Having just bought the Sony DAVS 550 to replace my multitude of black boxes I want to test out the SACD facility with a disc that will show its capabilities. Norah is not my 'boat' I'm more a classics and rock man. Can those of you who have been using the format suggest a list of must have SACD's ?

[Daneel]

Originally posted by mjr600
Norah is not my 'boat'

I'm sure she will be very glad to hear it!

Sorry, not having a SACD player I have nothing to contribute to your thread but I found your turn of phrase very amusing.

[JamesTapp]

Take a look at www.euphoricsounds.com

James

[Gary Palmer]

try http://www.highfidelityreview.com/

[PaulBoy]

Pink Floyd DSOTM is AWESOME!
Also Tubular Bells is pretty good
Paul

[Hawklord]

I've got most of Peter Gabriels back catalogue on sacd. Much better than normal cd repro imo. I've also got and would recomend:-

Thriller- Michael Jackson
Just Push Play- Aerosmith
O' Yeah-Aerosmith
Survivor- Destiny's Child
The Best Of Simple Minds
Dark Side Of The Moon- Pink Floyd
The Planets/The Warriors- Holst/Gardiner By Philharmonic Orc
Greatest Hits- The Bangles
Greatest Hits- Alice In Chains

Plice Every Breath You Take Greatest Hits is excellent. DSOTM of Course.

Apparently Roxy Music Avalon is also good but I cant find it at a sensible price.

Tower records have a good selection.

Rog

[Oasis-GasPanic]

My personal Rock fav's are:

Police - EBYT (Greatest Hits)

Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory. (M/Channel is great, stereo is same as CD)

The Who - My Generation

Pink Floyd - DSOTM

Destiny's Child - Survivor (ok it's not rock but it sounds great compared to the CD)

I've also been told the Rolling Stones SACD's sound great.

Regards,

http://www.revolutionhometheater.com...acd/main.shtml

Found this thread, thanks for the replies, I've now got DSOTM ordered from CDWOW at a very reasonable £10.99.

Can't wait.........

[keiths]

Hi,

If you like Steely Dan's Gaucho album, then you really should get the SACD (I got mine from www.amazon.ca). It's definately the best sounding SACD in my very modest collection.

Another vote too for Dark Side of the Moon and Tubular Bells. Also if you like James Taylor, try Hourglass.

Also the soundtrack CD for the film Masked and Anonymous starring Bob Dylan comes as a limited edition double pack with a seven track 'Reissues Series Sampler' SACD that's well worth getting hold of if you like Bob. Got mine for a very reasonable price from www.cd-wow.com

[owenw]

Yeah the Avalon SACD remaster makes a lot of use of the surround channels. I never heard the original album before (too young!!) but always liked the title track. It's probably my second favourite SACD after Groove Armada's Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub) There is also a Best of Roxy Music SACD available if Best of 's are your thing.

DSOTM on SACD is MUCH better than the CD
I'm not mad about Tubular Bells, Thriller is good for a 2ch SACD.

There aren't many SACD's worth buying unless you're into classical, jazz or older rock and stuff on the Epic Record Label (owned by Sony) which seems to be mostly American artists.

[karkus30]

are you all buying these because of the multi channel or the improved sound quality ? If its improved sound quality, what player amp and speakers are you using and what were you using previously.

I have a Phillips 963 DVD/SACD player, playing thru a yamaha cinema sound amp, but I have never bothered with the SACD or playing CDs through it.

I have a dedicated Marantz CD 17 through a NAIM pre power for that function.

Wondered if anyone has a similar hi fi / cinema sound system and have compared SACD to normal CD through a decent amp. Are others using a dedicated high quality SACD machines?

Multi channel seems a bit of a novelty IMO, I can still remember Quadaphonic and it wasnt an improvement.

[owenw]

I have a mid-fi SACD (I was suffering from Catalogue-itis at the time!) and SACD built into my new DVD. It's definately got better sound quality than CD, but I doubt I can hear half of it with my mid-range cinema system. The 5.1 stuff is used as more novelty than anything else on some albums where they pan sounds around your head, and positioning musicians around you as if you were in the same room as them.

Remastering 2ch to multi-ch is also somewhat dubious.

There are a few where they use the surrounds "properly" - live recordings where the sound engineers set up mic's around the room to correlate to the 5 speaker positions. This results in the ambience and "air" as well as higher definition on the recordings thanks to the high resolution DSD recorders.
This results in subtle ambient sound coming from the rears and great soundstaging across the front 3.

These recordings are where SACD comes into it's own as a serious format.

Unfortunately you will mostly find these recordings on Audiophile labels, while other record labels mostly use the surround effect as a gimmick. Still it is fun to hear sounds flying over your head, and moving around the room etc

It's worth remembering that there are far more 2 channel SACD's out then 5.1 and a lot of those are serious, novelty-free audiophile quality recordings.

To be honest, I am quite disappointed at the lack of 5.1 encoded SADCs. There are a number of types of music that lend them selves to this perfectly.

DSOTM is just awesome in 5.1 and not a novelty. If you have ever been to see DSOTM played at a Laserium, this is just the effect intended.

Duncs Iam with you on this. DSOTM and THe Police Every breath You take are excellent.

Joe Satriani Strange Beautiful Music is also great.

Also The Eagles Hotel California DVDA does a great job of surround. Which makes the 192Khz Stereo sound very flat.
Ahem.

Some of the others I have heard have been either weird or not really surround at all.

Over at quadraphonicquad.com there is a mini review of the new Led Zep DVDA How the West Was Won, and that is not a very good surround mix apparently.

I suppose we really need newer recordings to make the most of 5.1.

Rog

[OnTheFly]

You should try www.dvdpacific.com for great prices.
And Nora Jones sounds great in surround sound.

[clived]

BB King - Reflections - sounds absolutely great.

Read http://www.musictap.net/Reviews/KingBBReflections.html to judge if you'll actually like it!

Cheers, Clive