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Having only recently purchased an SACD player (Arcam CD37) and collecting SACDs, I'm curious about the policies of some labels with regard to new releases. Hyperion's recoding of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Marc-Andre Hamelin, recorded in 2006, is in SACD/CD compatible. Hamelin's recording of the Scharwenka Piano Concerto No. 1 (with the Rubinstein Fourth)was recorded in 2005, and came out in SACD/CD. Many if not most of Hyperion's releases in the past few years are in CD only. Chandos seems to have a selective policy as well. Its award-winning recording of vocal works by Stanford was in SACD/CD compatible. Other releases from this label are in CD only. I'm curious why Hyperion, Chandos and some other labels haven't issued everything they've recorded in the past 10 or 15 years in SACD/CD compatible. Does anyone have an answer to this?
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Hyperion has ceased SACD releases a few years ago. And with Chandos, I suppose they are selective in what they release on SACD as it is more costly to prepare a hybrid master for SACD than to press RBCDs or what most classical companies are doing.....offering hi~rez downloads.
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Post by Johnno May 24, 2012 (3 of 5)
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Frank Romeril said:
Having only recently purchased an SACD player (Arcam CD37) and collecting SACDs, I'm curious about the policies of some labels with regard to new releases. Hyperion's recoding of the Brahms Second Piano Concerto with Marc-Andre Hamelin, recorded in 2006, is in SACD/CD compatible. Hamelin's recording of the Scharwenka Piano Concerto No. 1 (with the Rubinstein Fourth)was recorded in 2005, and came out in SACD/CD. Many if not most of Hyperion's releases in the past few years are in CD only. Chandos seems to have a selective policy as well. Its award-winning recording of vocal works by Stanford was in SACD/CD compatible. Other releases from this label are in CD only. I'm curious why Hyperion, Chandos and some other labels haven't issued everything they've recorded in the past 10 or 15 years in SACD/CD compatible. Does anyone have an answer to this?
I can't offer an explanation as to why companies release some things on SACD and not others -- I guess you would need to ask the likes of Ralph Couzens of Chandos that question, or whoever makes such decisions -- but I was interested in finding out why Hyperion (when they were releasing SACDs) had a double inventory policy, i.e. releasing both hybrid SACDs and standard RBCDs of the same recordings, which seemed very wasteful to me. I know I've mentioned the following elsewhere on more than one occasion but I wrote to Mike Spring, now a Director of the company, and asked him. His reply was straightforward enough; the company was not prepared to risk losing sales to those who had no interest in SACD and who might not be prepared to pay the higher price asked for hybrid SACDs. It was expected that such people would look for alternative recordings of the same work(s) on another label, so Hyperon felt compelled to produce RBCDs of the SACD material at the same time to satisfy that demand.
After the dust had settled with a particular release, I wonder if the bean-counters did the maths and agreed that, at the end of the day, the company had made the right decision?
It would seem that Chandos has not adopted a similar policy and neither has BIS. Here in New Zealand both RBCDs and SACDs from the same company sell for the same price anyway (suggesting, I suppose, that the RBCDs are way, way overpriced OR that very little profit is being made on the SACDs. I suspect the former).
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Post by Jonty May 25, 2012 (4 of 5)
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I recall that someone from Chandos said that they would only release SACDs where the acoustic justified it. So we wouldn't get SACDs recorded in Studio 7 in Manchester, for example. Hopefully with the move to the new studios in Salford we will get more SACDs with the BBC Phil.
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Post by Claude May 25, 2012 (5 of 5)
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Jonty said:
I recall that someone from Chandos said that they would only release SACDs where the acoustic justified it.
I think this means the decision is linked to the faisability of a good multi-channel recording.
When it's decided to record in stereo only, there won't be a SACD release, but only a CD and hi-rez (stereo) download.
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