The Alan Parson's Project


Category: Music

APP wasn't my favorite group in the 1970s, but maybe it was because I couldn't hear it this way.

I listened in two-channel 24/192 and was blown away by the sonics. Close your eyes closed and the sound stage is 180-degrees wide. The fade at the end of "Genisis Ch.1V.32" slowly moves from covering and surrounding you to fading into a very distant ball of sound that covers only about 5-degrees. Only in that final fade do you hear the tape hiss from the original master.

Musically this is very good, but variable. The best is very, very good ("The Voice", "Day After Day" and all the instrumentals). A couple of cuts stray too near mid-1970s pop, but what the heck...

There's thick layering of chorus, orchestra, rock instruments, etc. The clarity of it all is astounding. Really it's a masterpiece from this era.

Boy, I hope one day that the entire Beattles songbook will get this 24/192 treatment. Abbey Road studios evidently had great equipment.

Dave

dcstep

Showing 3 responses by dcstep

I bought the DVD-Audio 24/192 a couple of weeks ago. You must have some incredible pressings if they sound this good. I'd give up new vinyl if I could buy everything in this format.

Do you have the DVD-A??

Dave
Sgr, I've got the Pioneer Elite DV-58AV universal player that's been modified by Ric Schultz with a Superclock 4 and beefed up and cleaned up input and output stages. The base player is pretty good at $360 or so, but the mods bring the total cost to around $1500 and elevate the performance to truly elite (pun intended) levels.

You don't see a lot of DVD-As in 24/192, so I chose the DVD over the 200-gram vinyl that's also available. The DVD-A cost $19 and the vinyl was $29, but the original MF vinyl box reissue, pre-owned, was $250!!! If you've got that, it's obviously the "collector piece" to own.

Anyway, the imaging is astounding and the details and pristineness of each element in this very thick, dense recording are amazing. Thankfully the music, well most of it, is really good, so this is more than a potential audiophile demonstration piece. It's the only recording I've got that throws a 180-degree image for minutes at a time.

Dave