I made the stupid mistake of ordering this with another item being released in November 2007, so I had to wait for a long time to get this. Anticipation was killing me!
There is no known consumeristic (sic) way to digitally rip an SACD, so I used my M-Audio Audiophile 2496 soundcard and did an analogue rip at 96kHz (24-bits per sample). There are a lot of unknowns here, such as my SACD player output quality, my soundcard input quality, etc., so take what I say about this with a grain of salt.
There's at least extra 6dB worth of dynamic range in all the tracks, with some having more than 9dB more in some places. I can't tell how much of this is just a side effect of analogue rip process. What is certain, though, is that it does sound good.
In some ways, though, it doesn't sound all that different from the CD version. This is both good and bad. After all, even the CD version is one of the better mastered J-??? discs out there. On the bad side, I get this feeling, this wasn't recorded using DSD equipment. I'm even wondering if it was recorded using state-of-the-art 192kHz 20+bits per sample equipment. Spectrum analysis of the D->A->D wave shows obvious dip past around 22kHz. I have a hard time believing my soundcard has THAT bad of a frequency response behavior. And I'm pretty sure my SACD player doesn't attenuate significantly until past 50kHz. This is based on Stereophile measurement of the same model I own (SCD-C333ES). Also, some tracks, like the last track, which is not on the CD version, has better-looking response curve that goes past 24kHz.
So, in technical terms, it's inconclusive. However, in pure musical terms, this is still the best piece of media disc I own at the moment, with wonderful songs, beautiful voice, thoughtful lyrics, and good sound quality. If you have an SACD player (I hear PS3 plays SACDs), I highly recommend you pick this up. If not, I highly recommend you pick up the CD version. Pick up her other CDs while you're at it, too.
As for the audio quality rating, I'm not so inclined to go anywhere near the top (10) for this, so ended up giving it a 6, which is still the highest number I've given out to date. I hope "Pure -AquaPlus Legend of Acoustics" SACD will do better than this. UPDATE: After looking at newer SACD albums (KIGA-3 and KIGA-4), I've re-graded this to 8 because, despite lower quality recordings (some possibly even analogue masters), mastering itself has the least amount of tampering here. Looking at the trend, this may forever be the best sounding album I ever own for the rest of my life.
Since the cover of the booklet is identical to that of the CD version, I picked out pages with pictures in the booklet, as well as the back of the booklet, to post.
