACD:
Listening to 70s quad tracks on my 5.1 system almost feels like the audio archaeology. It’s amazing how separating out a busy mix into four channels helps it spread out and breathe; you can hear so much more detail and texture.
I presume these releases weren’t hugely popular in the 70s, otherwise quad would have caught on more, but were they ultra-niche and only listened to in quad by a very few people, or slightly more popular than that?
Mark
Great releases to really appreciate sacd/quad discs at their best imho. I would also recommend Claire de Lune, this is available as a Japanese import. Not sure if you’re interested but rhino.com have started issuing regular batches of quad titles on Blue Ray discs and I have really enjoyed these.
Were all of them even released? I have a handful (Broadway musical cast recordings). I think I would have heard of them (even though I wouldn’t have bought them) at the time, but I never did.
By the way, if you’re into classical Pentatone, in its earliest days, released a number of four channel SACDs of Philips recordings from the 70s (and maybe late 60s). I have a number of those as well.
Edit - I a quick hunt suggests that several titles I have may have been released. I must say that I spent a lot of time in record stores and never saw them.
Here in Australia, Warner Music Australia’s website has many quad recordings available on Blu-ray with Hi-Res stereo tracks as well on the same disc, I have bought a few now and they seem to be releasing them quite regularly,
Has anyone tried any of the DSD downloads you can get from the Qobuz store?
One - the Milstein/Bach set. Sounds quite good - better than the standard CD.
Two things worth noting - ProStudioMasters has this title plus a number of other DG titles that Qobuz did not have the last time I checked. I have downloaded a number of them. Some are spectacular bargains like the Kubelik/Dvorak cycle for the price of a single (virtual) disc.
Edit - I see I mentioned ProStudioMasters earlier in the thread.
Further Edit - I see that Qobuz has added a lot of titles since I last looked. But now the question is the source master. For instance, “Blue Train” is listed twice, once with bonus tracks and once without. My AP SACD (from the original 25 disc set issued by AP circa 2010) has the bonus tracks. Has there been another DSD mastering since? Probably. I asked essentially the same question earlier today in a well-known audiophile forum but so far no response.
The DG titles all seem to track Emil Berliner masterings for Tower Japan SACDs.