“Overall, the first 10 releases in BMG’s RCA Living Stereo SA-CD series are overwhelming successes. I eagerly await the next 10!” – so commented Stereophile magazine on the launch of the first 10 albums in RCA’s legendary Living Stereo Series as multi-channel re-mastered Super Audio CDs.
Now, with 30 albums in the series available as hybrid surround SA-CDs, SonyBMG has announced the release next February of a further 10 albums. The albums slated for February release include Arthur Fieldler / Boston Pops – Pops Caviar; Virgil Fox – Encores; Morton Gould – Copland “Billy the Kid Suite”; “Billy the Kid Waltz”; “Rodeo Suite” & Grofé “Grand Canyon Suite”; Jascha Heifetz – Bruch Violin Concerto No. 1; Scottish Fantasy & Vieuxtemps Violin Concerto No. 5; Mario Lanza – At His Best / The Vagabond King, Charles Munch / Boston Symphony Orchestra – Mendelssohn Symphonies Nos. 4 & 5; Octet – Scherzo; Fritz Reiner / Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Respighi “Fountains of Rome”; “Pines of Rome”; Debussy “La mer”; Arthur Rubinstein – Beethoven Sonatas (Moonlight; Les Adieux; Pathétique; Appassionata); Charles Munch / Boston Symphony Orchestra – Berlioz “Symphonie Fantastique”; “Romeo and Juliet – Love Scene” and Fritz Reiner / Chicago Symphony Orchestra – Vienna (Johann Strauss; Carl Maria von Weber; Joseph Strauss; Richard Strauss)
Started in the 1950’s the Living Stereo Series represents an anthology of 20th century classical music performance and recording. Living Stereo recordings were made with only two or three microphones, which represented the best recording techniques of that era. Today, with the advent of Super Audio CD multi-channel sound, the listener can hear the left, centre, and right channels exactly as the recording engineers heard them at the original recording sessions.
When remastering the original recordings, John Newton and his engineering team used only three of the available six channels (or two when the original recording was two-track) on the SA-CD because that was the vision of the original producers. What you hear are faithful copies of these historic performances in brilliant DSD resolution. No signal processing was used to “improve” these extraordinary tapes.
“SA-CD is integral to the re-invigoration that Living Stereo is enjoying today,” comments John Newton, President of US-based SoundMirror Inc. “SA-CD is the only practical multi-channel high resolution format available to the consumer. This resolving capability is finally better than the original analogue tape which was used in the original recordings of the living stereo titles.
“The Multi-channel capability of SA-CD allows the consumer for the first time to hear what the artist, producers and engineers created during the original recording sessions,” continues Newton. “Most of these recording were made on three channel tape recorders and the multi-channel SA-CD Layer allows us to deliver these three channels to the consumer. The stereo SA-CD program allows consumers without surround equipment to experience the resolution contained in the original recordings. The CD layer on these hybrid discs is also vastly improved because it is made from a careful down conversion of the stereo SA-CD program. The previous CD’s were created from PCM conversions as apposed to DSD Conversions.
“It appears to us at SoundMirror that SA-CD’s are being gradually accepted by several groups of consumers; classical purchaser appreciate the surround sound capability, the historic market can finally benefit from high-resolution and three channel capability, and the jazz market responds to combinations of the above.”
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