On 31/01/2012, Tom Fine wrote:
> The SACD, like the LP, has found a niche in the audiophile community.
> Mobile Fidelity brand is now owned or operated by Music Direct in
> Chicago. Chad Kassim (sp?) has his Acoustic Sounds retailer and his
> Analogue Productions label, which also issues SACDs of old, remastered
> material. I don't think the major classical labels are making new SACD
> product. BIS and a couple of other small players do make new SACD
> product.
You are thinking that the old majors are still majors today.
Almost all the classical CDs that EMI, Universal and Sony release are reissues.
I think you will find that BIS, Hyperion, CPO, Naive, and others all
release more new recordings than the old majors - and Naxos very many
more.
> Assuming there is enough product sold to keep a production
> plant busy, it will be a niche for the foreseeable. However, unlike
> LPs, SACD's can't be pressed with a relatively low startup cost. I
> believe there is Sony proprietary equipment involved in the mastering
> and pressing, so if Sony loses interest that may be it for the niche.
> They've already lost interest in DSD, but some licensees continue to
> use the technology. Sony has a history of not playing in niches and
> cutting bait when there's not enough market for something.
>
> As for multi-channel vs 2-channel SACD, I too like the multi-channel,
> but we fans of a speaker array are a minority niche. If you look at
> the output from Acoustic Sounds and Music Direct, they are going for
> the hi-rez 2-channel market with their reissues, just like they do
> with their LPs. There was a short time where some old stuff came out
> remixed for surround (sometimes just doing some matrix-messing with
> the old quad mixes from the 70's, sometimes remixing from the
> multi-tracks. For instances, Universal put out Allman Brothers and
> Clapton classics in 5.1 surround, with what I think are nice mixes
> (although "Layla" cannot be de-mudded not matter what they do).
> Capitol/EMI put out a good-selling 5.1 remix of Pink Floyd "Dark Side
> of the Moon." Sony put out many more-than-2-channel offerings,
> including classic jazz and rock albums, and for a short time both Sony
> and Universal put new classical offerings out in 5.1 surround. And we
> have the excellent RCA Living Stereo reissues, many (but not all) are
> 3-channel. There was also some interesting (and some of it very
> good-sounding) surround-release activity by orchestras, mainly LSO and
> CSO. All of this was an ear-feast for people like me and Louis, but we
> are a minority, none of this caught on with the mass market. It's the
> same for DVD, by the way. For all the money spent making 5.1
> mega-soundtracks for DVD, almost all DVD viewing is done through a TV
> set and 2 little speakers on the sides of the TV, and more and more
> nowadays is being done on portable devices with earbuds (this kind of
> ties in with Louis and Richard and their interesting comments).
>
A great many people who have large TVs also have a set of surround
speakers. So do keen computer games players.
Many of these surround setups are low quality, but not all.
Any recent movie issued on Blu-Ray will have surround sound.
> Oh, one other thing kind of related, along the lines of what Richard
> was saying about "the kids" wanting video with their audio. There was
> an interview with Bob Clearmountain in TapeOp magazine a while back
> and he was talking about mixing surround movie sound for Scorcese's
> "Shine A Light" (Rolling Stones docu-concert movie). Clearmountain
> said that Scorcese kept telling him to "forget about how it sounds
> without the picture" and make whatever is the central focus of the
> picture louder, also make the sound move with camera pans. This is
> sort of a return to the early days of wide-screen multi-channel from
> the 50's. Clearmountain said it took some adjusting on his part, but
> he noticed that the same thing had been done for the DVD remaster of
> "The Last Waltz" (which I have and I noticed the same thing but only
> after I turned my back on the picture for a while). So it's a whole
> different kind of surround sound mix when a picture is involved. This
> is one of a variety of reasons why a typical home-theater
> surround-sound system is not good for playing music-only high-fidelity
> multi-channel material (another reason being that the 5 speaker
> drivers are rarely of the same size/type) My own experience is that
> you can get away with smaller rear/surround speakers, but they need to
> be full-frequency down to at least 120hz. The front three speakers
> need to be the same types, and need to be full-range and
> high-fidelity. Also, I'm of the view that you need left and right
> subwoofers, that bass is more directional in the real world than some
> theory claims. The good news is, you can get away with relatively
> lower-power amplifiers (again, they should all be matched) because
> each amp is driving less power to move the same air since there are
> more speaker-motors moving the air. Also, especially if you're using
> subwoofers, the front 3 don't need to be massives. I've heard good
> results using high-quality bookshelf speakers on good stands at ear
> level. In the best case, the guy used 5 of the same type bookshelves
> (they were PSB if I recall correctly, not bank-breaking, bass sounded
> like it was good down to about 120hz) and a pair of those Taiwan-made
> subwoofers, forgot the guy's name, which were shockingly good at high
> power levels (no crunch, rattle or popping). My only beef was that you
> had to sit in a very specific place for there not to be some turnover
> issues between the speakers and the subwoofers. But the big benefit
> for this guy was, for a few thousands bucks, he had a system that
> sounded good for everything from action movies to very detailed
> classical SACD's. Even Dolby and DTS music discs like the Beatles
> "Love" extra disc sounded great on that system. Because the speakers
> were small, it wasn't capable of 120dB SPL, but I measured a
> comfortable 90dB SPL peaks and the low-level stuff was not lost or
> unclear to my ears. I should add that he made fiberglass panels to
> span the corners of the room and had a heavy rug on the floor and had
> some creative fabric-drapes on the ceiling, so the room was quite dead
> and neutral.
>
> -- Tom Fine
>
I think there are many thousands with similar setups. Probably hundreds
of thousands.
Regards
--
Don Cox
[log in to unmask]
|