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Pentatone has done great, sound-wise (I don't know about business-wise), reissuing Philips' several 
dozen quad recordings done in the early and mid-70's. Philips wisely never released these recordings 
on LP because they didn't like any of the Quad matrix systems. Their method of quad recording is to 
use the rear channels for added depth and ambience and any LP playback or pressing errors would 
cause strange and noticeable distortions of the soundfield, and thus be very annoying. In some of 
those Pentatone SACD's is also a good case of a new 2-channel layer being better-sounding than an 
early-era CD. Pentatone was started by former Philips engineers and producers, so they have very 
deep knowledge about the old Philips recordings. In some cases the original producers and engineers 
were consulted on the remastering, which I think is always Best Practice.

Don, even Sony lost interest in SACD's. The medium flopped in the mass-market. There are some niche 
companies who have had modest success, it can be done on a small scale in particularly musical 
niches, just like vinyl. But no large company saw much of a good market in SACD. BMG probably was 
most long-lived and most aggressive because the excellent RCA Living Stereo reissues were 
line-priced with CD's and many titles were in print as long as 5+ years. There is still some of that 
inventory in the pipeline, but it's getting rarer and more expensive. When the box set of CD layers 
came out, I went down the list, realized a few things had come out on SACD that I didn't know about 
and wanted, and snapped them up most as Amazon "new and used" inventory from various 
warehouse-overstock sellers.

-- Tom Fine

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Don Cox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, January 30, 2012 6:17 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Mercury 51-CD box set now officially set for USA and Europe markets


> On 28/01/2012, Tom Fine wrote:
>
>> As far as I know, Universal is out of the SACD business. There is
>> probably some inventory left in the retail channels.
>>
> I don't think Universal were ever very keen on SACD, perhaps seeing it
> as a Sony invention.
>
> For several years Pentatone have been issuing SACDs of classic
> Universal-owned recordings on SACD under license. I think they
> concentrate on recordings that were originally quadrophonic.
>
> Regards
> -- 
> Don Cox
> [log in to unmask]
>