"John Phillips" wrote in message
...
In article , Keith G wrote:
Given that my own preferences are for vinyl and that I think all
'digital'
music is crap compared with it, I am, nevertheless, interested to know
why
exactly is it that SACDs (stereo) sound so much better than the
equivalent
CDs?

Well, even having never heard a SACD, I would dare to say that one element
is that digital audio production in itself is still getting better (IMHO,
I guess I should add - I'm sure there are those who will disagree but
I will give just some examples for why I suggest this).

First, many of the DDD CDs I have from the 80s (but not all) are very
flat in sound quality, regardless of performance quality.

However, I have CDs of analogue recordings from the 1960s onwards
with modern (1990s onward) digital mastering. Most sound marvellous.
Full of life and full of the ambience of the recording venue. For example
Boehm's 1967 Wagner Ring which just drips with the Bayreuth Festspielhaus
accoustic (even through the audible tape hiss).


Tape hiss? (He says while taping a couple of New Orleans Jazz LPs as he
types.....) What's that then? Is it like the 'needle noise, pops and tics'
that make LPs 'unlistenable?

;-)

Yer hafta larf......



Another specific example: I have a 1985 CD of a rather splendid 1975
performance conducted by Carlos Kleiber of Beethoven's Symphony No. 5. It
sounds flat. I also have the 1995 re-mastered CD. Even after correcting
for the higher level of the newer CD, it has bags more ambience. In many
ways it's much more like the 1970s LP I have of the same performance.

Actually I will listen to and enjoy that recording on any reasonable
medium - the performance is superb and the medium does not detract from
that. I also have CDs of superb performances back to the late 1920s
(e.g. Bix Beiderbecke and Pablo Casals) which a digital purist would
probably consider unlistenable.


Digital 'purist'? That's a good way of putting it it!



In my own experience, generalizations about CDs being better than vinyl
are as just as false as generalizations that vinyl is better than CD.
I dare to suggest the same today about the generalization of SACD
versus CD. I am fairly sure digital production has a long way to go yet.

Anyone who says they don't is lying (if only to themselves) - sticks out
like a chapel hatpeg....

Myself, I would have kept up the former dignity. Tsk!



I know, I've spent too long on this group seeing vinyl get bashed to death
by a few, er, 'digital purists'.... ;-)