Just working my way, backwards and forwards through the permutations was demanding and tedious enough, so rest assured, I won’t bludgeon you with the blow-by-blow minutiae of disc-to-disc switches. Instead, I want to concentrate on wider conclusions, because those were both surprisingly apparent and consistent.
Many of you will be familiar with the sound of SACD relative to standard Redbook discs. The higher resolution format delivers greater transparency, crisper dynamics, better separation, better instrumental location and a greater sense of the specific energy generated by each different instrument. That gives instruments, players and voices a greater sense of individuality, identity and life. It also offers crisper dynamics and more explicit timing/placement of notes and phrases, keeping its performance benefits firmly lodged in both the sonic and musical camps. Listening to SACD, the sound is more immediate, more present and more vivid, with a sense of colour and inner illumination that generally escapes CD. SHM discs generally heighten these distinctions, especially the level of inner illumination and micro-dynamic energy – tendencies that can get some systems into trouble, especially those with brittle, edgy or spot-lit high-frequencies.
Moving on to the MQA encoded UHQCD discs, there was a consistent and significant shift in spectral balance. Where the SACD might reasonably be described as brighter (albeit NOT in the accepted, audio sense of the word – maybe ‘more illuminated’ would be a less value-laden description), livelier and more immediate, the MQA discs were consistently warmer and richer in balance, more dimensional and with a more developed and coherent acoustic. They also demonstrated a more natural and planted sense of pace and rhythmic variation. Shifts in tempo or rhythmic patterns were more emphatic, phrasing and interlocking phrases more explicitly drawn. You hear that newfound rhythmic clarity and confidence in the extended drum patterns that open ‘All Or Nothing At All’ on Coltrane’s Ballads (UCCU-40111), patterns that sound slapdash and disjointed on CD and to a lesser extent, SACD. You hear it on the way those drum patterns settle into lock step with the bass and piano and you’ll also hear a more connected sense of ensemble from the widely spaced stereo of the early 60’s recording. It’s not that the instruments move closer together. If anything the spatial separation is more clearly defined, but the body and presence that MQA brings to discs and the more natural and coherent sense of integration and timing draws the band and the track together.
The shift in balance and confident timing are perhaps most obvious and most musically impressiveon the opening of the second movement of Má Vlast (‘Vltava’, UCCG-40085). The extended, fluttering wind phrases take on a new life and immediacy. The tonal differences between instruments are more natural and far more distinct, the pizzicato string punctuation, on time and on point. As the piece builds and the phrases come thicker and faster, overlapping into a tumbling, chattering flood, the music from the MQA disc never stumbles or falters – a stark contrast to the stuttering flow of the SACD and the muddled, almost collapse of the CD. Instead the musical momentum builds and is maintained into the strings’ swelling upward sweep, in turn maintaining the emotive power of the piece. This is no small difference and musically speaking, it’s absolutely crucial to maintaining the emotional journey encapsulated in the performance.
