Customer Reviews

Copland: Appalachian Spring; Rodeo; Fanfare for the Common Man; Hindemith: Symphonic Metamorphosis [Hybrid SACD]

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I originally bought this CD after hearing 'Fanfare' in an elementary school music class during the mid 80s. I must've listened to it hundreds of times over the years. I just bought this SACD version and was curious about the technical differences between it and the original CD. I loaded it into Pro Tools to see what was going on.

The original CD is slightly louder (only two or three tenths of a dB per song) but they fixed the polarity issues. The original CD had a negative polarity. What that means is during those big crashes in Fanfare your speaker cones were being sucked in to the speaker cabinets instead of pushing air toward you. Don't know how it got past them in 1982 when they recorded this album but I'm glad they fixed the problem.

I also noticed the sound was somewhat larger. The top end was more open and the midrange didn't sound as compact. The upper midrange digital glaze is significantly lessened letting the rest of the spectrum open up. I assume the difference in sound quality is due to transferring the original 50 kHz Soundstream recording over to DSD. More than likely they did this by converting the digital signal to analog and then recorded it back to DSD. Further proof this was the process is the SACD doesn't lineup with the original CD. If it were a digital transfer they'd stay perfectly in sync. Modern converters are of much higher quality than they were in 1981. This may be the reason for the much improved sonic character of the SACD.

I'm glad they didn't resort to any trickery in an attempt to market it as a 5.1 disc. This was recorded directly to stereo so to have any surround information they would've need to create new ambience somehow. Glad they decided not to do that.

A great selection of Aaron Copland composition, played by a great orchestra, excellent recording, and a solid mastering to SACD. Each instrument sounded crisp, and one of the best dynamic range recording I've heard. Even the CD version sounded great. I would highly recommend this.

This is a gorgeous recording by the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra. There is a great sound stage, and the performance is first class. I own several versions of "Fanfare for the Common Man", and this is by far the most dynamic recording and impressive performance.

This recording is an excellent justification of having an SACD player.

Records made by Soundsream are exelent, and of course, Telarc is top audiophile label. Also music is great. Copland's tunes has been easy for listening, but not everything is as exelent as Fanfare for the Common Man.

The first CD I ever owned was this Copland compilation (at the age of 10). It has had a big impact on my musical preferences afterwards. I would recommend this to anybody that searches for an introduction to classical music.

This SACD version also contains Hindemith which, in my opinion, doesn't really fit the picture and therefore most of the time I just skip it. Hindemith is rather dark music and it breaks the romantic mood of the Fanfare.

The sound quality is good but not spectacular for a SACD. The reason is that they seem to have used the original recording (somewhere 20 years ago). I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't make a new multi channel recording (which should be very easy since there are plenty of good orchestra around the world).