Thread: Discussion: looking for a Charles Aznavour SACD

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Post by FleurDeLys October 14, 2006 (11 of 14)
Bonjour,

Thank you to Amatala for his comment comment. My order through Amazon Marketplace Canada has been cancelled and I placed another one through Amazon Marketplace UK (still with Caiman) since it clearly states that it is a SACD in the description (not the case on the Can and US pages...although the ASIN# is the same for all). Anyway, I hope that Caiman will do as good a job as it did for Onebit and Amatala...

If it does not work out then I guess Lawrence might have more luck than I had with stores (I checked a few more stores today with no success). Thank again for the offer Lawrence I will post a new message once I receive my order from Caiman, and will send you an e-mail if I am still at the same point in a couple of weeks.

Have a nice weekend.

Post by shicorp October 16, 2006 (12 of 14)
FleurDeLys said:

Bonjour,

Thank you to Amatala for his comment comment. My order through Amazon Marketplace Canada has been cancelled and I placed another one through Amazon Marketplace UK (still with Caiman) since it clearly states that it is a SACD in the description (not the case on the Can and US pages...although the ASIN# is the same for all). Anyway, I hope that Caiman will do as good a job as it did for Onebit and Amatala...

If it does not work out then I guess Lawrence might have more luck than I had with stores (I checked a few more stores today with no success). Thank again for the offer Lawrence I will post a new message once I receive my order from Caiman, and will send you an e-mail if I am still at the same point in a couple of weeks.

Have a nice weekend.

A general question: do you really like the Aznavour SACDs? I've purchased one after I added the Integrale to my collection, and was terribly disappointed. I thought, these were mastered from discovered stereo tapes, but the mono titles were indeed re-channeled for multi-channel representation.

I'm in Vienna tomorrow and (if I do not forget) will have a look in the shop I've purchased my SACD. They had a few others, but I'm unsure whether the one you are searching for was offered there or not.

Best regards,

Stefan

Post by FleurDeLys October 17, 2006 (13 of 14)
First before responding to your question Stefan let me thank you for checking for the SACD :) If you are dissapointed about Aznavour's SACDs, I for my part, do not feel the same. I must say that I do not listen to my SACDs in Multichannel but only in Stereo (and of course in mono for some older albums), usually with good headphones, as I feel that with my limited equipment it is the only way for me to really appreciate the benefits of SACDs. Therefore, I can not comment on the Multichannel part. Regarding the SACD "Stereo" layers, as it is the case with other older recordings, the improvements are not stellar but still fairly noticeable. The Aznavour SACDs are in my opinion fairly superior to the 1995-1996 CD releases (which were not bad at all). They are more detailed, sharper, with extended frequency range. To me they are worth the extra $$$ especially because I expect to get a better system and then fully appreciate the capabilities of these SACDs.

What I do not get is that the "Hier Encore" album, for instance, did not have a SACD treatment, it is a major omission in my opinion, as I clearly put it in Aznavour's top three albums. "Plus Bleu" (this one does not make sens), "Autobiographie", and possibly "De t'avoir aimee..." could have been lower priorities. Another strange thing is that no live album got released in SACD. Finally, it seems that only one batch of have been produce and that they have been alrealdy discontinued: when you go through the decision and the troubles of remastering in SACD why not make them available for morethan a year? But who knows what happened, maybe the initial plan was to realease more albums in SACD, but then they dropped the project. At least, 10 of them exist (or I should say existed), with four of them I consider masterpieces ("Il faut savoir", "Qui ?", "J'me voyais deja", and "La boheme") that is better than nothing... Nevertheless I will try to contact EMI/Capitol to encourage them finish what they started, it is clear to me that they might not share my enthousiasm ;)

Have a good day.

ps 1: the "Il faut savoir" stereo SACD layer has a few problems (patches of stereo on normally mono tracks) on a few tracks. The Red Book layer did not seem affected. I returned the SACD and got a new one but the same problems were there. Although I was surprise of this glitch, it has been the only problem I got so far with the 9 out 10 Aznavour SACDs I got.

ps 2: if you are looking for vintage Aznavour concerts, I highly recommend the "Charles Aznavour : Concerts 68/72/78/80 Live - Édition 2 DVD" (ASIN: B00006IWN0). I ordered it from Amazon France, it is a PAL format but from 1 to 6 so it worked on my PC. I am very satisfied with this double DVD: 5 concerts from 1968 to 1980 at the Olympia + longue interview in French. The picture quality and the sound quality are far from premium, BUT the 1968 performance is worth the price alone. Most importantly Aznavour's voice and performance are up there...let's avoid the way he was dressed or a few orchestrations though ;)

Post by FleurDeLys October 19, 2006 (14 of 14)
I GOT IT! Finally, I got the 'Idiote je t'aime' SACD today, the last missing in my collection :) I placed an order a few weeks ago at a store here in Montreal (after buying the last of their Aznavour SACDs they had) without thinking it would work, but they must have eventually found a copy somewhere in their network of stores...

So thank you to the people that helped me and proposed to look for this SACD.

Thanks again and have a good day.

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