In 2003 Sony released 15 of Dylan's albums in Super Audio CD (SACD) format.  The series included the three 1965-66 albums which are the main subject of this website.

This page is intended to save repetition by covering the generic aspects of the discs, including some information about the technology used and what you need to get the most out of them. I've tried to keep the jargon to a minimum, and to get across what's important to the general listener as opposed to the serious audiophile (who'll probably know all this anyway).

Disc Formats

The digipak editions, first released in September 2003, are hybrid SACDs.  This means that each disc contains two layers of digital information.  One contains a conventional stereo version of the album which can be read by all CD players.  This is known as the CD Audio layer, and is encoded with the usual PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) system.

The second layer contains the same stereo version encoded in a new format called DSD (Direct Stream Digital).  This is only be accessible using either a dedicated SACD audio player or one of the growing number of DVD players that can also play SACDs.  The new encoding system is intended to reproduce more of the subtleties of the original analogue recordings.  It's said that to get the best out of the extended frequency range offered by SACD you need speakers which incorporate super-tweeters; but many listeners report noticeable improvements even without these.  You'll know if you've got super-tweeters - they're small,  and look as though they've been stuck on top of the main speaker cabinet.

The SACD layer on some of the discs also contains a second version of the album, specially remixed for 5.1 surround sound.  This will only be playable on a machine which is specifically capable of playing 5.1 SACD content.  All SACD-compatible DVD players should do the job, but early SACD audio players were only designed to play stereo discs.  In addition to this you will need a six-channel amplifier, together with three front speakers, two rear speakers and a sub-woofer for deep bass signals.  To get the optimal surround-sound effect the three front and two rear speakers need to be identical and should be arranged in a circle around the listening position - these requirements are not met by the typical home theatre surround set-up.  And of course the sound will only be as good as those five identical speakers are capable of delivering.

(It should be mentioned here that Sony's initial range of SACDs, launched in 1999, were all single-layer discs.  They only had the SACD layer, and that only contained a stereo mix. The discs were therefore completely incompatible with normal CD players.  One of the very first of these single-layer SACDs was Blonde On Blonde.  This edition has now been superseded by the hybrid SACD reissue.)

Presumably recognising the need for less expensive mass-market editions which could not be squared with hybrid SACD manufacturing costs, Sony subsequently issued all fifteen of the hybrid SACD Dylan titles in plain CD editions (March 2004 in the UK, June 2004 in the US). These lower-priced jewel-case editions are ordinary CDs, but they give you benefit of the remastered (and in some cases remixed) stereo CD Audio version of the album. Digitally and aurally these will be identical to playing the hybrid SACD on a standard CD player.

Remixing and Remastering

The SACD technology is only one part of the story with the new releases. More important is the fact that all of the reissued albums have been remastered, even for the normal CD layer. Even more significantly,  Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde have also been remixed, and it's important to understand what these two processes involve.

Remixing involves going back to the original studio multi-track tapes and mixing these into a new two-channel stereo or six-channel surround-sound mix.  This can make a radical difference to the sound of the album, as the lateral positioning (panning) of instruments can be changed, the tone (equalisation) of particular instruments can be adjusted, reverb and ambience can be added, relative volumes changed and so on.  Remixing is essential to create a proper 5.1 surround version.  With Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde, the original 1960s stereo master tapes had become unusable through wear and tear, so these albums had also to be remixed for stereo. ^Note 

Both of these albums were actually remixed back in 1987 for the first CD editions, presumably because the original stereo tapes were worn out even then.  However, those mixes were never well-received, and Sony clearly felt they could get a better result by remixing them again for the SACD editions. 

