Post by fausto K March 14, 2015 (1 of 4)
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WOW, Captain Beefheart on SACD, who'd expect that?! And Doc at the Radar Station is my favourite of the bunch.
But I recall the original 1980 mastering was done on the CBS Disc Computer TM System. This was a storage/mastering system, but I don't know if this means that the analogue source was digitalised (I suppose so), so I venture to say that unless this SACD is sourced from the original recording tapes, it's a pretty useless release. The redbook, both 1st '86 master on CD and the later '06 remaster, sound pretty good anyway.
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fausto K said:
WOW, Captain Beefheart on SACD, who'd expect that?! And Doc at the Radar Station is my favourite of the bunch.
But I recall the original 1980 mastering was done on the CBS Disc Computer TM System. This was a storage/mastering system, but I don't know if this means that the analogue source was digitalised (I suppose so), so I venture to say that unless this SACD is sourced from the original recording tapes, it's a pretty useless release. The redbook, both 1st '86 master on CD and the later '06 remaster, sound pretty good anyway.
fausto, if you follow the link to CDJapan they state that the Beefheart remasters are DSD mastered from the original UK Analogue tapes.
I'm sure Don Van Vliet never sounded better!
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With these Beefheart releases we're closer than ever to see Zappa albums appear on SHM-SACD. DSD remasters have been already done and the label is Universal. Fingers crossed.
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Post by fausto K March 14, 2015 (4 of 4)
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rammiepie said:
fausto, if you follow the link to CDJapan they state that the Beefheart remasters are DSD mastered from the original UK Analogue tapes.
I'm sure Don Van Vliet never sounded better!
hmm, this seems in fact to confirm my worries, since there is NO reason NOT to believe that these UK analogue tapes are just copies of what was stored on the CBS DisComputer System, i.e. digitally sourced!
Only use of the ORIGINAL US studio masters will be proof positive that the SHM-SACD is a DSD transfer of the analogue original. The fact that Universal says analogue tape is used as basis for the SHM-SACD says nothing. There are currently hosts of artists who e.g. record in analogue, mix in digital, and then transfer the whole thing again to analogue tape, because it gets you that faux-warm analogue sound. The same happened with lots of artists in the early digital era, take Peter Gabriel's SO: the SACD is said to be based on the original analogue tape, and that's true, but what is not said is that the mixing prior to producing the final master tape as basis for the commercial CD & LP (and thus any later format) was done entirely in the digital domain, on these early Mitsubishi digital machines. So, technically, one is right to say that the commercial formats are based on analogue tapes, but somewhere down the chain digitalisation took place. It's all a hoax. What I'm saying is that I don't believe for a bit that this new Captain Beefheart series is any better than the existing redbooks.
EDIT: The CBS DisComputer System facilitated better vinyl cutting, so it's possibly only a computer enhanced cutting facility, which leaves the analogue signal path in tact.
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