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Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies SACD

Classic Rock

No Score

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Audio Fidelity Records
by Craig Hartranft,  13.02.2014

Billion Dollar Babies is the album that got Alice Cooper noticed, receiving critical and popular acclaim and reaching number one on all the music trade magazines in 1973. As much as it's a Cooper classic, a glimpse of melodic theater rock, it's also a period piece, a symbol early Seventies rock. For shear pretense, theatre, and absurdity it was hard to beat Alice Cooper. Even current posers who adopt a woman's name and make up can't measure up to the master who pioneered theater and shock rock.

Alice Cooper's: famous billion dollar bill.

The folks over at Audio Fidelity have taken this classic disc and reproduced it on Super Audio CD. If you don't know, or need some recollection, a SACD is 'based on DSD (Direct Stream Digital) processing, a 1-bit format with a sampling rate of 2.8224MHz, 64 times the rate of a standard compact disc.' In other words, you get better fidelity than a standard CD. Now, I have some recollection of having a SACD player at sometime, but I thought this technology had gone the way of Sony Beta video recording. Obviously not. Billion Dollar Babies is actually a hybrid SACD, so it will play in a conventional CD player.

Supposedly, when played this way, your listening experience is enhanced. I don't know if this true as my experience with this album was always on vinyl, as it probably always should be. But playing the album through my computer to my classic analog Advent speakers (of the same era), Billion Dollar Babies sounds pretty darn good.

But at $30 American ($22.70 on Amazon), it's rather pricey. Yet, it comes on gold CD, in limited numbered edition (mine was 1100), and with a genuine one billion dollar bill (see above). What's not to like. And it's a classic to boot! Alice Cooper fans should dig this. (Also a huge thank you to thoughtful and kind person(s) who passed a copy my way.)

Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies 2013

Note: All Amazon advertising in this review first benefits the artist, then Craig Hartranft also receives a residual. Click, and thanks for your support.

Audio Fidelity offers Alice Cooper fans a revved up version of Billion Dollar Babies with a Super Audio CD recording.

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The Powell Payne project, created in 2022 is the collaboration of Mark "Penfold Powell (ex-drummer of Psycho Kiss) and Adam Payne (former vocalist of Airrace). With guitarist Adam Davies and keyboard player ... [ Read More ]