Why is SACD so restricted?

[CatManDo]

On 1/7/2021 at 3:32 AM, sandyk said:

 There are plenty of SACDs that appear to have come from the original RBCD master as can be seen from the Frequency Spectrum in an Audio editing program such as Sound Forge.

There are also plenty of others where there is no musical information to even 22kHz, yet have been released on SACD where a normal RBCD would have sounded at least as good

 

Indeed, many classical SACDs have no frequencies above 22 or 24kHz. But that's not because they were made from a CD master (that happens too with some reissues, unfortunately), but because a 24/44 or 24/48 PCM recording is the original source.

 

Smaller european labels like BIS, Audite, CPO and others, who released many SACDs, have continued to record in 24/44 or 24/48 multichannel PCM when 24/96 had long been the standard.

 

But it was justified to release those recordings on SACD, because multichannel sound is considered the main selling point of SACD vs CD.

 

I discovered this when I ripped my entire SACD collection (>1000 discs) and made a spectrogram analysis (convert a track from ISO to PCM 24/88, then open in an analyzing tool).

 

The biggest culprit concerning fake hi-rez releases is the german Delta Music label, which also does the Membran reissues

 

https://www.hraudio.net/music.php?format=0&genre=0&label=187

https://www.hraudio.net/discsbylabel.php?label=353

 

All of their SACDs, even when an analogue master exists, have no content over 22kHz, i.e. they probably used a CD master as a source. In addition to that, they added fake multichannel sound, even when the source material was mono.

 

 

[sandyk]

5 hours ago, CatManDo said:

But it was justified to release those recordings on SACD, because multichannel sound is considered the main selling point of SACD vs CD.

 It would be interesting to know what % of those SACDs with multichannel sound are actually played in a true Multi Channel system.

I suspect that it would only be a small percentage. The same applies to DVD-A .

[Kal Rubinson]

51 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 It would be interesting to know what % of those SACDs with multichannel sound are actually played in a true Multi Channel system.

I am guessing not the majority.  It is one of the reasons why, even before CD sales sagged, some SACD/multichannel producers began moving to CD physical releases and to file downloads for multichannel.  

[Kal Rubinson]

6 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

I am guessing not the majority.  It is one of the reasons why, even before CD sales sagged, some SACD/multichannel producers began moving to CD physical releases and to file downloads for multichannel.  

..................................and I prefer it that way. 👍