Reissue roundup: to SACD or not.(Sony Super Audio CD)(Brief Article)

My apologies to you for my regular column's absence these past few issues, but I do have an excuse which, in the course of this installment, and in my staff picks for this year, will become all the more valid to you. I have been very busy in this absence; the reasons will prove a value for those who have been considering one of the new hi-rez digital formats. Explaining the absence begins with a reminder that in my picks for 2000, I had made mention of four letters, two of them all too familiar to the audio enthusiast which are now preceded by the letters, S and A. That's right, when you put SA in front of CD (SA stands for Super Audio, Sony's nomenclature for its new Direct Stream Digital process), you get one of the latest buzzwords in high resolution digital audio. Super Audio CD has been around for a bit more than two years now, but I was taken by surprise when last year one reader e-mailed me to ask what it is, and where he could hear it. For those of you who have not yet seen or heard an SACD, please note that these special discs that look exactly regular CDs require an SACD player.

I had been given the opportunity to audition Sony's flagship SACD player, the SCD-1, for more than a week almost two years ago, and was immediately taken by its sense of ease and musical rightness, no matter what kind of music it played. But, at $5,000, I thought it was a bit expensive for me, and waited for lower priced players to be introduced. There are now more than a dozen models to choose from for as little as $300 or as much as $16,000, and this includes several multi-channel models.

I was prompted by an e-mail from one of our subscribers to go ahead and take the SACD plunge as he had, and I must say that this decision has been one of the best I've made in recent years, so, thanks, KBA, for helping to make this happen. These past several months have been spent listening to a number of the great titles from the past that have appeared in this new format, and investigating some new artists ...