VA - The Nordic Sound: 2L Audiophile Reference Recordings (2009) [SACD]

2L’s 2-disc set includes materials over which audiophiles could sit & argue for hours, if not longer. Each disc contains the same 19 musical selections taken from their growing, broad selection of recordings ranging from Mozart & Vivaldi to Schoenberg, Carter & beyond. The goal, presumably, is to make an argument for the superiority of surround sound not just for movies, but for music as well. Disc 1 is a hybrid SACD with 3 separate audio tracks: DSD Stereo, DSD 5.1 channel surround, & standard redbook. The 2nd disc is a Blu-ray disc again presenting 3 audio formats: 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio, 5.1 channel 24bit Linear PCM, & 2ch 24bit Linear PCM. Two discs, 19 tracks, & 6 different audio formats to choose from; what’s an audiophile to do? There can be little question that 3 surround options, whether on Blu-ray or SACD, offer a far more pleasing listening experience; the level of detail & realism offered in these formats vastly exceeds the 2ch tracks. But even between the surround options, there are differences. There are some tracks, such as the excerpts from Britten’s “Simple” Symphony & Bartуk’s Sonata for Solo Violin, where the SACD surround track offers a much cleaner, more detailed accounting. However, the sense of truly being in the centre of a live performance of Islandmoen’s Requiem or Haydn’s Op. 76/5, String Quartet that is achieved on the Blu-ray with DTS-HD cannot be improved upon. The decision, then, comes down to the preference of individual listeners. Maybe even more than that, however, is the practicality of using Blu-ray as an audio-only format. Sure, there’s a sharp-looking menu that listeners can use to navigate the disc, but that still seems like a bit of a waste of Blu-ray’s vast storage capacity. DVD-A was a format that was even less popular/accepted than SACD, so it will be interesting to see if Blu-ray Audio catches on.