Previously Unreleased Deutsche Grammophon QUAD mixes coming to SACD

[fredblue]

Noticed this discussion earlier:

http://www.sa-cd.net/showthread/121617//y?page=first

It appears Deutsche Grammophon created a number of Quadraphonic mixes back in the day that never saw official release and now some 40 years later Pentatone are set to issue them on MultiChannel SACD.

 

[DuncanS]

Interesting, I like Ravel & Bach, but I don't know those ones, I'll look through thr vinyl I inherited from my father and see if he had either of those and give them a listen if he did.

 

[winopener]

Pentatone already did that by a decade with Philips stuff... to differentiate the 5.1 release from the 4.0 from old schol tapes they used the RQR logo (remastered quadro recordings). DG had a bunch of mixes done, Karajan was strong on quad mixing and a lot of his EMI recordings of the70s are SQ.

 

[fredblue]

Yes I'm aware of Pentatone's RQR SACD releases (I have some) the 'big news' here is these are said to be previously unreleased Quad mixes. Just thought it might be interesting to some QQ members.

 

[Ranasakawa]

Why do they persist with SACDs when BluRay Audio in my opinion is better considering there is a shit load of BluRay players out there,

 

[steelydave]

Because they know their target audience and classical audiophiles like SACD and have their players hooked up to their high end playback system. I know it seems like heresy here, but go to sh.tv and you'll see lots of guys who have a megabucks SACD stereo system, and then a separate BluRay/DVD system hooked up to a TV and they're resistant to changing anything. I think this sums them up:

 

[ChristopherLees]

so the titles are
W.A. Mozart - Piano Concertos Nos. 14 & 26
Tamas Vasary , Berliner Philharmoniker (1979)

- Giuliani, Castelnuovo-Tedesco & Villa-Lobos - Guitar Concertos
Narciso Yepes, Luis Antonio Garcia Navarro , London Symphony Orchestra (1976)

- Ravel - Orchestral Works
Seiji Ozawa , Boston Symphony Orchestra (1974)

- J.S. Bach - Cantatas
Karl Richter, Edith Mathis, Trudeliese Schmidt, Julia Hamari, Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, Peter Schreier , Münchener Bach-Orchester, Münchener Bach-Chor (1970's)

- J.S. Bach - Brandenburg Concertos Nos. 1 - 6
Pinchas Zukerman , Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra (1978)

- L. van Beethoven - Piano Concertos Nos. 3 & 5
Seiji Ozawa, Christoph Eschenbach, Werner Henze , Boston Symphony Orchestra, London Symphony Orchestra (1974)

 

[bmoura]

Pentatone already did that by a decade with Philips stuff... to differentiate the 5.1 release from the 4.0 from old schol tapes they used the RQR logo (remastered quadro recordings). DG had a bunch of mixes done, Karajan was strong on quad mixing and a lot of his EMI recordings of the70s are SQ.

That was my guess as well. Putting these in the "RQR" series makes sense since the Philips 4.0 unreleased material was reissued that way by PentaTone when the label first started as a spin-off of Philips.

 

[cupboy]

Why do they persist with SACDs when BluRay Audio in my opinion is better considering there is a shit load of BluRay players out there,

Very few Blu-ray players still made. Mostly are transports with no audio outputs only useful in HDMI set-ups. SACD players still have audio outputs, which are quite helpful in music systems.

 

[Eclectic]

My view is pretty much diametrically opposed to yours. An HDMI output is a (digital) audio output (as well as a digital video output). If it has an HDMI output, it's a Blu-ray player, not a transport, or even a drive. I don't care much about the medium; I just want the (LPCM) bits. Whatever it comes on, I rip it using an appropriate drive (e.g., the Blu-ray drive connected to my computer), transcode it to flac, and put it on my NAS, from which my receiver can play it. Typically I never read the disc again once I've ripped it, and don't play a disc even once. I have plenty of DVD-A's, but I've never owned a DVD-A player, and have no desire to get one. Analog outputs on disc players are of no interest to me: Discs contain bits and I just want to get them off the discs and send them directly to the (high-quality) d/a converters in my receiver. Converting to an analog signal first and then sending that to my receiver just seems like one more opportunity to introduce noise. And repeatedly handling an optical disc seems like an opportunity to damage it.

To my tastes, DVD-A and Blu-ray are fine, SACD is not. SACD is DSD encoded, and I'm not convinced that DSD has any advantages over LPCM. The world has pretty much settled on LPCM, so listening to an SACD requires one more potentially lossy transcoding step (DSD to LPCM) when compared to any LPCM-based encoding (e.g., MLP, DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD, flac, LPCM). Also SACD has more annoying DRM than DVD-A or Blu-ray, requiring a specialized drive (PS3 with firmware 3.55 or earlier) to losslessly rip the content.

Chacun à son goût, I guess.

