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Review by AmirKessner April 28, 2007 (2 of 5 found this review helpful)
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Sonics:   |
Have you ever bothered to imagine how a 5.1-channel MONOPHONIC disc might sound? :-)
Well, here is your chance to find out, though it's not GUARANTEED to be mono, as Membran are not very explicit about any reprocessing the (surely mono) recording has been gone thru.
The nylon-sealed carton that covers the jewel case says "HYBRID MULTICHANNEL: PLAYS IN BOTH CD AND SACD PLAYERS" (their upper-case) and then "SACD Stereo / SACD Surround Sound / CD Audio". When you open the nylon and remove the carton cover, you see the same text, but now DDD is added. It's only when you open the booklet that you can see that the recordings are from 1951, 1954, 1955 and 1956. The sound as such is not BAD, but is pretty mono-ish, and definitely cannot possibly be DDD... Any spatial effects might as well be imagined, as often happens with explicit mono recordings. Some electronic reprocessing may have been performed, I can't tell. Maybe a bitwise comparison of the channels is required for this...
Anyway, that's not the only problem with the presentation. From outside you can't even tell if it's a solo disc or a quartet. Again, you'll have to consult the booklet to see that one track is solo piano and the others are of the quartet, all featuring Paul Desmond, but two different bassists and two different drummers.
The performances are probably OK, but I won't comment on them – they might be as authentic as the multichannel sound...:-)
There are similar problems with the Supreme Jazz: Count Basie and Supreme Jazz: Jay Jay Johnson albums I've bought. I'm not going to buy any more Membran SACDs. I don't know about you, but I don't like to be, shall we say, "mislead"?
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