[fredfung28]

Duplicates post- deleted

 

[KaiSc]

This post is a FYI for anyone with CD's and SACD's gathering dust.

My great Sony SCD-1 (modded) died after 20+ years and I had about 300 CD's and SACD's that I no longer could play. I had some great SACD's that I could not stream from TIDAL or Qobuz. I did not want to spend too much to buy a SACD player since playing discs would not be a primary concern.

I had a used $250 OPPO PDB-83 Blu-ray player also gathering dust. I ended up buying the geerfab D.BOB digital breakout box for $675. With this device I can hook the OPPO via HDMI into the D.BOB and then output SPDIF to my Benchmark DAC3B. The DAC3B is connected to my RAAL VM-1a tube amp. The D.BOB allows for the transfer out of the pure DSD signal into the D.BOB (I thought that was illegal). PCM is also supported.

https://geerfab.com/audio/

My old Sony SCD-1 is a classic SACD player and one of the best SACD players ever made, especially after the Vacuum State mods. A well know mod back in the day. The D.BOB was great on my 2-channel system, more detailed than the old Sony SCD-1. However, the SCD-1 still won out for me since it had an overall magical sound after the mods.

Now the D.BOB | DAC3B | VM-1a has that SCD-1 magic but with more details. I am definitely going to brush the dust off my disks and play them a lot more.

I also have fibre optical streaming setup into the Benchmark DAC3B. That is a great quality stream, but playing those disks is also amazing (maybe better than streaming).

I tend to play discs (CD, DVD Audio, SACD, even vinyl) more and more these days.

Streaming started great in it’s early days.

But today the content is replaced by “remastered”, so called HiRes versions more and more, that simply are pushed up to crazy III Loudness War levels:
Killing all dynamics in favor of squeezing out the last dB of loudness, upsampled for pseudo/fake HiRes, all in a way that you hardly recognize the original great releases from then.

I do, of course, use streaming to discover new stuff.
But luckily I have a lot of my favorite music on discs, that stay like they are forever, giving me more fun on my Raal SR-1a, and a sound quality that streaming often lacks.

 

[nfandi]

I tend to play discs (CD, DVD Audio, SACD, even vinyl) more and more these days.

Streaming started great in it’s early days.

But today the content is replaced by “remastered”, so called HiRes versions more and more, that simply are pushed up to crazy III Loudness War levels:
Killing all dynamics in favor of squeezing out the last dB of loudness, upsampled for pseudo/fake HiRes, all in a way that you hardly recognize the original great releases from then.

I do, of course, use streaming to discover new stuff.
But luckily I have a lot of my favorite music on discs, that stay like they are forever, giving me more fun on my Raal SR-1a, and a sound quality that streaming often lacks.

Kai do you think that’s true of the remasters done by Steven Wilson or those of the Beatles done by Giles Martin?

 

[ApertureSilence]

I for one love the Wilson remasters, especially for Jethro Tull. Giles also does a fine job, but maybe strays too far from the originals sometime.

Whoever recently remastered those Red/Blue Beatles CDs should be fired into the sun, though.

 

[yyzSB]

Kai do you think that’s true of the remasters done by Steven Wilson or those of the Beatles done by Giles Martin?

For your own safety do not ask Danny about the Giles Martin remasters of the Beatles.

 

[ApertureSilence]

For your own safety do not ask Danny about the Giles Martin remasters of the Beatles.

I know what I need to do now…

 

[nfandi]

For your own safety do not ask Danny about the Giles Martin remasters of the Beatles.

I’ll ask him when/if I meet him. Should I wear a flak jacket? I happen to think Revolver sounds great. And I agree with Aperture about the Steven Wilson remasters of Jethro Tull.

 

[ApertureSilence]

I did think Steven Wilson pulled the strings too far back on his remaster of ABC’s All of My Heart…

 

[rlawry]

I liked the Steven Wilson remixes of Gentle Giant's records. Their fidelity, at least on Qobuz streams, are much improved.

 

[nfandi]

I liked the Steven Wilson remixes of Gentle Giant's records. Their fidelity, at least on Qobuz streams, are much improved.

Haven’t got around to the Gentle Giant one’s yet but I will do this week.

 

[ApertureSilence]

What do y’all think of Dweezil Zappa’s remix of Machine Head?

 

[KaiSc]

I tend to play discs (CD, DVD Audio, SACD, even vinyl) more and more these days.

Streaming started great in it’s early days.

But today the content is replaced by “remastered”, so called HiRes versions more and more, that simply are pushed up to crazy III Loudness War levels:
Killing all dynamics in favor of squeezing out the last dB of loudness, upsampled for pseudo/fake HiRes, all in a way that you hardly recognize the original great releases from then.

I do, of course, use streaming to discover new stuff.
But luckily I have a lot of my favorite music on discs, that stay like they are forever, giving me more fun on my Raal SR-1a, and a sound quality that streaming often lacks.

Kai do you think that’s true of the remasters done by Steven Wilson or those of the Beatles done by Giles Martin?

Steven Wilson’s work is simply great.
I.e. he lifted the classic “Jethro Tull - Songs From The Wood” into a new dimension, really nice to listen to.
His mixes are transparent, dynamic and quite true to the original in a musical sense.

Listening to them on Raal headphones is a real treat.


I’m not that familiar with the multitude of Beatles remasters and new mixes and newly overdubbed versions.
Although in my Studio I have re-recorded the whole Beatles repertoire several times, which needed to analyze every single note they ever played… including the mistakes in their recordings.

One thing all the new releases of the original Beatles recordings seem to have in common:
Each new one is louder and more squished, less dynamic than the one before.

But - Beatles never were my cup of tea.
At their time I was a fan of Deep Purple, Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Nazareth, Thin Lizzy, Hendrix, Doors, Santana, Cream, BTO, BOC, CCR, Al Di Meola, Keith Jarrett and the whole ECM bunch, lots of Classical music, …