MILES DAVIS, “Kind of Blue” • remaster: Hemolia Records, SACD Single Layer & CD REVIEW

Hemiolia Records, an Italian record label specialising in reissues of the most popular jazz and classical music titles on tape, has released its first title in a digital format – SACD and CD.

The label was founded in 2016 by Claudio Valeri. Operating from a recording studio established in 1990 and utilising ‘vintage’ equipment, it offers remasters on analogue tapes, prepared from original master tapes.

To mark the High End Vienna 2026 exhibition, the Italian label announced the launch of a new technological and release project: ‘Hemiolia on Vinyl & SACD’. As a result, the label’s catalogue of original master tapes is, for the first time, taking on the form of 180g vinyl records featuring AAA remasters, alongside an exclusive digital set comprising two discs: a Single Layer SACD and a CD. The first title on LP is Sonny Collins’s “Saxophone Colossus”, while the first digital release is Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue”. We’ll start with the latter.

text WOJCIECH PACUŁA

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Hemiolia Records is a project by, who operate from two locations in Italy: Hemiolia’s headquarters in Perugia, Umbria, and a recording and mastering studio in Savio, Emilia-Romagna. Let’s take this opportunity to explain: ‘Hemiolia’ is a rhythmic musical pattern based on syncopated beats, consisting of two beats in the time of three, or three beats in the time of two.

The label has many satisfied clients and is well-known within our industry. As it happens, its masters are created from the same tapes as those of Audionautes Recordings. I asked its boss, Fabio Camorani, how this works and how these two approaches differ. As he says, the starting point is the same, but the entire process is different and specific to each label.

Fabio’s masters, for example, are produced at the Creative Mastering studio in Forlì, Italy. Stefano Capelli is responsible for transferring them from tape, while Roberto Mengozzi, Fabio Fornari and Fabio Camorani oversee the mastering. The tapes are transferred from a Studer B67 tape machine, which is a sort of compact version of the A80R; more → HERE.

▓  The studio

Sessions for Hemolia Records are similar in spirit, but take place in different locations and different people are responsible for the production. The studio in Savio is equipped with analogue tape recorders in all formats – including 2-inch 24-track ones. They are used to make copies of analogue tapes after they have gone through the mastering stage. In Perugia, meanwhile, new master tapes are copied for end customers. There are as many as sixteen Telefunken M15A tape recorders there, to which the signal is fed from two Studer A80 VU tape recorders. Dave Denyer writes

Alongside the copying room is an exquisitely stocked listening room, and fully climate-controlled storage facilities where Hemiolia stores both its stocks of blank tapes (from Recording the Masters) and its recordings – the master copy for safe keeping, and the master copies available for sale.

⸜ DAVE DENYER, A quick introduction to… Hemiolia Records, Dave Denyer: The Reel-to-Reel Rambler, → THEREELTOREELRAMBLER.com, accessed: 1.07.2026.

Writing about the recording studio, Denyer adds that it was designed and built in 1990 by the British organisation Society Audio Design Group, which is also responsible, among other things, for the creation of the new Abbey Road studio. Savio is built mainly from stone and wood, and its design incorporates various natural elements to improve the acoustics, such as chambers and recesses designed to ‘provide ideal conditions for recording’:

It’s a benchmark of technical and acoustic quality and, having been in operation for almost three decades now, the Hemiolia facility has recorded in excess of 600 albums. (Ibid.)

‖ Hemolia Records stand at the time of the High End Vienna 2026 exhibition

Hemiolia’s catalogue of master tape copies currently comprises over twenty titles. Each one comes with a certificate confirming that it has been produced using Hemiolia’s ‘A4P’ process. The aim is to guarantee customers that these tapes are exactly what they are paying for: authentic, fully authorised, studio-quality copies of master tapes, sourced directly from original master tapes. This is important because not all tapes on the market are copies of analogue masters. That is why Hemiolia Records’ reels are marked with an electronic watermark (ERW).

