So what is SA-CD, anyway?

[HDJK]

Originally Posted by beavis667

If only SACD had Dire Straits: Brothers in Arms 20th aniversary SACD when the format was released. People would have been trading their spleen for it. Boy, this disk is magic. It's as if David Knopfler is standing on my face playing the classic guitar riff in Money for Nothing. You've never heard the nuances of that riff until you've heard this SACD.

I couldn't agree more

Even though I listen to the DVDA of that album

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Or Mark Knopfler even!

David Knopfler, Mark's brother, played rhythm guitar with Dire Straits and left the band to persue a solo career during the recording of "Making Movies", which was released a few years before the band started working on "Brothers In Arms"

One other thing of note is that this recording was a full digital recording for CD (DDD), which means the SACD format is not being fully realised on this recording. It is very likely that the digital recording was either 16/44.1, 16/48, 24/44.1 or 24/48. It's still great and a massive improvement over the SACD, but in my opinion that also has a lot to do with the incredible surround mix. They really hit the nail on the head with the surround mix - not one thing sounds gimmicky. However if this recording had been done on reel to reel analog, we would have an even better fidelity release on SACD.

One need only check out any of Elton John's releases to see how incredible a DSD encode of analog tape can be.

True. According to this article it was mixed on an analog console though. By using the best DASH there was and mixing in the analog realm the album gained a lot in fidelity (on SACD and DVDA). It's not the same as coming from analog reels for sure, but it's still an improvement.

The second part explains why I went with the DVDA