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yes, there is a consistent sonic difference

Posted by jeromelang on March 8, 2006 at 07:57:53

In Reply to: Japanese SACDs vs. U.S. SACDs posted by Quint on March 7, 2006 at 17:03:33:

speaking as someone who owns multiple copies of us and jap pressings, on both sacds and lps of many recordings available on both media, yes, there is consistent differences between jap and us sacds, played in my system, with sony sacd players. (i can't say the same for a meitner based system. emm lab combi is notoriously good in rejecting word clock jitter, which might explain why you don't hear the differences that somebody do)

specifically on sacds, imho, the sonic differences are due in part to:

1. dsd master duplication process
2. optical disc chemical composition
3. pitch shift arising from ac power supply differences

1. take example, sony sacds. among the titles which has been pressed in both us and japan, off hand that i remember i own: satch play fats, toto iv, abraxas, the stranger, thriller, can't stand the weather, we are in love, carol king(stereo), kind of blue(stereo), she's so unusual, divas live, mariah carey's the ones, bernstein's rapshody in blue, bernstein's new world symphony, bob dylan's blonde on blonde(stereo), star dust,... and many more. mostly mastered in new york. dupe copies of the dsd masters were made for japanese pressing plant for the japan market. the dupe processes created sonic differences. you might describe the sacds made from the dupe master as sounding diluted in flavour. this adverse effect has been described by joe harley in the hi-rez forum. make a search. the same problem is also noted on emi titles - like pink floyd's dark side of the moon, and norah jones' debut album. both jap copies sound extremely diluted when compared to their european sonopress(DSOTM) and Crest National(NJ) equivalents. another example also experienced is helmut lotti's my tribute to the king and pop classics in symphony, both which were first released on the emi label, then subsequently re-released on umg label. the later releases sound diluted again. both releases were all made in sonopress, germany. go figure.

2. the optical disc chemical composition for both us and japan sony pressings are different. the jap sony pressings have a "hot" flavour. basically you may describe the character as "harsh" or 'peaky" on trebles. in many cases, with many of the titles mentioned above, i often get a ringing fatigue after a relatively short listening period. this harshness has been noticed consistently across the many sony titles i own in both us and jap pressings. you may be able to reduce the fatigueness by treating the discs in certain ways - like cyrogenic treatment for example, which i had done. subsequently i went and made re-purchases of the jap pressings that went through the cyro treatment and i was able to compared both. while i prefer the non-treated discs, i like the us pressings even better. they are more analog sounding.

3. pitch shift arising from ac power supply differences. japan is 100v country vs 110v for the us. that's the main reason i feel why the sony sacds from japan run at slower speed and thus giving me lower pitches. ask christine tham. when i played toto iv in her system, she noticed the pitch differences immediately. interesting, i also notice this pitch problem on sony's rbcds and lps too. for instance, i own multiple copies of wham's make it big and billy joel's the stranger on lps, rbcds, and sacds. both jap lps and rbcds are lower in pitch compared to german, uk and us pressings. the jap sacd has the same pitch as the other jap lp and rbcd. the wham!title was not released in us market.

i would say: buy us first pressings whenever you can. but for you, maybe it doesn't matter with meitner sacd combos. even the jerome syndrome which i often described here is virtually imperceptible on meitner. that's how good they are.

hope that helps.

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