The label’s latest project consists of vinyl and digital releases. The producer writes:

When we gave life to this project, over two years ago, we set ourselves an extremely ambitious and avowedly uncompromising goal: we wanted to transfer into the new physical media the maximum possible amount of information, dynamics, and breath enclosed within our original tapes, preserving their detail, soul, and deep emotional charge intact.

As we read on, the objective was to create vinyl and SACD editions of such excellence ‘as to establish themselves as the new reference on the market (…) we can proudly declare that we are fully satisfied with the result we have managed to achieve’.

▓  Technology

The basis of the process is ‘meticulous and passionate mastering work’ guided by the experience and sensitivity of Pietro Benini, which – as emphasized by the label – has been tailored to the specific requirements of each medium. The choice is ‘technically indispensable but, above all, essential to maximize its native potential’:

To ensure that this intent translated into reality without any compromise, we elevated every single link in the chain to excellence, creating a perfect symbiosis between the finest hardware technology and the irreplaceable sensitivity of the human factor. While for vinyl our chain gives life to editions strictly classifiable as AAA, for SACD and CD we can proudly reaffirm the historic AAD classification, rarely used for digital formats today, since the original signal from the magnetic tape flows entirely in the analog domain through the entire mastering chain, up to the last useful stage where the conversion electronics intervene exclusively to translate its breath into bits.

And, in fact, very few labels currently offer AAD remastering. Almost all of them carry out remastering in the digital domain, which results in SPARS ADD code. This is how, for example, our top remastering engineers work (in the order in which they appear in “High Fidelity”): Jacek Gawłowski (more → HERE), Paweł “Bemol” Ładniak (more → HERE) or Damian Lipiński (more → HERE). The Polish exception is Custom34 studio and Piotr Łukaszewski with his AC Records releases (more → HERE). In the Western hemisphere, such studios include Mobile Fidelity and Kevin Gray’s Cohearent Studios.

This requires a completely different approach to the source material, but it is also the result of a different philosophy regarding remastering. The digital process provides sound engineers with unique tools. It allows for thorough removal of noise, correction of phase issues, and reconstruction using other available tapes.

This is how, for example, the remaster of the Komeda Quintet’s Astigmatic album was created. It was prepared by Jacek Gawłowski for the ‘Polish Jazz’ series in 2016. As he told me at the time, all the material comes from the original master tape, apart from a short section on the B-side, which is slightly damaged. There, he inserted a section from a backup tape.

This isn’t done in analogue remastering, so the resulting material has more noise – even more than the original. This is because analogue tape demagnetises over time, has a higher noise level, and also suffers from crosstalk, which leads to the so-called ‘pre-echo’. However, there is something about this type of mastering – usually tube-based – that makes it sound absolutely superb.

▓  Kind of Blue

PERSONNEL: Miles Davis – trumpet, John Coltrane – tenor saxophone, Julian “Cannonball” Adderley – alto saxophone, Bill Evans – piano, Wynton Kelly – grand piano (Freddie Freeloader), Paul Chambers – double bass, Jimmy Cobb – drums

Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue, a masterpiece released in 1959, has been reissued by Hemolia Records in an unusual format – in a box set (a classic) but also on two formats: SACD and CD; the former is a single-layer disc.

If I’m not mistaken, this is the first initiative of its kind outside Japan. It is soon to be joined by a new album from the Polish label Prelude Classics, on which you will find the ‘High Fidelity Masters’ logo. Hemolia is, however, the first. Previously, albums of this type were released by the ‘Stereo Sound’ magazine, mainly featuring classical music. What’s the point of all this? Wouldn’t a hybrid SACD be enough? After all, that’s what it was created for, wasn’t it?…

In the vast majority of cases, a hybrid SACD disc would be a sufficient medium, but not always. You see, it is a disc made up of two different layers bonded together, which creates stresses in the material, which results in the optical correction system having to work harder. More importantly, however, the laser beam must pass through the SACD layer to reach the CD layer, which weakens it and causes diffraction. Tests and measurements carried out by Sony at the very dawn of the format in 2000 showed that this could be a problem. That is why the label’s first SACD discs, released in Japan, were single-layer SACDs.

