reginalb
1000+ Head-Fier
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- Aug 11, 2011
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The thing is that you'll probably notice a sound quality improvement with most SACDs. Where some audiophiles sometimes get it wrong is that they ascribe the better sound to hi res or DSD technology when it is just the music has been mastered better for a more discerning audience. The label could easily release the same quality mastering on CDs but they usually don't - even the CD layer on most SACDs are mastered differently (usually brickwalled or heavily compressed). I have many MFSL and original release CDs which sound better than the SACD version which, if one suscribed to the superior technology theory, wouldn't think was possible.
This is actually why I've bought some digital downloads from Acoustic Sounds. I like that they disclose who did the master, and I've long suspected that you'll find better masters in the releases aimed at not being listened to on cheap earbuds while walking down the street with tons of ambient noise. They have to raise the quiet sections of a track for that type of situation, or you wouldn't be able to hear those quite sections, without turning up the volume so much that you'd rupture your eardrums when a loud section kicks in (my digital copy of of Ella and Louis has a few moments of pop the in-ears out when the horns kick in because holy crap that hurt)
Wouldn't it be nice if downloads came with 2 masters? Like a high and low ambient noise master? Or if they all just had the low ambient noise master, and you could use the DSP options in something like the bulk transcoder in dbpoweramp to create that? A pipe dream I'm sure, but still.