Miles Davis - New 5 SACD Box Set from Esoteric Japan (December 2016)

[duxservit]

Apologies if this has been posted. For Miles Davis fans, the folks at Esoteric Japan have produced a new box set of some of the beloved albums of Miles Davis:

 

ESOTERIC MILES DAVIS GREAT 5 | ESOTERIC COMPANY

[duxservit]

no Blue?

 

what's the cost?

 

Box set cost is around USD$250. Several already advertised on eBay.

 

I ordered mine from Elusive Disc because they have a 15% discount currently.

[duxservit]

AFAIK, Esoteric has never done a transfer from original (analogue) tapes. They always worked on digital (PCM) copies provided by the original label. They then play those back through a DAC and then an DSD converter (using their own Esoteric equipment) to master the SACDs. This has been confirmed by an Esoteric official.

 

Notice that their technical description only mentions the converters and cables, but not the tape deck, and they say "The criterion of re-mastering is to faithfully capture the quality of the original master. ", but don't say the SACDs were mastered from the original tapes.

 

So it all depends on the quality of the transfer done by the original label.

 

I've been able to compare two Esoteric SACDs with later DSD transfers by Universal for their SHM-SACDs, and the Esoteric SACDs sounded much worse, with a more bloated (artificially warm) sound lacking detail. This was the Mahler 9 by Bernstein and the Tchaikovsky Symphony 5 by Mravinsky.

 

Those Miles Davis albums now released by Esoteric have been mastered for SACD already 15 years ago by Sony (mostly using remixes from the 3-track tapes), and some of them have more recently been released on SACD by Mobile Fidelity (using the original stereo mixdown tapes, i.e. a tape generation higher) . The MoFi versions sound much much better, because the Sony remixes have a rather thin sound. The Sketches of Spain Sony SACD mastering especially was a dramatic failure.

 

If Esoteric used the original Sony DSD transfers, they are not worth getting. I think the original single layer Sony SACDs can still be found at a lower price. "Porgy and Bess" and "Miles Smiles" are the only one of those five albums that have not yet been reissued by Mobile Fidelity, and the Sony SACDs sound quite good.

@CatManDo: Thank you for this great input. I have most of the Mile Davis MoFis SACDs. Going to cancel my Esoteric order, pending review from the experts here. My shelf space is just too valuable these days :-)