Where to get Jimi Hendrix & ACDC best Hi Res Releases SACD or Digital

[tmtomh]

For Hendrix, as of now I would say the best-sounding CD sources for the three main studio albums - Are You Experienced, Axis Bold as Love, and Electric Ladyland - are the original U.S. Reprise CDs. You have to be careful, though: The Reprise CDs were remastered with NoNoise, a form of noise reduction that negatively impacted the sound. The original, "pre-NoNoise" versions are the ones you want. One way to ID the correct ones is that they were mastered by Lee Herschberg. The NoNoised ones have a mastering credit of Joe Gastwirt.

 

They are available on discogs, although right now the prices on Are You Experienced and Axis are insane. There's a copy of Electric Ladyland for $23US though, which is a good price for this title.

 

https://www.discogs.com/The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Are-You-Experienced/release/3663919

https://www.discogs.com/The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Axis-Bold-As-Love/release/3756473

https://www.discogs.com/The-Jimi-Hendrix-Experience-Are-You-Experienced/release/3663919

 

The first two albums do show up at more reasonable prices from time to time, on discogs and on eBay. For reference, I got Are You Experienced off eBay for $7 a few years ago (although that was an extremely lucky deal - I'd say $15 is a more reasonable target price). For Axis I had to pay around $20.

 

Also, there's a great-sounding best-of compilation called the Ultimate Experience, which came out in 1995. Unfortunately, the one to have is a specific version, the "special edition," which is a UK/EU release that's HDCD encoded with the Peak Extend feature. This produces a more dynamic sound, but it requires an HDCD-capable CD player, or alternatively there's free software that can take a rip of the CD and decode the HDCD info into a 24-bit high-res file that you can then play on a computer or stream to your stereo.

 

https://www.discogs.com/Jimi-Hendrix-The-Ultimate-Experience-Special-Edition/release/3344026

 

For Cry of Love, the 2014 Experience Hendrix remaster is fantastic, still in print, available cheaply, and the best-sounding version out there.

 

Blues also is a great-sounding CD, and the 1994 original and 1998 reissue are sonically identical and available very cheaply.

 

Finally, Are You Experienced and Axis are coming out next month in SACD format. No one has heard them yet, but they could possibly the best-sounding ever. I believe they are $35 each - and since no one yet knows how they will sound, it's kind of a risk to pre-order them.

 

http://audiophile.elusivedisc.com/audio/Jimi-Hendrix-Sacd

 

Hope this helps!