On the one hand I am jealous of the many Universal Japan SACD releases of favourite (classical) albums with artists like von Karajan, Pollini, Bohm, etc. On the other hand I have my doubts whether these releases are worth the cost of upgrading. Given that Universal, like a lot of (classical music) record labels are vague at most about how these releases has been produced (new remastering from analogue tapes in DSD, PCM or just simple upsampling from RBCD??). I bought a lot of the Universal Japan SACD re-releases of famous classical albums about ten years ago, but upgrades are not convincing. I am usually impressed with the (re)-releases by Pentatone of old DG/Philips albums. Clearly a lot of work went into these new versions.

So: 1. Has anybody an clear opinion of these Universal Japan SACD (re)-releases like the Adagio with von Karajan. 2. Has anybody any reliable information on the remastering and authoring process of these albums? A couple of years ago, EMI did an elaborate remastering of some of its classic albums (Like the ones with Klemperer, Richter, Oistrakh) and they put out videos about the process in Abbey Road studios.

Paul, the most recent wave of Universal Japan single-layer SACD reissues are sourced from DSD remastering of the original master tapes by Emil Berliner Studios. Take a look at the listings over at cdjapan, which provide the information-- I assume they're contained in the obi strips that accompany the actual records, too (alas, my Japanese is non-existent).

I think these discs are pretty terrific-- mine include Karajan's Mahler 6, a couple of his Strauss records, Ozawa/BSO in Scheherazade, and the Pollini Beethoven record.