I just picked up five Sony SACDs at $15.29 each, during a special sale at Best Buy. As it turned out, a composition on one of the SACDs duplicated what I already had on a regular CD in my collection, and this gave me a chance to compare the two formats. WOW, what an amazing improvement SACD is over regular CD. The composition that I compared is Mozart's Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. The CD that I compared to the
Sony SACD is a digital recording by EMI, with Sir Neville Marriner conducting (CDC 7 49073 2). The SACD sound has an amazingly broad, spacious, and open sound stage. Sounds of all solo instruments are clear, and extremely well focused. As a listener I feel exactly as if I'm sitting in a large concert hall, enjoying the sound of a wonderful orchestra, as modified and influenced by hall acoustics. By comparison to SACD, the regular CD sounds cold and artificial. It lacks the openness and spaciousness of sound stage of the SACD, and sounds like the sterile product of a sound studio. I guess this is what I've heard audiophiles refer to as the cold sound of CDs versus the warmer sound of LPs. It's a real surprise to me, since I've previously not done this sort of comparison. As for the equipment that I use, it's as follows: AKG K1000 headphone; Maratz SA8260 SACD; ASL AQ-1005DT power amp.; ASL Passive TIDT preamp.; and high quality interconnect cables.