Separating the DSD and PCM material, as in the case of the new version of Kind of Blue, between their respective media is therefore a sound and almost obvious move.

This material has been remastered using analogue techniques and released by Hemolia Records as a Deluxe Digipack in a box set containing two discs (SACD + CD). The release is limited to 1,000 numbered copies. This is because the metal masters wear out, resulting in a deterioration in the quality of copies with higher numbers.

Furthermore, the DSD (Direct Stream Digital) signal on the SACD is not encoded using DST (Direct Stream Transfer). This is a lossless compression technology (for reducing file size) for DSD files. It works like a zipped ZIP file on a computer, reducing the size of the music file. This compression is theoretically ‘invisible’ from a mathematical point of view, but it requires the player’s processor to work harder, which always results in higher levels of noise and jitter. Hemolia Records has opted not to use compression, so the disc features Pure DSD signal. 

‖ Since 2016, the ‘Stereo Sound’ label has been releasing selected titles in two formats: single-layer SACD and CD

The starting point was Pietro Benini’s creation of two separate analogue production masters, optimised respectively for the physical and dynamic specifications of the SACD and CD formats. Both masters were recorded onto ¼” magnetic tape (RTM SM900) using an Otari MTR-15 tape recorder. The same device was then used for playback to feed the signal to dedicated conversion chains: for the CD format, the analogue signal was entrusted to the historic Studer D19 Mic ADtube converter, whilst for the SACD, native conversion to Pure DSD format was carried out by the widely acclaimed Merging Anubis Pro system.

The tapes come from Sony’s European archive. These are second-generation ‘master’ tapes. However, as experience shows, as they were very rarely used, their condition is far better than that of the actual originals in the US. This also means that the material has been corrected in terms of speed. It is worth recalling that almost all releases of the Kind of Blue album published over the last thirty years have suffered from issues with the speed accuracy of the three-track Ampex tape recorder used during the session on 2 March 1959, during which Side A of the album was created.

As is well known, the main three-track tape recorder used during the first recording session had a mechanical drive fault. This fault, which altered the original pitch by approximately a quarter-tone, was discovered in 1992 by the renowned sound engineer Mark Wilder, who restored the correct speed, albeit by means of digital processing. The three-channel tape was labelled ‘Job Reel C’, and the corrected recording appeared for the first time in the 1992 reissue from the Master Sound series. Since then, the industry has continued to use sources derived from this master or from subsequent digital corrections.

‖ Four versions of Kind of Blue: Crystal Discs by Audionautes Recordings (2025), a box set by Hemolia Records (2026), a 7-inch SACD (stereo & mono) by Sony Records (2026), and Super Bit Mapping on Gold-CD (1994)

Hemiolia offers a release that uses an analogue tape, recorded from the very beginning at the correct speed, as its source. It states:

We did not have to perform any speed variation or restoration: the source used is a first-generation flat Production Master Tape, derived directly from a different Session Tape than the one used by Wilder in 1992, recorded at the correct speed, the one originating from the backup three-track Ampex recorder utilized during the recording sessions.

The ending of the track ‘So What’ is said to be irrefutable proof of this source’s value. As it has not been shortened or manipulated as a result of subsequent historical interference with the Columbia tapes, the structure of the track extends here for a full thirteen bars, compared to the mere five in all current editions.

As stated:

In order to guarantee a standard of production excellence without compromises on a purely physical level as well, the entire engineering and manufacturing of the media and packaging has been entrusted to Sonopress GmbH’. A world leader and absolute benchmark in the high-precision optical digital printing sector, the German company handles every single aspect of the release entirely within its facilities in Germany: from the physical production of the SACD and CD media to the manufacturing of the refined containers and the entire printing and editorial apparatus that safeguards the work.

