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OJC Hybrid SACDs August 26th


Guest GregM

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Guest GregM

Dave Brubeck Quartet - Jazz at Oberlin - SACD (Fantasy) Aug 26

Vince Guaraldi - A Charlie Brown Christmas - SACD (Fantasy) Aug 26

Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane - Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane - SACD (Fantasy/Jazzland) Aug 26

Gil Evans - And Ten - SACD (Fantasy/Prestige) Aug 26

John Coltrane - Lush Life - SACD (Fantasy/Prestige) Aug 26

Bill Evans - Portrait in Jazz - SACD (Fantasy/Riverside) Aug 26

Wes Montgomery - The Incredible Jazz Guitar - SACD (Fantasy/Riverside) Aug 26

Zoot Sims - And the Gershwin Brothers - SACD (Fantasy/Pablo) Aug 26

I'll grab them all except maybe the Guaraldi and the Sims. I sure hope OJC gets around to its Booker Ervin stuff on SACD sooner than later. Would be nice if Steve Hoffman remastered these, but can't have everything. At least they'll be more affordable.

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I have some of those albums on remastered CDs and will wait for reviews on the sound. These are Fantasy releases and not done by Analogue Productions, so it's not sure if the quality will be as good as the first Prestige/Riverside/Contemporary SACDs

I will not get "Portrait in Jazz" because I recently got the DCC CD and noticed a vast improvement over the K2-CD. This Steve Hoffman remastering will be extremely hard to beat.

Edited by Claude
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Guest GregM

I have the DCC version of Lush Life. Should be interesting to compare it with the SACD. Tonally, I really enjoy the DCCs, but there is no comparison to SACDs in terms of overall realism.

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Greg, I mentioned "Portrait in Jazz" because this is a special case. The tapes of this recording seem to be in bad shape. The Fantasy CD releases I have heard (box set, german ZYX 20Bit, US K2 20bit) sound much worse than other Evans Riverside recordings (Village Vanguard, Explorations), but the DCC is very good. There is no comparision.

So Steve Hoffman did a remarkable restoration job on that one, which the Fantasy SACD engineers will be measured on.

Edited by Claude
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Eventually, probably the whole batch, if the reviews on sound are good. These are pretty much all staples. I agree with Claude that the Analogue Productions SACDs have been wonderful - warm, full, real - so I'm curious about Fantasy's ability to reach those heights, especially because I find most of their 20 bit standard CD series is not a vast improvement on older versions.

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Thelonious Monk/John Coltrane - Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane

John Coltrane - Lush Life

Bill Evans - Portrait in Jazz

Wes Montgomery - The Incredible Jazz Guitar

These will be on my list. Of course I have to buy the SACD player first.

I'm looking at the Pioneer DV45-A universal player or the more cautious approach: Sony DVP-NC685V (to be released)

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Matt: You probably already saw my recent post in another thread about high resolution audio, but if not: I'm thrilled with the Pioneer DV45-A so far. It is really great to be able to enjoy DVD-A CDs as well, whether or not they can keep pace with SACD is really kind of irrelevant as far as I'm concerned, because I think there will continue to be a niche market at least for some time for DVD-A and some of the titles in that format may not be issued in SACD, or at least multichannel SACD.

Extremely reasonable price, too.

The way we looked at it, why limit yourself to one high res format? If you do some direct listening comparisons, please post about whether you appreciate any sonic differences for SACDs between these players!

Edited by DrJ
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The important thing is if universal players really gets the most out of every disc. They need dedicated circuits for every format, which has it's price. I haven't seen good reviews of players that support DVD-A and SACD. I don't know the Pioneer, but it would be of no use to have a universal player which doesn't sound better with hi-rez discs than a CD player of the same price.

While it's debatable if it is worth investing into a good SACD player now, as this format's market success is not guaranted, the question is much more pertinent with DVD-A. You risk buying discs with no so great music just because there are so few releses in that format.

The list of available DVD-A titles does not convince me to get a suitable player. Jazz fans are luckier with SACD releases, but this could only be a coincidence because of a few labels (Sony of course, Analogue Productions and now Fantasy) active on this format.

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Guest GregM

I question anyone's sanity if they're making buying decisions based on the perceived necessity of adopting the DVD-A format. Not that there's titles that would make DVD-A worth adopting (there isn't), but simply that the format has snubbed us so many times in its development, and the key players pushing it don't care much about delivering the best possible content to the consumer in the most convenient and BS-free package. What cracks me up is to see a folks watching DVD-A who don't adopt SACD because they think it's not much of an improvement over CD. Well, DVD-A is even more closely related to CD. It's a good home recording format (there are soundcards that bundle with DVD-A), and that's about it. With OJC, Blue Note, Columbia, Verve, Impulse, Venus, Eighty-eights (most of which Claude overlooks) and some European and boutique audio labels representing jazz on SACD, and almost nada on DVD-A, I fail to see why people dumb down the SACD performance to accomodate what could be a dead format shortly. The Pioneer seems to do this.

I also question why anyone thinks upgrading to SACD would be a questionmark. As I've said from very early on, SACD players cost no more than comparable CD players. So even if SACDs stop production tomorrow (which would be quite ludicrous since the industry continues to ramp up SACD production), you can still play your entire CD collection. It's a no-brainer.

My ears tell me different, but some here have convinced themselves that music digitized and converted back with 20+ year old technology has all the same characteristics as music converted with 5-year-old technology. You're just delaying the inevitable revalations and enjoyment that SACD has in store for you.

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