rsn said:
<font color='#000000'>I have seen plenty of SACD (and DVD-A) discs that I know came from 44.1 masters. They did not go back to any multi-tracks and remix, because ther ARE no original multi-tracks.
Well, for two-channel digital recordings, you may be right. But most -- if not all -- of the stereo SACDs I own were originally recorded in analog, so I would assume they were mastered in DSD directly from the analog master tapes. That's not necessarily true (more on that below), but I know in the case of the Rolling Stones' ABKCO catalog that Bob Ludwig says he used PCM only when he had to do some special processing, and it wasn't much. For surround, however, they'd have to go back to the multitrack masters; how else could they make a surround mix? I've never seen a two-channel DVD-A (although it's in the spec), so I've always figured all DVD-As are remixed from the multitrack tapes. I think a more-significant issue -- and a relatively arcane one -- is that some SACDs migrate through PCM, which would seem to defeat the purpose of DSD. I'll give you a couple examples.
Earlier this year, I was reading about the upcoming SACD of the Who's "Tommy," and Pete Townshend, who supervised the surround mix, mentioned that, since they didn't know which format they'd ultimately use for release, they mixed to LPCM (at 24/96, I think). Eventually they released the recording on both SACD and DVD-A, but I'm sure they used the same mix, so this means the SACD went from multitrack analog to LPCM to DSD. Kinda stupid, if you ask me.
In 1992, Tom Dowd remixed "The Allman Brothers Band at Fillmore East" and it was re-released it as "The Fillmore Concerts." In the liner notes, Dowd says they transferred the eight-track masters to digital (at 16/44.1 or 16/48, I'd assume), allowing them to retire the priceless multitracks "to the Smithsonian." This year they re-released "Fillmore East" as a 5.1 SACD, and you gotta think they mixed from the 1992 PCM multitracks (not that the liner notes tell you anything).
For SACD surround mixes of classic works (mostly recorded in analog), it seems to me as though they'd specifically transfer the multitracks to DSD, then mix and master in DSD, and keep PCM out of it. Same thing for DVD-A -- just use LPCM all the way. But for digital recordings . . . I dunno. Everything was recorded in PCM, so what's the point of a higher digital resolution?