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SHM SACD's need to be burned in

I recently purchased Aja on a SHM sacd. I have never purchased any single disc at this price,but the chance of aquiring one of my favorite albums on SACD made me go for it.
I was so excited the day it arrived. I warmed up my system for a half an hour and popped it in. WHAT A DISAPOINTMENT!
The bass was bloated and the highs rolled off. It was inferior to my two redbook copies sonically(MFSL ultradisc and 1999 remaster).
I went on various forums to see if others had the same opinion as mine. To my surprise what I gathered was that playing these SHM SACD's about ten times to burn in improves the sound. I didn't beieve it but I had the disc already so .....
I played it on repeat on my cdp for two days straight. I then warmed up my system the same way and expected little change.
Much to my surprise the base tighten up,the highs improved and the soundstage organised itself. If I hadn't heard this for myself I never would have believed it.The mofi wasn't in the ballpark anymore!
Anyone else with a simular experience?

Regards,
montejay
mceljo
983 posts
 
Montejay - While I don't think most people would consider me to be "crazy" there's no doubt that I generally "see" things differently than the masses.

When I watched the first Ford commercial that said that they were matching Toyota's quality my first thought was to wonder if they realized that they were essentially admitting that they hadn't in the past.

Also, we Ford first started the new generation of the F-150 and the excellent series of advertisements I had to actually setup a VCR to record one because I knew they couldn't lie but what they said didn't make any sense. I had recently driven a half ton truck of every available brand and the Ford certianly wasn't the most powerful truck in class. Turns out that their statistic was that they had the highest percentage of peak toque at 800 rpm. It was in the fine print that could only be read when paused.

On second thought, I may be crazy, but I prefer to be called "normal challenged."
tbg
5,263 posts
 
Rja, yes most of my SHMs are CDs but several are hybrids. I have played them both ways.
montejay OP
285 posts
 
Tbg,
I thought that the SHM SACD were not hybrids. I have ordered a few more but everyone I looked at played on SACD only.
My OP concerns the SHM SACD only.

Regards,
aplhifi
515 posts
 
Montejay,

The SACD (of any kind) is a DVD-based media. A 650nM wave-length laser is used to read that media, and at a power that is 0.2-0.3mW. In order to burn a CD-R or DVD-R, the laser power is increased at least 10 times.

Simple math will be that, if the laser can heat the disc surface to 200C to burn the film at 2mW, the temperature while reading will be 10 times less or 20C. At this temperature there is no way for the laser to make any change on the disc surface.

Furthermore, even if the laser was capable of some sort of interaction with the disc surface and can somehow change the pits shape, this will not result in improved sound but in severe playback errors.

But let's imagine for a moment that the laser miraculously makes the pit edges smoother with many hours of repeat playback. Even with this scenario, the laser cannot re-master your SHM SACDs from dull/bass heavy sounding to amazing crystal-clear vinyl sound. :-)

Hope this helps!

Best,
Alex Peychev
bar81
754 posts
 
There are no SHM hybrids that I've ever seen.
More to discover