Mercury Asks: Which Living Presence Albums for SACD? [HFR]

Mercury Records has delighted Classical Music fans with the news that they are planning to release a number of albums from their “Living Presence Stereo” series on SACD in the near future. These 3-track 35mm analog recordings are well known for their sonic excellence.

In a message on the Universal Music’s iClassics Message Board on the Internet earlier today, a moderator of the board named “iClassics_Steve” asks:

“Mercury Living Presence SACD Question”
To all SACD fans:
If Mercury Living Presence SACDs were to be released in an initial batch of ten and then 5 more every 6 months or so, could you give some feedback on what ten initial titles you would most want? Thanks.

Participating In the Survey
To participate in the survey, you can visit this message thread on the iClassics Internet Message Board.

Before dropping by, another resource you may want to check is the comprehensive 3 page listing of Mercury Living Presence albums compiled by Jack D. Hill. You can find Jack’s list entitled “A Mercury Living Presence Labelography” on his web site.

Survey Results So Far
So far, a number of music fans have already weighed in on the survey. They have suggested which Mercury Living Presence titles they would like to see issued early on in this process as well as whether the SACDs should be Hybrid or Single Layer, Stereo or Multichannel and Stereo.

If Mercury chose to use SACD’s Multichannel layer to present the 3 channel master tapes in their original 3 channel, Left, Center and Right positioning along with the traditional Stereo mix on the Stereo SACD and Stereo CD layers, that could be pretty interesting indeed!