Stokowski: Rhapsodies - Symphony of the Air
Gershwin: Rhapsody in Blue - Fiedler/Boston Pops
A friend of mine found a good deal on the RCA Living Stereo 60 CD box set and asked me if I knew how the SQ of that set compared to other available releases in the Living Stereo series. I had purchased the set as a gift for my mother and ended up getting it back when she moved int the nursing home and since I also had both the original CD release and copies of the SACD Hybrid discs of both of these albums I thought IO would sit down and do some critical comparisons among the versions.
I was very surprised at how much better the box set CD sound when compared to the original releases. The originals sounded very muddy and cluttered in comparison. The detail on the box set discs was much clearer and the lateral soundstage much better defined.
That said, listening to the CD layer of the hybrid SACDs brought the SQ up even another notch further. On the SACD the spacial cues were much clearer and the sound stage much more three dimensional. In addition to projecting more depth in the stage the hybrid disc also gave each instrument a much more realistic sense of existing in its own space. In general just a more realistic presentation.
In terms of the magnitude of these difference I think even a casual listener would easily here the difference between the original and the box set discs. The differences between the box set and the SACD were more subtle and while they would be fairly easily pick up by and audiophile listening on a decent quality system, I not sure if they would be so apparent to John Q. Public who A) would most likely be listening on a lower resolution mass market type system and B) would not have the trained ear of an audiophile, who is used to listening for these types of attributes.
And lastly, this phenomenon of the CD layer of a hybrid disc sounding better than a single layer CD pressing of the same album has occurred in every comparison I have made cutting across classical jazz and rock albums. I am not sure if it has something to do with the physical media and how it is made or with the mastering process for SACD releases, but I have yet to find a case where it did not hold true. Anybody have any thoughts as to why this may be?