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SACD
Arrives
Finally it's happening!
Chandos releases SACDs. And so does Universal, the biggest of
the majors and they, like Chandos, are releasing 'hybrid' SACDs.
Our first release
will be next month (March 2003) and these
releases will be:
Vaughan Williams
'A London Symphony'/Hickox CHSA 5001
Britten War Requiem/Hickox CHSA 5007(2)
Herschel Symphonies/Bamert CHSA 5005
Piazzolla Orchestral Works/Castagna CHSA 5006
Walking the Wild Rhondda/Heneghan and Lawson CHSA 5010
'Hybrid' means
that it will be backward compatible, playable on normal CD players
due to its two-layer construction, one layer of standard CD (16-bit/44.1kHz)
encoding and another layer, read by a different laser, of SACD
(Direct Stream Digital - DSD) encoding.
Therefore these
discs will have three formats on them: in SACD (DSD) format there
will be multi-channel content (surround sound) and stereo; also
on the disc will be CD format stereo.
Chandos is releasing
SACD because the industry seems to feel that it is the purest
audio option available as the DVD has become more widely accepted
as a video format. The use of the 120mm silver disc format that
is familiar, both visually and operationally, is important for
public acceptability. Most major and independent record companies
are going down this route, and we do also know that many of the
so-called 'golden ears' in the music industry are behind SACD
rather than DVD-A, although both are very high quality systems.
More
about SACD from Chandos
A
quick guide to SACD
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