emaidel said:

I'd love to purchase exclusively SACD's, but much of the music I look for just isn't available on it. I'm a member of the Spartanburg Festival Chorus in Spartanburg, SC, and we've performed a number of seldom-performed, and seldom-recorded works that I purchased on CD because they're not available anywhere on the SACD format. One is Ralph Vaughan William's "Hodie," a huge, splashy, very Hollywood-ish Christmas oratorio that would easily lend itself to a spectacular demonstration-quality SACD, and another is Randall Thomopson's "The Peaceable Kingdom," a purely acappella work that would also sound lovely on an SACD. So, I purchase the "lowly" redbook CD's of each. I like both of those CD's, and don't regard CD's as poorly as Theresa clearly does, but, boy!, would I love to hear this music on a BIS or Ondine SACD. That would be just wonderful!

emaidel said:

I posted elesewhere, and quite a while back, that it was the CD medium that wound up developing my love for classical music. I always liked a number of classical "warhorses" like "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," or the "Firebird Suite," but on LP, the quiet passages of many a work were simply ruined by the incessant surface noise, snaps, crackles and pops of a typical vinyl pressing. When I played my very first CD and heard the orchestra come blaring forth out of a background of complete silence, I was instantly hooked.

The quality of CD's improved dramatically over the years, and I was a strong supporter of the Telarc label, since most Telarc recordings were very much those of "demonstration quality." I purchased (and, because of my position in the consumer electronics industry received many Telarc discs for free) just about anything on the label, and started to both learn, and appreciate the vast world of classical music.

While SACD's offer a still greater and more enjoyable listening experience, I've learned that I'm still not too old (I'm 64) to continue to learn about, and appreciate music I've not heard before, which includes "Hodie," and "The Peaceable Kingdon." I feel that my life has been enriched by these experiences, and hope that the SACD medium will only continue to reinforce that enrichment, Telarc duds notwithstanding.

bissie said:

Hello,

this is Robert from BIS, aka bissie.

In the current business climate even we have to look at bean-counting.

Since we release all our SACD:s as Hybrids and since we don't charge a premium, but absorb the extra costs for recording, editing, mastering and production of an SACD, selling at the same price as a RBCD,

*I would be extremely interested in knowing how many EXTRA copies we sell because of the SACD option.*

Mathematically, starting from the edited master tape, we need to sell some 600 EXTRA copies of the production in order to break even for the extra costs of producing the SACD, compared to releasing only a RBCD.

Question: do we do it? Since we don't have double inventory, there is no way for me to tell.

Obviously there are other factors as well: prestige, good-will, satisfaction with a superb product, but, when it comes to paying the salaries (BIS is nowadays probably the only classical company in the world with its own, full-time production staff - we have 7 producers/engineers hired that roam the 6 continents of the world recording with our own equipment) we need the green stuff.

So, since this would be the relevant Forum to ask something like that: how many of you, who do buy the occasional BIS SACD would abstain from doing so, were the identical programme to appear only as RBCD?

I think this is a relevant question to put, especially so, since many of my colleagues seemingly have made the same calculation - and then abandoned SACD.

Best - Robert