Remastering just involves producing a new stereo digital master (CD or SACD) from an old stereo mix-down tape.  There are a number of factors which will affect the finished result, including:

a) The source tape used. Ideally this will be the original mix-down tape from when the album was first made.  Or it might be a safety copy of the original, which will be practically as good. What has happened too often in the past with albums from the pre-digital age is that record companies haven't bothered to seek out the original master, and have used instead a tape which has been compressed and equalised for the purpose of cutting vinyl.  These always sound considerably worse - for example, the old CD version of Highway 61 Revisited.  Just to confuse matters even more, up until the late 60s it was common practice for the compression and equalisation to be applied at the mixdown stage, so there is no original stereo master without these unwanted characteristics.

(b) Any manipulation of the overall signal which the engineer chooses to apply - noise reduction to minimise tape hiss, equalisation to boost or cut specific frequency ranges, and so on.

(c) The analogue-to-digital conversion process used, and the digital format being mastered for.  SACD format (DSD encoding) should be capable of reproducing more subtle musical information than normal CD format (PCM encoding).  But many improvements have been made over the last twenty years to try and get the most out of the regular CD format, including 20-bit and 24-bit mastering, so even normal CDs can sound very fine indeed. 

And there will be other factors that apply to both remixing and remastering, including the type of equipment used to play the source tape. For example, many engineers prefer to use valve-driven equipment for reproducing old recordings, so as to get as close as possible to the original sound.

What difference does it all make?

The detail of how these new editions sound is covered in the articles about the individual albums; but it's useful here to put into perspective the relative impact of the different technical factors involved.

Listening to these three reissued albums, it's plain that by far the greatest improvements come from the remixing of Bringing It All Back Home and Blonde On Blonde.   Even in the regular stereo CD format they really do sound like albums revitalised.  The surround mixes go even further: they add another dimension to the music, quite literally, though for now they will only be of practical use to a relatively small number of listeners.

If we gave the stereo remixing of these two albums an improvement rating of 20, then the remastering  of Highway 61 Revisited would get about 5. There's a clearly audible improvement over the old Sony CD, but the album is still saddled with the crudeness of the 1965 stereo mix.  (And of course there's no 5.1 mix at all, though my rating doesn't mark the reissue down on that account.)

That leaves us with the improvement which the SACD layer brings to the stereo mixes when compared with the standard CD layer.  On that same scale of 0 to 20, I'd say about 1.  For hi-fi enthusiasts that will still be an important 1, but on the overall scale of things, in relation to the improvement brought by the remixing, I can't see how it can be rated any higher.  For the general listener it will seem a very small improvement indeed, and may not even be detectable.  Perceiving these sorts of difference isn't just a matter of buying expensive equipment: you also have to train your hearing to listen out for the right sort of subtleties.  Listeners who climb the hi-fi ladder do this gradually as they buy increasingly sophisticated equipment. For many people, quite reasonably, these refinements are beyond any significance.  

To me, the difference is most apparent in the refinement of high frequency sounds such as cymbals, the overtones on acoustic guitars and the texture of Dylan's voice.  Ironically, it's most noticeable on switching back to the normal CD mode, when these sounds seem a little more coarse in comparison. This is probably why some people find SACDs less tiring to listen to, and in this respect more akin to the sound of vinyl records. You can listen to a whole album without wanting to turn it off and give your ears a rest.

On the other hand, the slightly less refined high frequencies do give the CD version more "bite", which some people actually prefer for the rock music character of most of these three albums.  Take your pick.

Even more subtly, the SACD technology conveys ambient sound information a little better, and so slightly improves the sense of space and stereo imaging. But to be honest you'll really only notice this if you have good equipment, your hearing is sharp and well-trained, and you sit still in the right spot giving the music all your attention.

So I'd say that nearly all of the benefit in these reissues can be enjoyed on a conventional CD player.  Unless you want the surround sound capability, I wouldn't suggest you go out and buy an SACD player without listening first - preferably with your own amplifier and speakers - to see if you think the improvement is worthwhile. If you decide to stick with stereo CD technology then you could save some money by buying the remastered plain CD editions; all the SACDs will give you is some additional photos in the packaging.

Of course, if you're reading this site you probably bought the SACDs before the plain CD reissues came out; in which case, don't go and buy them all over again!

Last updated January 2008

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