Customer Reviews

Saint-Saëns: Symphony No. 3; Debussy: La Mer; Ibert: Escales [Hybrid SACD]

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

 

 

These are some of the RCA Red Seal Classic recordings from their

Living Stereo series remastered for SACD. The Saint-Saens

recording comes from a recently discovered Three Channel master

tape, so on the SACD Surround portion of the disc you hear Left,

Center, and Right channels only. Not 5.1 or 4.0. What you do hear

are Three of Charles Munch's finer recordings with the Boston

Symphony Orchestra. The recordings made in 1956 and 1959, manage

to stand the test of time, and are welcome additions to the SACD

catalog. Especially at Mid Price. Hopefully these Ten SACDs will

be the first of many. One recording I hope will be issued on SACD

is the Berlioz Requiem with Munch, The BSO and Leopold Simoneu.

Also Maestro Munch's recording of the Berlioz Symphonie

Fantastique

It isn't very likely that you've arrived here not knowing that this recording is one of the first of ten legendary RCA Living Stereo titles to be offered in the high-tech SACD format. As with the earlier reviewer below, I have my own personal list of favorites from the RCA catalog that I hope to see in the SACD format one day, but I hope that when that day comes, I will not be as disappointed with the sound on those as I am with this one.

Super Audio CD (SACD) is touted as being a better medium than conventional CD, and this has been demonstrated to me time and again. Given the possibilities, it is important that the engineers who perform the transfers from the original master tapes to a digital format pay even more attention to their work than they have in the past. If they don't, they run the risk of providing consumers with a product that is, in fact, inferior to less capable mediums, and that is certainly the case here. The previously available CD has a less irritating sound to it, and is therefore more satisfying to hear.

I bought four titles from the Living Stereo SACD series at the same time; this one provides the poorest sound. This hasn't always been the case: audiophiles value the sound of the original LP highly. Caveat Emptor to audiophiles.

Unlike the case with some of the Mercury Living Presence SACDs (e.g., Firebird/Dorati), where the improvements over their corresponding CDs is VAST, I'm a bit disappointed by the SACD remastering here. The RCA Living Stereo SACDs are not a great improvement over the corresponding "Living Stereo" CD incarnations, neither in stereo nor in 3 channels. Thus, you needn't bother purchasing the newer versions if you have the former ones. If you have neither version, you can just as well buy the new Hybrid SACDs.
(SACDs compared to CDs using the following equipment: Bel Canto PLayer PL-1 universal player + PRe 6; for front/stereo channels: Bel Canto eVo4G2 amp bridged for stereo + B&W Nautilus 802; for the center channel: Adcom GFA 5503 + B&W HTM2).

This release may well be the best CD release of Munch's recording of Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony, but for me the question is: Is it as good or better than the original RCA "Living Stereo" LP issue? The answer here is a resounding no.

I have listened carefully to this disc and the "Shaded Dog" RCA original on and off now for several days. In all respects: tonal clarity, nuance of color, 3-dimenional image, overall presence, I found the LP (a "1S" pressing) to be far superior.

I'm not really happy to report this. I am hoping that the SACD format will offer a way to reproduce the impact of Living Stereo and other great audiophile analog recordings for the mass of listeners in our digital age.

The performance of course is a killer.

(The Escales and La Mer sound curiously flat on my SACD copy. They must be the victim of some technical problem.)

Mark Hite

When I was choosing this recording, I decided to listen to other transfers of this disc, and there have been many. I first listened to this on the Living Stereo release at my local public library probably 25 years ago. Perhaps that colored my future perceptions of this recording: the library used to clean their recordings with WATER, of all things. So there was much surface noise. The performance shined, though. As the years wore on, RCA decided to release this on what they called the "5.0" series where they remastered their classic recordings with new technology (sound familiar?). I owned this version for many years, but I listened to it on my turntable 3 years ago and was really disapponted-mostly things seemed over-modulated and distorted. 2 or 3 different CD releases of this recording seemed to be cut from the same cloth. Then I heard this SACD release and I was floored. It seemed that the original master tape was discovered in Japan! So most of these releases were not cut from the original master tape! I own many of these SACD's and are generally very pleased with the new remasterings. I really don't know why people are so gung-ho about the original LP's as I have tried this by spending 20-30 dollars on Living Stereo LPs from Ebay and putting the needle on my record and immediately hearing surface noise. If you decide not to take the plunge on this recording, my other favorites in this wonderful symphony include Barenboim/CSO on DG, Ansermet/Suisse Romande on Decca, with casual nods to Eschenbach/Philadelphia on Ondine and Mata/Dallas on Dorian which both have interpretive issues. I do prefer the analog recordings of this work to the digital ones.

Beautiful performance and recording of the Saint-Saens. Amazon's stock of this is missing the liner notes however (it has an insert explaining what an sacd is, but that's it). After explaining the problem to their customer service, Amazon was quick to send me a replacement, and it too was missing the documentation. Worth getting, but get it from somewhere else.

I have heard much about these RCA SACD releases and this is my first purchase and might also be my last. Both the performance and sound quality are at best mediocre, quite the opposite of this disc's reputation.

Recording balance is odd: percussions are loud, dry, in your face; winds are next; strings are further back; in other words, it's the opposite of a natural concert hall perspective. It's so unnatural, the performers don't seem to be in the same space.

The sound is coarse, perhaps from frequent tape drop outs, or old tapes that were stored improperly.

Ensemble playing is untidy, i.e. not together.

The above comment relates to the Saint Saens played on CD, not SACD. The Debussy is even worse, sounds like a cassette tape!