Mercury Living Presence SACD's

Mine are on order, will come shortly (I pre-ordered the first five almost a year ago, apparently they're waiting for the Respighi to come in before they ship). It will be interesting to compare the Stravinsky to the Classic vinyl reissue, which has better dynamics in my system than any CD I've ever heard and on a par with the best SACDs I've heard. It is truly a special recording (and performance).

Elusive Disc is selling the first 5 titles (6 discs) as a package for $100 (all right, $99.99), that's the only price I checked out.

Listened to the Respighi and Suppe discs last night. They are better than the CD versions from before, which themselves were among the best CDs I've heard, in terms of capturing the ambience of the hall and the decay of the instruments. Very open and spacious sounding--make the CDs sound closed-in in comparison. They also appear to be smoother in their reproduction of instruments (flute and brass lose a little metalic ring or edginess, for example, which might have been a digital distortion artifact), although I'm not sure about this as I am using my Sonogy amps full range right now instead of the tubed Lamms on the highs, as one's in for minor repairs. I'm looking forward to listening to the rest of them this week.

El, you're mixing up RCA and Mercury! Your point is well-taken, though. The Mercs, for example, all have the prevalent tape hiss, though I find it easy to listen through that. As for that low frequency rumble on the Chopin, it's not limited to old recordings. I find a number of Telarc recordings of the Atlanta Symphony have a prevalent rumble (low enough in frequency to make my stomach queazy!) that I can only guess is the air conditioning system.