‖ The Sony Records versions feature the original cover art; all those using the European masters feature a photograph of Don Hunstein taken during the recording session on the cover

▓  The edition

This Miles Davis album, released by Hemolia Records, marks the launch of the label’s new series. It has therefore been produced with exceptional care. It is presented in a small box set with an outer sleeve, into which a double digipack is inserted. The cover features a photograph licensed by Sony Europe – a different image to that on the original (the Audionautes release has the same cover). On the left-hand side, a strip reminiscent of a Japanese obi has been printed. It contains information on the remastering process, the type of tape used, the contents, as well as SD/SACD and CD logos.

Above the cover photograph is a caption stating that this is a Hemolia Records remaster, reminiscent of those on Mobile Fidelity releases, and below it is information on who remastered the material, along with a facsimile of Pietro Benini’s signature. Quite a lot of detail for such a small format. On the back are the track titles, a list of performers and a machine-printed number – mine is: 0141.

When you slide out the digibox, you’ll see the same cover, but with a slightly different ‘obi’. The rest, including the back, are almost identical to what is printed on the box. The digibox has three flaps. The left-hand flap contains a booklet with an essay on the album, the musical content and information about the remaster. The middle section holds the SACD disc, and the right-hand flap holds the CD. Both discs feature a print pattern resembling analogue tape. It is worth noting that ‘Stereo Sound’ releases followed the lead of many Japanese editions, which coat the front of the disc with a specially selected shade of turquoise lacquer to minimise laser beam reflections. 

▓  The Sound

PROGRAM ‖ ① So What (9:22) ② Freddie Freeloader (9:46) ③ Blue in Green (5:37) ④ All Blues (11:33) ⑤ Flamenco Sketches (9:26)

Choosing this particular title for the first reissue in the new series seems a very safe bet. Firstly, it is a classic of jazz music; secondly, it is a classic among audiophile reissues; and thirdly, this year marks the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth (26 May 1926). To mark the occasion, as part of the ‘Miles Davis 100th Birthday Celebrations’ series, Sony Records Int’l (マイルス・デイビス生誕100周年記念)released a double SACD album (7-inch Paper Sleeve), in mono and stereo versions (SICJ 10023–4).

For comparison, we will also have the phenomenal version by Audionautes Recordings (AN 2405 KD), released in 2023 on Crystal Disc CD; the UHQCD version featuring the same remaster; the 2015 Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab SACD (UDSACD 2085), and the benchmark for contemporary releases: the 1994 gold-coated CD from the ‘Master Sound’ series. 

Right from the very first few seconds of listening to ˻ 1 ˺ So What from the SACD remaster by Hemolia Records, two things stand out. The first one is a relatively high level of noise. This is something that almost all previous releases have sought to mitigate, to tone down a little. That’s why – I remember this well – I was so surprised by the CD included in the ‘anniversary’ box set, featuring a remaster prepared to mark the 50th anniversary of the release of Kind of Blue – it also has noise (50th Anniversary Collector’s Edition).

The noise also revealed something that was confirmed moments later, as soon as Paul Chambers’ double bass came in. It’s big sound with strongly pronounced low end. It seems to me that an effort was made to convey the actual size of the instruments, as the piano is also large, and of the exceptionally spacious studio where the recordings were made.

So, we have plenty of volume and a lot of space. Yes, the latter is more expansive – both deeper and wider – than I’m used to from listening to earlier releases. You can tell that the producers of this version wanted to capture the power of the sextet’s performance when heard from a close distance. In other words, just as jazz was listened to back then – in small clubs, standing or sitting at tables set up not far from the stage. This also creates incredible energy. When the whole band suddenly kicks in at 1:35, it’s a fast and powerful hit, almost awakening. Coltrane’s saxophone is also presented in a similarly expansive and sweeping manner.

