I’ve been looking at a stack of mostly SACD test discs here in my office for some time now, and haven’t been able to get around to doing a special feature on them. However, this one is so good that everyone should know about it without having to wait for a survey article. This was my favorite standard CD test disc for years in a gold CD version. The selections are intended to demonstrate qualities of Image, Timbre and Dynamics, and come from the mostly Blumlein-miked two-channel tapes in the Opus 3 vaults. This format makes it easy to generate a difference or ambient surround field from the original two-channel recordings, and this is what Opus 3’s Jan-Eric Persson has done here to create a 4.1-channel SACD. There is no center channel – nor is it needed – but the frequencies below 60Hz have all been routed to the LFE (6th) channel.The disc opens with a huge audiophile demo track back in vinyl-only days: Tiden bara gar. It’s a cute jazz vocal with doublebass, guitars, bongos and triangle. The SACD version in surround sounds just as impressive to me as the original vinyl did back then. Tracks 2 & 3 have been my main test tracks for years: Bach’s Invention No. 14 played by the Stockholm Guitar Quartet, followed by Tomas Ornberg’s Blue Five group playing Buddy Bolden Blues. This is a terrific pair of demos: first four guitar spread across the frontal soundstage in such a way that when properly reproduced you can sense the position of each of the four instruments left to right. The trad jazz selection has two brass instruments and a strong soprano sax. The piano is on the left and a bit recessed, but if it doesn’t sound like a real upright piano something is amiss with your system. The banjo next comes in on the right channel, and if it sounds distant and not with a remarkable presence, something is wrong. When the soprano sax takes its solo it should be hard center, sounding as if you had a center channel, and playing with great force but with a round non-shrill tone.
The rest of the 14 tracks provide a variety of musical test material, including a folk vocal, a quartet featuring vibes, an acoustic guitar folk group, a string quartet, a jazz trio, a work for a guitar duo, and some swing violin. There are two tracks from some of the sources such as the guitar quartet and the Blue Five trad band. As a pianist myself, I find the tracks featuring piano to be excellent test material – I know exactly what to listen for. None of them suffer from the 40 ft.-wide grand piano effect heard on so many recordings. The original recordings were made from 1977 thru 1984 but sound more impressive right now than 90% of what one hears on new recordings. This disc should be in the hands of anyone comparing or testing out SACD players specifically or even entire systems.
TrackList:
Therese Juel: Tiden bara gar; Stockholm Guitar Quartet; BACH Invention No. 14; Tomas Ornberg’s Blue Five: Buddy Bolden Blues; KNOA: Unca’s Flight; Lars Erstrand, vibes: Lang of the Midnight Sun; Peder Riis, guitar: Fantasie; Eric Bibb: Going Home; Gunnar Lidberg Trio: I Got Rhythm; Saulesco String Quartet: HAYDN Andante; Tomas Ornberg’s Blue Five: Tain’t Nobody’s Bizness If I Do; Duodecima: SOR Fantasie for 2 Guitar; Knud Jorgensen Jazz Trio: My Heart Stood Still; Stockholm Guitar Quartet: TELEMANN: Violin Concerto theme; Lars Erstrand: Four Brothers (J. Giuffre)
– John Sunier
