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Prestige Miles Davis on SACD vs. vinyl

I have several Miles Davis recordings on the Prestige label on both SACD and vinyl (it is 120g 33 RPM - nothing fancy). I find that the vinyl recordings have much more 'body' - much more upper-bass, lower-midrange energy. (To most ears the do sound qualitatively 'better'.)

Some may say, "Well, duh - that's vinyl vs. digital". But, that's not usually the case on my system. My digital (Marantz SA-7) and analog (Basis Ovation/TriPlanar/Ortofon Rondo Bronze/Herron phono) front-ends are actually quite similar-sounding on a lot of recordings that I have on both formats. So, I think what I am hearing here (and it applies to several recordings, "Relaxin'" being one example) is on the recordings, to some extent at least.

This really leads me to wonder about the mastering process. Did the engineers who mastered these recordings compare the two formats and hear what I'm hearing? I doubt it! If they didn't compare them - why not?

Are the digital recordings just "poorly mastered" or are they actually closer to the master tape??

Thoughts?
paulfolbrecht
3 responses Add your response
musicslug
430 posts
 
my experience with both SACDs and CDs, compared with LPs, is that they are simply highly variable - you really have to judge each release on its own merits. hence the importance of forums like this to deflate the hype and tell it like it is. some SACDs are amazing (e.g. the Band's Music from Big Pink), some are clearly inferior to a good LP of the same title - and the same goes for CD.
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paulfolbrecht OP
603 posts
 
Musicslug, you make a good point.

Viridian, I do not know that the LP and the SACD were not made from the same master (in the case of Relaxin' and the others) - do you? I do not see how you can chalk this up to differences in the master tape. The LP and SACD sound very different - and the LP pretty much sounds better in all ways.

This is not earth-shattering news, but it seems that digital mastering is often sorely lacking, even for SACD, even from audiophile labels, and it's really a bad. The format has what it takes, technically, to rival vinyl - but in practice it so rarely does.
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