I heard a direct comparison (by reservation) of the SACD at the CES in Vegas last month. I was sitting with a reviewer from a prominent high end audio magazine. The people at Sony played Miles Davis, Joni Mitchell and other music that I was familiar with. After the demo, the reviewer and I walked into the hallway and he said, is this what all the SACD talk is about? This is better than CD perhaps, but just as far away from vinyl as it ever was. I personally think that unless a person has heard the ultimate that LP has to offer, you cannot say what it does against SACD. I certainly hope that the demo at the CES, in spite of the money spent by Sony and others, does not fully represent what this format can do. I have stated in other postings that the sound at the CES is generally bad, however it is still possible to separate what is tolerable and what is not. In general, digital is not tolerable for me at all. I have really tried too, there was a period of seven months, at the end of my five year journey into digital, when I used all of my favors and influence to obtain every combination of digital player, converter, etc. that I could get my hands on. There was a monumental test between all of them to see what was the best (judged by a group of not less than four or more than nine people on most sessions). In the end, I gave up on digital altogether, and sold all (over 2000) CD's. I have no built in hatred of any format, and I sincerely wish that SACD would beat my turntable. Heck, I wish I could even listen to SACD against my turntable and not be thinking all the time about putting the LP back on. I will admit, that I have about $30,000 just in the source and front end (not counting the preamp or any of the rest of the system) and perhaps that has everything to do with my tests (although I had tens of thousands of dollars worth of digital against it too). The SACD is not expensive by that standard. I should say here, that I have heard a direct master DAT pulled from the mixing board from a recording session by Delos. It was jacked into a stereo system belonging to one of the members of my audio group. That was the only time I ever heard digital sound good. My friend who was playing me this master tape was the performing artist on the tape. He, in fact, was one of last years Grammy Award winners, and when not playing his own performances (that he has direct masters of) he listens to a turntable. He records in digital because that is what he's paid to do, and it is what is convenient and what sells to the general public. When all the commercial stuff is over, and its time to listen to music, the LP goes back on. He has one entire wall covered in vinyl. A note also, in a brief discussion I had with the People at Sony, they admit that they have a very limited library coming at this point. They even stated that their best hope of making the switch to SACD successful, will be from analog recordings (what LP is), or new music, yet to be recorded. He agreed that much of the existing digital was pretty miserable, and that it was not possible to make more of it than is was when it was recorded. So, one can wait and hope for the next generation of yet to be recorded artists and hope that the antique masters in the vault will make yet one more transfer or, you can take advantage right now and enjoy most of the greatest music ever recorded in a format that is still available, in literally hundreds of millions of copies, pressed over the last 50 years. Much of it pressed from the tapes when the tapes were barley weeks old! This makes the LP the only true archival format for this great music, as much of that tape is now falling apart or has already done so.
