| Review by nickc April 29, 2004 (1 of 2 found this review helpful)
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Performance:  Sonics: |
One of Naxos's earliest sacds and not a total success. Performance is generally good but the recording lets the side down a bit. It is recorded in a huge, empty and reverberant space which souds like an aircraft hanger! Uranus fares worst in this respect - it sounds like we are swimming in a sea of reverberation from the bass drum. Mystic Trumpeter sounds much better for some reason. Anyway i'm just so happy that Naxos are moving into sacd because if they really get into it everyone will have to follow (on the classical side at least).
ps the shostakovich 7 was recorded much more successfully by naxos so it seems they are ironing out the early "kinks" if i can call them that.
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| Review by sacd_fan_2007 February 6, 2008 (3 of 4 found this review helpful)
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| The SACD sound here is very good but not great like some. Neptune was very effective to my ears, which is rare in The Planets recordings. That is, the entire Neptune movement came through clear at one volume setting. Overall, the individual movements are well played with good contrast. My only major complaint is some sloppy fanfare playing by the trumpets in Mars. I don't enjoy the performance as much as Montreal/Dutoit on RBCD, but it'll do for now until better options are available on SACD.
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| Review by Whitehall February 10, 2010 (5 of 8 found this review helpful)
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The stereo SACD sound was actually uncomfortable to listen to when played at a high volume on my Thiel 3.6s. That is very unusual for even CDs much less SACDs or new vinyl on my system which is "revealing" in audiophile parlance. And some of the tracks were expressly written for high volume performances. The quieter sections were much better but if you can't crank up "Mars - Bringer of War" why bother?
The liner notes only say it was recorded at 24 bits. That's better than Redbook, but not necessarily by much.
Besides the poor stereo sonics, the performance is true to the traditions of this piece and quite competitive to the other versions I've heard over the years.
Sorry, but I can't recommend this recording to anyone with a decent stereo system. It's the recording engineers' fault - or the producer's if too cheap to do SACD right.
Another over-priced recording not worth the SACD premium.
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| Review by HeresJohnny August 16, 2011 (2 of 11 found this review helpful)
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| There's a DVD-A version of this recording that was mastered at 24bits / 44khz. I assume that the same master was used for this SACD - probably not worth the extra premium.
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