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SA-CD

Super Audio CD releases reviewed for SA-CD.net between 2003 and 2009, on the performance and the disc in equal measure.

31 articles.

Blue Dream — Fiona Joy Hawkins

The first SACD released by an Australian independent artist: new age piano produced by Will Ackerman and mastered by Bob Ludwig, in a mix I wanted to be bolder.

Dreams and False Alarms — Andy Milne

Solo piano readings of Mitchell, Sting, Marley, Young and Dylan that take their time letting you work out which song you are hearing. Audition before buying.

Places You Go — Brad Shepik Trio

A trio with a Hammond B-3 where the acoustic bass should be, playing original mid-tempo numbers and ballads. Almost an hour long, and I wanted more.

Think Like the Waves — Gordon Grdina

ECM-ish contemporary jazz coloured by oud and Middle Eastern lines, with Gary Peacock and Paul Motian completing the trio, in an enveloping 5.0 mix.

Purity — T Minus 5

An a cappella collection of hymns recorded with no limiting, compression or artificial reverb — unusually clear about the voice, and unforgiving about any note that strays.

Ten at 86 — Joe McQueen and friends

An IsoMike four-channel jazz recording made with baffled microphones, at the lowest level I had met on a commercial disc, where the ambience channels matter more than I expected.

Wagner: Siegfried — Asher Fisch and the Adelaide Ring

The opera in the cycle I had always liked least, in a performance and recording that changed my mind — the best balanced of the four, and the one to sample multichannel SACD on.

Dark Clouds — Stu Goldberg and Cassius Khan

Piano and tabla, and the rare SACD where I preferred the stereo mix — with an explanation from the producer of why the surround ambience was built the way it was.

Bach: Italian Concerto and Partitas — Glenn Gould

Gould at his most accessible, playing the piano rather like a harpsichord — the best introduction to him on SACD, stray clicks and omnipresent hiss notwithstanding.

Chet — Chet Baker

Ballads from 1958 with Bill Evans and Kenny Burrell, where the SACD layer reveals tape dropouts and saturation that the CD layer turns into something like clipping.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown — Vince Guaraldi Trio

A 1965 television soundtrack that still sounds startlingly alive, hard-panned in the manner of early stereo, and emphatically not the kiddies’ music the cover suggests.

Jazz in an R&B Groove — a HighNote compilation

The companion HighNote compilation, and the better sounding of the two — clean, airy and room-filling, with the CD layer clearly behind the DSD stereo.

Kinda Jazzy Kinda Funky — a HighNote compilation

A mid-priced HighNote compilation whose cheesy title and blurb undersell it: consistent instrumental tracks, mixed a little low, with the DSD layer tightening the bass.

The Dark Side of the Moon — Pink Floyd

The 30th Anniversary SACD ranked against a Quad LP, two earlier CD masterings and a bootleg DTS disc — seven versions of one album, each with its own sonic character.

Forget About It — Alison Krauss

Soft ballads with only hints of bluegrass, on a stereo hybrid where the SACD layer is mastered at least 3dB below the CD and the two make for genuinely different listening.

Steppin' — Christy Baron

Chesky's jazz and R&B arrangements of pop tunes, with the rolled-off top end and barely used surround channels typical of the label's multichannel discs.

Getz/Gilberto — Stan Getz and João Gilberto

The Verve single-layer SACD against a battered LP and the Master Edition CD: more presence on the saxophone and voices, and enough resolution to expose tape faults the CD had hidden.

Subjects across the sa-cd, sized by the number of articles each one appears in. Each one leads to every article on that subject, in whatever category it was filed under.