 

[Franklin]

As far as SACD vs BD goes, it's not that I fear change it's that I dislike paying for a new player and amplifier just to hear a handful of releases in surround.

 

[bmoura]

As far as SACD vs BD goes, it's not that I fear change it's that I dislike paying for a new player and amplifier just to hear a handful of releases in surround.

That is the challenge for the new BD Audio format.

It will take BD Audio (almost 300 albums to date) quite awhile for it to reach the large catalog of albums available on Super Audio CD (over 9,600 to date) and more recently DSD Music Downloads (over 900 to date).
We will see how it all plays out in the months ahead.

 

[Franklin]

DSD downloads - may have to investigate titles. I wonder if there's any available for the UK market. I gather the file sizes can be quite large.

 

[bmoura]

DSD downloads - may have to investigate titles. I wonder if there's any available for the UK market. I gather the file sizes can be quite large.

The file sizes can be large - especially if we are talking about Double or Quad Rate DSD (DSD128 or DSD256) which are made available at double or 4 times the resolution level of a Super Audio CD (SACD) - or Multichannel DSD files that can be triple the size of Stereo DSD files. Today, most DSD downloads are in Single Rate DSD (DSD64) which are smaller than their higher resolution DSD cousins.

Some of the music download sites are restricted to one country or region (just like DVDs or Blu-Ray Videos) while others are worldwide. In general, the sites run by record labels and artists are worldwide (no geographic restrictions) while the ones that license albums from the record labels and artists are geographic restricted.

Since we're talking about Pentatone in this thread, I should mention that one of the biggest selections of classical music downloads (WAV, PCM, DSD) in both Stereo and Multichannel is the one run by Pentatone at http://www.pentatonemusic.com/catalog. It's worldwide (anyone can buy) and it has almost 200 Multichannel and Stereo albums available for download. Pentatone does not offer any of the Philips "RQR" 4 Channel Multichannel albums as downloads yet. But they are taking with Universal Music (the owner of the masters) about changing that.

Next up for classical music fans would be NativeDSD at https://www.nativedsd.com. They have over 300 music downloads in NativeDSD format that were recorded in DSD by 13 different record labels, primarily Classical with some Jazz and Acoustic music. Interestingly, the NativeDSD team is very big on Multichannel - so you'll find that 285 of these DSD music downloads are also available as Multichannel DSD downloads! Some of the NativeDSD labels (Cobra, Crier, Paraclete) sell DSD Downloads that were recorded in DSD but never released on SACD! NativeDSD.Com offers a free track every day on their home page that can be downloaded simply by signing up for the site by providing an email address. A great way to get started with Multichannel and Stereo DSD Downloads absolutely free.

Also worth mentioning are DSD File (run by Opus 3 Records) at http://shop.dsdfile.com/ that offers a mix of Jazz, Blues and Classical DSD Downloads in Stereo and Blue Coast Music/Downloads Now at http://bluecoastrecords.com and http://downloadsnow.net that features Folk, Instrumental and Vocal DSD and PCM Downloads in Stereo. These download sites are run by the record labels (Opus 3 and Blue Coast), so all of these titles are available worldwide to all music fans - the same as PentaTone and NativeDSD.Com

Other sites with DSD Downloads to check out can be found in the downloads section of the DSD Database list online at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgVhKcl_3lHfdFVyenBBNjNpQ2lieG81WGpqQTNfVUE#gid=0

Enjoy!

 

[Franklin]

Wow - great information - thanks!

Is there an easy way to burn DSD to SACD readable disc?

 

[fredblue]

That is the challenge for the new BD Audio format.

It will take BD Audio (almost 300 albums to date) quite awhile for it to reach the large catalog of albums available on Super Audio CD (over 9,600 to date) and more recently DSD Music Downloads (over 900 to date).
We will see how it all plays out in the months ahead.

300 BDA's..! :yikes (I'm slacking! )

 

[bmoura]

Wow - great information - thanks!

Is there an easy way to burn DSD to SACD readable disc?

Yes, *.DSF files with DSD Music can be burned to DVD-R media.

TEAC has a player + digital to analog converter (DAC) - the PD-501HR - that lets you play DSD & PCM Stereo music downloads from disc (up to double rate DSD - DSD128) in just that way. No PC required. Sells for $899. Check http://www.teac.com/product/pd-501hr/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOfkBLDllE4 for more information. There's also a review of the PD-501HR at http://dagogo.com/teac-pd-501-digital-player-review

 

[cupboy]

Looks interesting at first but then I noticed there is no USB-B output and the digital output doesn't work for DSD playback.

I will take a look at the owner manual download.

 

[DuncanS]

300 BDA's..! :yikes (I'm slacking! )

Its only 300 ............so how long until you've all of them @:

 

[fredblue]

Its only 300 ............so how long until you've all of them @:

haha! probably never! I might get to triple figures one day but I'll bet 100 of them are French artist HFPA's and another 100 are 7.1 mixes of solo piano!