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Questions about SACD vs.analog for classical music

I've just ordered a VPI Scoutmaster. A rather impulsive decision made at just the point when I was about to have my Sony 9000es modded. Not quite just at the point, but right after I removed my Hw-19jr/pt-6/Glider/blackcube rig from storage in order to get the parts ready for shipping to they new owners. I had what i thought would be my last night listening to the TT, after a several year hiatus, and you know what? There was that organic something, that harmonic coherence in certain recordings that I noticed only in the very best SACDs. In some of my LPs, that 'present' or 'real' feeling exceeded all but one or two of my SACDs (only the Rite of Spring on Telarc, a few tracks from the telarc classical sampler 2, and one other were superior to anything I heard on the VPI). OK, the SACDs were obviously cleaner sounding and more extended (I was using Stax sr-lambda phones) except when compared to a couple of the highest quality analogue productions lps I own, but it got me thinking: hey, if my humble jr. sounds this good now, I can only wonder how good one of the purportedly much improved high-end rigs would sound. The Sony mods would have cost upwards of $1300, but selling my jr. and lumping all that dough together and allocating it to a renewed involvement in analog looked, well, promising.
So I ordered a new Scoutmaster (at substantial discount) with the JMW-9 arm and am now by the way researching my options for cartridges and preamps. I've sold my blackcube, but have a Jolida JD-9 on load from a dealer, which sounds very nice with the jr. (the sold TT about to be shipped) - very vivid and harmonically satisfying, well articulated, etc - though it's not as quiet as the 'Cube and I even can hear some AM radio coming through my phones when I turn up my linestage preamp volume. But here I digress.
My main reason for starting this thread, aside from having some assorted questions about carts, preamps, and the like, is to ask for some objective and subjective opinions regarding the decision I just made. Bear in mind that my main interest is classical music, especially chamber (esp. string quartets, trios, wind quintets, etc) and piano with some orchestral, followed by classic rock and some Blue-Note era jazz. The SACD route seemed promising at first, and I told myself that, even though there were only a smattering of sacd recordings for many of my favorite classical performers (eg. Elly Ameling Soprano, Yo-Yo Ma, Rubinstein), there were so many truly talented lesser-knowns on the sacd scene (e.g. pianist Freddy Kempf on BIS, Csaba and Heisser on Praga digitals, and of course Paavo Jaervi on Telarc) that I deemed my chances of attaining long-term satisfaction with purely sacd (and a little redbook on the side) to be very good. Especially after sacd mods. As for classic rock, the SACD of the Police Synchronicity just blew me away (through Sennheiser HD600w/cardas cable).
But THEN it occurred to me that the only way to possibly hear my very favorite string quartet - the Vegh Quartet - in better than redbook fidelity was through vinyl. Ditto for numerous other performers who will never appear on sacd. Then of course there's always the Beatles, Stones, Jerry Garcia and others to sweeten the deal for vinyl. By the way, I sold my Ikemi redbook player in order to open up some new options and try something new. Even my girlfriend almost cried to see the Ikemi go, her having been converted just enough to an audiophile that she could absolutely see someone justifying having spent almost four grand on a source component (even a non-disc changer)
So what do you guys think? When my scoutmaster arrives, am I in for some visceral thrills and deep musical connection? I know that it's also dependent on the rest of my system, and so far I've narrowed cart choices down to the Lyras and the Shelters, leaning heavily towards the former. As for phono preamps I'm considering the Linto, Ear 834p mm/mc, and a few others including a modded Jolida JD-9 or something along those lines.

Is the scoutmaster, fitted with a $1000+ cartridge and a similarly priced phono preamp, going through Cardas golden reference into either a Bryston B60 integrated (and then to Sennheisers or B&wdm603) OR into a Stax srm-t1 tube driver of my Stax electrostats, going to 'knock my socks off' as suggested by Mike at VPI yesterday? How close can I get to SACD (especially to the 'pure DSD') fidelity through this setup? I know speed stability and noise floor will be drastically improved, giving tones accuracy and timbral accuracy, and i expect bass to be better and overall macro and microdynamics as well BUT... am I going to be able to achieve some of the same absolutely organic, sparkling, and pure sound of some of the better DSD recordings? What about the musical clarity per se of redbook, in particular when listening to string quartets and the like? Will I get a 'clean' sound in the tonal sense, not overly dark, but a sound that seems right? What about the upper octave of piano?
I once read an article long ago (i believe it was in stereophile) in which the author admitting to prefering cassette tape over vinyl due to it having cleaner and more pitch accurate upper octave reproduction. That was then, this is now. What do you guys think? (last time I'll ask that, I promise!)

Ted
tedd1
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rauliruegas
13,066 posts
 
Dear friends: I agree that with a top CD/SACD/DVDA player, like dSc, EMM Labs, meridian, etc. , the " digital sound " almost dissapear and the quality sound reproduction is nearest to the analog one and to the real music.
I'm saying this with SACD/DVDA at 24/192kHz and only when the original recording was recorded in that native digital format.
Still with all the best digital technology the natural tonal balance ( top to bottom ) that the analog medium has is not even with digital, it is near but only " near ".

It is very dificult to compare both mediums because both are extremly different technologies, each one with its own advantages and disadvantages. We have trade-offs in both mediums: which one is best for us -?, this is a question with several answers because our music sound reproduction priorities are very subjective ones and singular for each person.

