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Adolphe Adam's "Orfa" on Naxos
Posted by Rob Maynard on June 20, 2023, 4:33 pm
I find myself somewhat more impressed with Adam's penultimate ballet than was my colleague Raymond J. Walker, though we are in complete agreement about the very fine performance delivered by Dario Salvi and the Sofia Philharmonic.
I was almost unable to listen to the disc at all, however, for it would not even begin playing on either of my CD players (both purchased within the past two years). Fortunately, it would play on the DVD/Blu-ray player hooked up to my television but, as you can imagine, that's not an optimal solution. All I can imagine is that the completely unprecedented problem may derive from the fact that, as Raymond points out, "enhanced sampling compression" has been applied to get 89 minutes of music onto the single CD. I wonder whether anyone else has experienced the same technical issue with this or any other release coming in at around the 90 minutes mark?
A quick online search shows 89 minutes was achieved some time ago in 2006 (in a 2-CD German punk rock set where the companion disc ran over 88 minutes) without any claim of a special technology. Indeed, I'm not sure what "enhanced sampling compression" means because the simple replay principle is that the player must find the digital data where it expects to, as set by the CD standard. Longer playing times have hitherto been achieved by stretching the allowed tolerances to decrease the track pitch, thereby increasing the total track length over the playable area. I've found that older players can be challenged by more closely spaced data, but also critical is accurate alignment of the disc's centre hole. It's perhaps not surprising that BD/DVD players are more reliable with these CDs since they are designed for higher data densities. Another issue I've seen reported and experienced myself is that better players which stick more closely to the CD standard have more trouble with the CDs that don't!
Previous Message
I find myself somewhat more impressed with Adam's penultimate ballet than was my colleague Raymond J. Walker, though we are in complete agreement about the very fine performance delivered by Dario Salvi and the Sofia Philharmonic.
I was almost unable to listen to the disc at all, however, for it would not even begin playing on either of my CD players (both purchased within the past two years). Fortunately, it would play on the DVD/Blu-ray player hooked up to my television but, as you can imagine, that's not an optimal solution. All I can imagine is that the completely unprecedented problem may derive from the fact that, as Raymond points out, "enhanced sampling compression" has been applied to get 89 minutes of music onto the single CD. I wonder whether anyone else has experienced the same technical issue with this or any other release coming in at around the 90 minutes mark?
Rob, I'm just in the process of reviewing a BIS SACD which has a playing time of 84:47 and 28 tracks (it's a disc of songs). Immediately under the track list there's the following statement: "This is a very long SACD, and the last track starts after 80:00. On some players playing the last track alone could be a problem. In such cases please start at the second last track and let the machine play through."
I realise this is a different issue to the one which you experienced, but it does indicate that extremely generous playing times can potentially create issues. I can report, though, that I have played this particular SACD without experiencing the problem that BIS mention, nor is there any problem with sound quality - quite the reverse, in fact.
I've ha=d a few discs with lengthy playing times in recent months - I think the longesr one was the Pentatone CD of Semyon Bychkov conducting the Maher Second symphony. That had a playing time of 86:52. Touch wood, to date I've not experienced any problems with lengthy discs.
To confirm those observations about CDs exceeding 80 minutes, an internet search reveals a few facts: "The “Redbook” CD specifications state that CDs contain a maximum of 74 or 80 minutes of music. But over the years, record producers have tried to push that limit. There have been some CDs released that approach the 90-minute mark, but I suspect that these are CD-Rs – individual burned CDs – because this is possible using “overburning.”
But I’ve been seeing a lot of CDs recently that are longer than 80 minutes. In the Mozart 225 box set, many of the CDs exceed this duration, and some are even longer than 85 minutes. The longest CD in this set clocks in at 86:30.This isn’t a problem if you’re playing back the CDs on recent devices, or trying to rip them to a computer, but older CD players may not support these discs because the track that spirals around the disc are too close together for older players to read."
Previous Message
I find myself somewhat more impressed with Adam's penultimate ballet than was my colleague Raymond J. Walker, though we are in complete agreement about the very fine performance delivered by Dario Salvi and the Sofia Philharmonic.
I was almost unable to listen to the disc at all, however, for it would not even begin playing on either of my CD players (both purchased within the past two years). Fortunately, it would play on the DVD/Blu-ray player hooked up to my television but, as you can imagine, that's not an optimal solution. All I can imagine is that the completely unprecedented problem may derive from the fact that, as Raymond points out, "enhanced sampling compression" has been applied to get 89 minutes of music onto the single CD. I wonder whether anyone else has experienced the same technical issue with this or any other release coming in at around the 90 minutes mark?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be only older CD players that are affected. Neither of mine is more than two years old and one was bought within the past year. Are technical developments now coming along so thick and fast that a machine that was bought just a few months ago now counts as “old”?