John Puccio responds ...(Forum)

Reader Emmett Byrem makes two good points in his letter in Issue 98. First, he finds the sound of the Rossini Overtures with Marriner on PentaTone Classics' SACD (presumably in the two-channel stereo mode) inferior to his copy of the Overtures on Philips CDR 950. Second, he wonders why I'm reviewing the two-channel-only versions of these Overtures when the PentaTone disc has a layer of four channels in Super Audio. Fair enough.

In the first case, I compared the stereo layer of the Rossini to the latest stereo re-issue on Philips Trio 473 967-2 CD and found the PentaTone superior in almost every way. Two people hearing differing results from CDs is not unusual, especially when the discs being compared to the PentaTone are different (I don't own Philips CDR 950). Even if our comparisons were the same and we heard different results, it would simply mean the two listeners were different people, with different playback systems, and listening for different things. Even in the same room listening to the same disc on the same system, two different listeners will often hear different results. Or perhaps you haven't attended a typical audiophile shootout. I can only report on what I hear, not on what you will hear. I liked the Rossini disc from PentaTone so well (in stereo), in fact, that I included it as one of my favorite releases of 2003. Ironically, I find the PentaTone remasterings "less bright and more dynamic" (Mr. Byrem's observation in reverse) than the latest Philips remastering.

In answer to why I didn't review the Overtures in their multichannel format, it's simply because I don't have an SACD player or five channels in my dedicated music listening room. Despite my explaining this situation to Telarc, they keep sending me their SACD releases, so the least I could do, I felt, was review the two-channel stereo layers. Nor do I plan ever to buy an SACD player for my dedicated music listening room just for the sake of the magazine. I have a five-channel home theater system in a separate room for movies on DVD, but that's an entirely different set of speakers designed to reproduce the best possible movie-theater sound in that particular room.

I'm sure Telarc knows what they're doing. They're investing a great deal of their money, their reputation, and their future in the SACD medium, and I wish them well. It's certainly a fine audio reproduction process. However, SACD has been out and about now for some time, and it has not had much market penetration. Personally, I don't know a single person, except the Editor, who owns ...