SHM SACD's need to be burned in

You should purchase another copy of the SACD and see if you can tell the difference if someone else loads the player.

Also, you should see this effect on other CDs if it's real.

How does a laser change a disk? If it did, then they should also continiue to change over time and eventually wear out.

In all seriousness, the closest that I've come to this experience was getting a new SACD recording of a particular piece of organ music (Saint Seans Symphony No.3). The two recordings were so very different that the first time I listened to the SACD it didn't sound that good to me. Now that my expectations have adjusted I prefer the SACD because it's a much higher quality sound.

You expect the SACD to sound better so it's quite possible that after hearing it once the "shock" of the different sound didn't overshadow it's improved quality.

In the case of the organ music, the SACD relative volume of the organ vs. the rest of the instruments is much lower, but the sound quality is amazing and after reading how it was recorded it sound exactly as it should.

I have tickets to a live performance in a couple of months so I'm excited to see how it can really sound on a great organ.

This is similar to the experience of drinking a clear soda thinking it's grapefruit and finding out that it's a different flavor. You may like the new flavor, but not until your expectation/perception changes.

Rayray8 - I think you made a typo in your last post. There seems to be an extra "b" at the beginning of the noun name of the thing that got tighter as a result of your jeans going through the dryer. Makes perfect sense to me. It's probably happened to all of us.

It should be expected that "crazy" ideas would be more acceptable in an Asylum.

Montejay - While I don't think most people would consider me to be "crazy" there's no doubt that I generally "see" things differently than the masses.

When I watched the first Ford commercial that said that they were matching Toyota's quality my first thought was to wonder if they realized that they were essentially admitting that they hadn't in the past.

Also, we Ford first started the new generation of the F-150 and the excellent series of advertisements I had to actually setup a VCR to record one because I knew they couldn't lie but what they said didn't make any sense. I had recently driven a half ton truck of every available brand and the Ford certianly wasn't the most powerful truck in class. Turns out that their statistic was that they had the highest percentage of peak toque at 800 rpm. It was in the fine print that could only be read when paused.

On second thought, I may be crazy, but I prefer to be called "normal challenged."

Montejay - For there to be an audible difference after break in that is a result from something happening to the disk it means the laser somehow physically altered the disk. If the laser was somehow changing the disk then there's nothing that would keep it from continuing the change, thus degrading the disk over time. Has anyone noticed that these disks continue to have a changing sound or the long haul?

The only other thing that really happens to the disk is that it is spinning. I can't think of a reason that spinning a disk would change it's physical properties.

Do you have any ideas as to how it is possible?

Montejay - Are you talking about heat from the laser or from the player? Either way, if there is a coating that is coming off then you should be able to obtain the same difference using an oven. Also, if it's a coating then I'd say the manufacturing process should be the same on all of their SACDs and you should hear a similar difference.

The downside to trying to verify this type of thing is that you can't go back to the start. Your friend will have no chance of making a solid comparison between what he heard before and what he'll hear tomorrow. Comparing the present to a memory is nearly impossible.

Did you do any blind tests? Placebo and expectation can be strong with all of us from time to time.

Is it possible that your player just does a better job with standard formats than it does with the SHM SACD format?