What's the deal with Japanese Import SACD's?

[j20056]

I discovered that Japan has a pretty rich collection of SACD imports for many classic rock bands, and that are not available otherwise.

They cost between $70-$85. Are they real SACD in 24/96 from the master tapes, or just BS upsampling of redbook CD's? I would spend that much for a lot of classic albums that otherwise will never see the hi-res daylight.

Opinions appreciated as always.

 

[Jesse]

too much polished from my personal view. I bought two Esoteric's SACDs, one of them is Karlos Kleiber's Brahms' symphony originally digitally recorded in the 80's, and I would say it's worse than the Redbook CD. I also bought a lot of Toshiba made EMI CDs, and these are also too much polished. The only Japanese CDs I personally love are those XRCDs from JVC. I compared the US made Heifetz's Beethoven Violin Concerto SACD with the XRCD24 version, and the XRCD version is much better maybe because the XRCD didn't cut too much hiss noise in the high frequency part.

Jesse from China