John Smyth responds to my:

>>Does this mean the companies are expecting us to buy hideously
>>expensive SACDs of all the stuff that's already been reissued on
>>CD?  Here's one person who won't be!
>
>No performance after 1960 is ever good enough for you guys, yet when
>a company tries to give you the best remasterings they can from those
>wonderful days of yore, no one will pay 'cause it's too expensive.  My
>goodness.

I'll forgive John's sarcasm but I must take issue with his apparent
characterisation of me as a rusted-on Luddite, if that's what "you guys"
is meant to imply.  Or perhaps we guys are those who are old enough to
have been collecting for many years, have shelves groaning with LPs,
tapes and CDs, are faced with the prospect of yet another gee-whizz,
look-ma-no-hands sound carrier format, and are wondering what it's likely
to mean, quite apart from the need to upgrade audio equipment and to
move into the garage to allow room for all the new shelving.  I'm happy
to buy SACDs when that's the only available format for a new release
and, in passing, I find the design of the cases a big improvement on the
standard jewel case.

I am sufficiently ancient to have started in the age of 78s, and still
own some, although not the means to play them.  I have lived through
various experiments such as electronic stereo, quadrophony and other
short-lived ways of getting more money out of us.  It has long annoyed
me that re-releases of some older recordings were full-price if the
particular performance was one the company in question thought it could
make some extra money on.  Most of the usual costs don't apply: the
performers have been paid, the recording venue rent has been taken care
of, and on and on.  How much does it cost to remaster a recording and
reissue it as a CD, a SACD or whatever?  The performance that gave rise
to this continuation of the thread was George Szell's 1963 Cleveland
recording of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition.  To take one online
outlet's prices, in $US, the CD version costs $6.65, the SACD will set
you back $16.75.  I have not heard the SACD.  If I played it on my Marantz
player, it may well sound better than the CD.  Using appropriate equipment,
it probably sounds sensational, but that price difference!

What all this means is that the companies seem to have seen a way of
making yet more money from their back catalogues.  Call me a jaded old
cynic, but I get the feeling that these people want to rip me off, and
I don't like it.

Richard Pennycuick