Jimmy’s Junkyard

Wednesday, 23rd May 2012.

Stockholm Cathedral Choir: Now The Green Blade Riseth

Posted on Thursday, 22nd July 2010 by Auw Jimmy

Actually, this is an old recording. I listened the first few years ago in XRCD format. I lost the CD, and suddenly I saw a SACD one on an audio shop in Singapore. Surely I wouldn’t miss it. This record also available in JVC K2 HD format, at almost double the cost. I picked the SACD one then, since I didn’t really know the K2 HD style. This SACD has Proprius label, which also well know with the “Jazz at the Pawnshop”.

The SACD format used on this album is Hybrid Multichannel. It means that you can play in on your ordinary 20-years old CD Player or your new sophisticated US$ 5000 SACD multichannel player. All can do. The surround effect on this – I believe – was created on purpose for the SACD label. The original master shouldn’t have surround track. I don’t really care about it since my main focus is stereo only.

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Tags: Choirs, SACD
Posted in CD/DVD Review | Comments (3)

Various Artists: This is K2 HD Sound!

Posted on Saturday, 17th July 2010 by Auw Jimmy

Due to my busy time, I haven’t written much on this blog. But in next few weeks, some hot entries will come - as I have purchased some new toys. Wait and see…

Let’s fill the entry with some “light-weight” topic. I bought some CD during my business trip last week. Let’s enjoy some.

Standard CD, although considered as an obsolete formats for many years, but still become a most used audio format until now. We have seen DVD-Audio and SACD were the strongest candidates to terminte Red Book CD Audio. But still, CD Audio maintains its superiority as widely used audio format, until present time. Perhaps we can see the digital storage format like WAV or loseless stored in your giant HDD, someday will terminate the life of the CD Player. But before that time comes, we still enjoy the CD as the main audio source.

I knew JVC recording long time ago. It was XRCD (eXtended Resolution Compact Disc), continued with XRCD2 and XRCD24. About one or two years ago, they release K2 HD format, which claimed to provide better sound at standard Red Book CD Audio, without additional decoder. Could it be?