Is Pentatone Bailing on SACD?


As most Audiophiles know, SACD was released with great acclaim a few decades ago, and failed to find traction in the market place, even before the advent of streaming.  The one exception has been Classical Music, where several thousand titles remain available.
  Classical listeners are very familiar with the Pentatone label, founded roughly 15 years ago by former Phillips employees.  They resurrected old Quad recordings from Phillips, DG, and other labels.  They simultaneously promoted new Artists, such as Julia Fischer, Arabella Steinbacher, Daniel Muller-Schott, and many others.  They began releasing High Resolution downloads and streaming  in addition to SACDs, a sensible move in view of industry trends.
  I just bought a superb Pentatone disc, Carlos Kalmar and the Oregon SO playing works by Walter Piston, Howard Hanson, and Morton Gould.  I can’t recommend the disc enough for its musical content, and it sounds superb, especially in my 2 channel system .  It was when I first popped in one of my HT systems that I realized that it wasn’t an SACD.  I scoured the jewel case for the SACD logo, and my eyesight is getting progtrssively worse, but didn’t detect it anywhere.  I have been buying Pentatone discs for years and must have over  100 collected; to my knowledge this is the first non SACD from them.
  I googled this and found nothing.  And I repeat, this is a magnificent sounding disc, and I guess that is what is most important.  However, if a diehard supporter like Pentatone is abandoning SACD, then I fear that it truly will disappear 
mahler123

Showing 1 response by pmotz

I too enjoy the music on PentaTone and was surprised to read your post on SACD.  I checked the PentaTone website and found the following, which indicates not all releases will be SACD, but they have not abandoned it.

PENTATONE was founded with the vision that the 5-channel surround sound will gradually replace today's stereo sound. In the last two decades, the label has built out one of the world's largest collections of high resolution audio, releasing albums on Hybrid Super Audio CDs and in hi-res digital formats.

PENTATONE launches approximately 30-40 albums per year and aims to make recordings available in the highest possible audio resolutions. After having physically released on SACD exclusively in the past, the label now diversifies between standard CD and hybrid SACD formats for physical releases. Digitally, PENTATONE continues to explore new developments in hi-res audio, now offering releases in resolutions higher than DSD 64 when possible, thereby surpassing the maximum sound quality realisable on Hybrid SACDs.