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Maddening Musical Mystery! Getz/Gilberto...

Posted by mr.bear (A) on March 22, 2017 at 15:05:07

Listening to a new toy, a Sony Universal disc player UHP-H1, supposedly tailored for music. To see if these newfangled SACD's sound really SUPER, I bought an SACD copy of the beloved album ("Getz/Gilberto" Verve 314 589 595-2, 2002) and sat down on a nice quiet afternoon to compare that to the remastered CD (Verve V6/V-8545, 2014). The CD states the first 8 tracks are the "original stereo album" (although there are also mono tracks on this CD).

Comparing SACD/CD, it slaps you right in the face that they have reversed L&R channels, most distinctly noticeable on Track 1 "The Girl Form Ipanema" and Track 5 "Corcovado" where Astrud's voice is panned hard. What the heck-- that's crazy!

Also, the SACD playback is lovely but is a few dB lower than the CD. Is this done to allow more headroom for peaks utilizing the slightly greater dynamic range of SACDs?

I chose this particular album because the CD version seemed slightly too "thick" sounding, bassy, and almost distorted in some passages (like the vocal and sax mics re being way overloaded). The SACD is cleaner and prettier but the channel-swap is freaking me out.

Anybody know what's the deal?

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