We ( Jos{e and I ) build our self design CD/DVDA player that at least is in the same league that EMM Labs and other top digital players ( in some quality sound reproduction characteristics our design outperform EMM Labs ) and I could live hearing that unit instead of my analog rig. The digital technology at this performance level is really great.

There are several differences between both technologies but the real differences exist at the frequency extremes: the digital medium has advantage at the low bass range and the analog one has advantage at the high frquency range.
Now, there is a really big disadvantage in the SACD/DVDA technology: SOFTWARE, it is almost cero. The recording companies are not supporting the SACD/DVDA medium and never will. Everyone can ask then: why am I investing 15-20K in a technology that can't give me any support ( software ) in the future?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.
jdaniel18ee
88 posts
 
Your evolution is very similar to mine: CD to SACD, (same sony unit at one time), 2chan to multi here, and finally a Scoutmaster. (How you're getting it so fast I have no idea.) I have the Dyna 20X low and couldn't be happier with the synergy. Nightly, the reproduction leaves me speechless, and, to address the pro-digital crowd, it's not just the "colored" sound. Let's not forget the better soundstage, the better timbral delineation, the more accurate authoritative bass, the quickness, etc. Don't forget a record cleaning machine or at least record cleaner for CD-quiet sound!!!
fbhifi
108 posts
 
Robm321: What "fractoinally" priced Vinyl rig betters the sound of the EMM Labs? Please include table, arm, arm cable, cartridge, phono stage, interconnect from phono stage to pre-amp and 2x power cords (table + phono stage) you can quote either retail or resale pricing. One other question- Have YOU done an A/B comparison of the EMM labs CDSD/DCC2 and your vinyl rig IN YOUR SYSTEM ?? Many of us HAVE done this A/B comparison in our systems. Without this type of 1st hand experience your blanket statements are less than reliable and convincing.
merganser
216 posts
 
"The first group to really embrace CD in a big way was classical music lovers. Ever wonder why?"

And the first group to really embrace SACD in a big way are the classical music lovers. 'Nuff said.
tedd1 OP
36 posts
 
All the the most accomplished classical musicians I've ever known personally (including a clarinet player in the Boston Philharmonic who's a long-term friend of my girlfriend, a pianist who recently finished a doctorate in composition, a harpsichordist who is friend of my parents, my classical guitar instructor who attended Eastman as well as another virtuoso guitarist, Apostolos Paraskevas, who taught me for several years until I couldn't afford him), seem complacent with the worst low- to mid-fi sound systems. They must be interested in just the notes themselves or something. Likewise my girlfriend's brother-in-law and his two (now) adult children - classical trumpet, violin, and piano respectively - ALL heavily embrace the iPod and use the stock Earbuds! They don't even both to encode their music at higher than 192kbs, even though their large capacity iPods would accomodate it. The classical trumpet player is a talented amateur who regularly plays in a brass quintet in Wayland, MA, and his son especially is a talented (though not quite concert-level) pianist who plays challenging concertos very well at almost full tempo. All the above people have large collections of classical recordings, yet none of them own a system that even deserves to be called 'a system'. We're talking worse than Bose speakers, $200 CD changers made ten years ago by Kenwood and the like, $60 headphones in the best case scenario and usually worse.
I don't know what the point of my spiel here is, but intuitively I feel that whether or not classical music lovers (I'll assume that those performers do in fact love the music they listen to) embrace a medium or not is hardly the basis upon which the given medium can claimed to be sonically superior. I myself am an audiophile, but my technical skill as a musician is far below that of those mentioned above. However I will say that there was a time early in my life as a youngster when I even enjoyed listening to the reproduction of works such as the William Tell Overture on my 1983 IBM PC that had no soundcard and as such played only the tones themselves - nearly monophonic.
I'm not implying that digital sound reproduction only gets the notes - that would be utterly absurd - but in light of the above, I'm inclined to think that many classical music lovers have embraced the digital medium without regard for the types of sonic omissions which some accuse all but the high-end digital recordings and playback of exhibiting. It is true in classical music more than in any other genre that the essence of the music - what the composer had in mind so to speak - is largely conveyed by the printed score.to those who are trained to interpret it. So if printed musical scores sufficed for so long as an adequate recording medium, it's no surprise that classical music lovers would have lower audio standards RELATIVE to the reproductive demands placed by (especially richly orchestrated) classical music on a given recording medium and playback apparatus. Thus since clarity is above all the prime requisite for accessing classical works, I'm not surprised at all when lovers thereof embrace whichever is the clearest option relative to their financial means. In a sense, I'm accusing some classal music lovers of being 'clarity whores', though admittedly this claim is contradicted to some extent by the less than stellar clarity - with respect to the more understated or softly articulated symphonic phrases - offered by a pair of earbuds. Yes, there's so much more to a classical performance than the music per se, but unlike other genres, their notes themselves can provide long-term musical satisfaction to those who's brains happily decode them.
I hope didn't open a can of worms here.
On a different , the Fedex train carrying my new Scoutmaster has reportedly pulled into the station, so in a few hours - by the end of the day latest - I shall know whether all my love has been in vain (sorry, i had a high fidelity dream about that last night (those guitars!), and has been in my head ever since, albeit now on a vanishingly
Ted
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