New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan

DVD-Audiobahn

New DVD-Audio music releases and talk about the latest players.

The day before yesterday, I received my latest shipment from HMV Japan containing three new Exton DVD-A’s released over the last couple of months:
Mahler Third Symphony (Macal and the Czech Phil)
Strauss Also sprach, Don Juan, Rosenkavalier Suite (DeWaart and the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic)
Schubert Unfinished and Great C maj. Symphonies (labeled as nos. 7 and 8 – do we really need to slog through this type of musicological correctitude again? – oops, getting off the subject – sorry!) (Sieghart and the Arnheim Philharmonic)
My friends, aside from the Schubert disc, which is a “24-bit Remastering” (of what – I don’t know!), the labeling leaves no doubt that the masters for the other two discs (the Mahler and the Strauss) are DSD!!!
In the past, I used to snicker to myself when I would read the outraged comments on the HiRez (SACD) Highway about SACD’s derived from PCM masters (via conversion to DSD), as if the purity of the SACD format had been tainted by any contact with PCM. (I think the most recent discussion of this had to do with the Mercury Living Presence 35mm SACD’s being converted to 24/192 before conversion back to DSD for SACD production – there was much weeping and gnashing of the teeth about this, if I remember correctly.)
At the same time, I just don’t understand the logic of taking a PCM master and going through another conversion step to produce the DSD master necessary for SACD. I mean, if your master recording is 24/192 or 24/96, why muck things up with another conversion step just so you can release it as a SACD? Why not just release it as a DVD-A?
Well, now the shoe is on the other foot – the masters of these new Exton DVD-A’s are DSD. I have to ask, why bother to release them as DVD-A’s? Why not just stick to SACD’s in this case and save the extra conversion step?
My initial listening of the Schubert and Strauss discs did not produce favorable impressions. (I’ve lent the Strauss disk to another listener just to check my reaction against his.) I will need to spend more time with the Mahler. Interestingly, Macal’s performance comes as a 3-disc set, with the same performance contained onto 1 DVD-A and split over 2 hybrid SACD’s. I suppose the idea is to compare DVD-A vs. SACD, but given the DSD origins of the recording, I can’t imagine that the DVD-A will sound as good.
-Chris Salocks

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Topic - New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - Chris from Lafayette 18:55:44 11/11/05 (5)

Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - racerguy 15:06:38 11/13/05 (0)

Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - flyingdutchman 10:01:37 11/13/05 (1)

Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - Chris from Lafayette 14:37:19 11/13/05 (0)

Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - Christine Tham 14:27:12 11/12/05 (1)

Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan - diw 04:59:34 11/13/05 (0)

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