History

The Stranger was Billy Joel’s first big hit album. The Piano Man netted only one real hit, but The Stranger rang up four top 40 hits and four Grammy nominations. Phil Ramone’s assistance in this album was certainly of big importance in its success.


This was one of my favourite albums growing up along with Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water, but when I got the CD version in the 80’s I was very upset at the raspy thin sound. My LP wasn’t great, but far better.

So when SACD came around, one of the first discs I wanted was The Stranger. I didn’t have to wait long as Sony released it in 2001, in fact this was my second SACD purchase. Boy was I excited!

The SACD version is a non-hybrid SACD so it will only play on an SACD capable player. It does add multi-channel which I’ve never tried.

Listening

My SACD player is a Pioneer DV-747 with lots of mods (See the article on this site for more info) and the rest of the system is quite revealing so differences in source quality really jump out.

When the disc arrived from Amazon, I couldn’t wait to hear it so I didn’t even give the system time to warm up. I put it in and pushed play.

…

Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) bounces out, and I just listen, listen, and the big smile on my face slides off onto the carpet. What is this? It doesn’t sound much better than the CD. This was not enjoyable, in fact painful. So I decided to turn down the volume and let the system warm up for a while.

An hour later I came back and started the disc from the beginning. Nope, still sucks. Listened to all the tracks though. Then I put in the CD to compare. It was much quieter, but the same sound. It just sounds the same. All that effort to get better sound, and for nothing.

Results

Unless you want multi-channel of this disc, it is an absolute waste. You can’t play it in your car, or in the cd player in the bedroom, and when you do play it on your he-man system, your ears will hurt.