Camille Saint-SaënsSymphony No. 3 'Organ'
Chicago Symphony Orchestra
Gaston Litaize
Daniel Barenboim
SACD ISO & Flac Rip - Deutsche Grammophon 477 5397 (2004)
Our esteemed fellow blogger ytsejamer05 was generous enough to share the LP of the Barenboim Saint-Saens 3rd! Here is another take on the same topic!
No doubt he was disappointed that CDs didn't deliver on the promise they were touted with on arrival. I too was disappointed that the early CDs sounded at best flat and lifeless, at worst shrill and almost completely unlistenable. But for me the surface noise on LPs ruined any other gains, and so I suffered. But to my ears what is available in modern high resolution recordings/masterings holds out some promise for the future! I wouldn't hold out this Barenboim recording as a special one sonically; but I've always loved the performance! Listen for yourself and decide.
I have included an ISO file extracted from the SACD and a 24/96 flac file extracted from the ISO. If you don't know how to play ISO files from SACDs, Foobar2000 has plugins for most hi-res files. Do a Google search for "Foobar 2000 sacd iso decoder" and you should get what you need. The 24/96 flac file can easily be down-converted to 16 bit using Foobar2000 if that's what you really want (just be sure to check the "always dither" option).
As some of you may know, until recently the only way to extract the hi-res layer from SACDs was using old XBox Play Station 3 game consoles. Recently I came across a script that allows extraction from newer stand-alone Blu-Ray players such as Oppo and Marantz. I am trying to extract my library which runs to about 800 titles. If there is a positive response to this, I might be encouraged to post some more of these.