˻ 2 ˺ Freddie Freeloader also takes advantage of this momentum. As we’ve already mentioned, this recording has great depth and scale. Jimmy Cobb’s drums, when he hits the hi-hat a bit harder in a few places, almost border on overdrive. That’s how it was recorded, but this particular remaster brings out the energy, along with other details.

It’s also warm sound. We don’t think about it straight away, but over time we come to that conclusion. We don’t think about it because of the energy and tangibility of the performance. But when we hear the soft playing of Wynton Kelly, who replaced Bill Evans on this track, we know full well that there’s certain artistry here and a kind of sweetness, in contrast to Evans’s more percussive style. This is also evident in the playing of Julian ‘Cannonball’ Adderley, whose alto saxophone usually sounds more piercing, but in this version is more ‘honey-smooth’, as if it had a rounded attack.

There’s something about this version that makes you think of this recording as a more contemporary one, with a wider tonal and dynamic range, rather than a nearly seventy-year-old ‘oldie’. I know, I know – a classic, a masterpiece, a poem… But even classics grow old, don’t they? And A Kind of Blue somehow eludes this process of deterioration. When we hear that calm, beautiful ‘sound’ of ˻ 3 ˺ Blue in Green, When the drumsticks gently rustle across the snare drum, and the bandleader’s trumpet comes in – we get the impression that the sound is ‘right here, right now’.

Perhaps that is, in fact, the main distinguishing feature of this version. A great deal of effort has gone into bringing that sound into our room, and it has really been successful. That’s why even Evans’s incredible playing in the background in ˻ 4 ˺ All Blues is clear and dense. And when, at 1:46, the drums begin to sound in full, when Cobb switches from brushes to sticks, it suddenly bursts forth with a wealth of harmonics.

The last track on the album, ˻ 5 ˺ Flamenco Sketches, Miles Davis’s composition, blends gently into this pattern. The sound of this track is less tangible and less ‘immediate’ than the previous ones, as if the difference lay in the way the tape was saturated. By the way – the background noise here is much lower than on So What. I get the impression that, while initially slightly quieter, it was turned up to match the leader’s trumpet coming in more forcefully at 1:42, or perhaps it was edited together from different takes.

We know that during the recording sessions, Davis stood or sat close to the microphones, and this is precisely what is emphasised in this version. This closeness – the trumpet’s mute almost touching the microphone grille – is very characteristic of the Hemolia version. It also appears immediately afterwards with Coltrane’s saxophone. Interestingly, Adderley’s saxophone is presented further back here, with a stronger presence of reverb.

▒  COMPARISONS

SACD (2026) • The new release from Sony Records Int’l, brought out this year to mark the 100th anniversary of Miles Davis’s birth, is really great: detailed, selective and dynamic. There’s no doubt, however, that Hemolia’s remaster adds something extra to this sound. I think it’s the softness and depth – both tonal and spatial depth.

The Sony version presents the sound in a drier way and isn’t quite as rich. When, at 0:10 in “So What”, you hear a non-musical sound in the background of the studio – as if something had fallen onto the floor – the Italian version renders this more beautifully, more effectively and more organically, which also translates into the sound of the instruments. It’s also bigger sound. The mid-range level seems similar, yet we get the impression that the Hemolia Records remaster is louder. What seems most important to me, however, is that the Italian remaster offers more detailed, more nuanced and, as a result, more engaging sound.

Crystal Disc (2025) • The new Hemolia version is closer to what Audionautes Recordings had previously produced. It shares a similar approach to softness and fullness, as well as depth. And yet Fabio Camorani’s version is also different. It is more selective, yet warmer. It is also less ‘forward’. The soundstage feels slightly wider with this version than with either of the two SACDs.

The depth is also more pronounced, as the reverberations are longer and fade out more slowly. The Hemolia version brings the sound closer, making it feel slightly larger and more tangible. But there is also less “breath” in it.

Generally speaking, the Crystal Disc is exceptionally ‘pure’ and resembles the sound of analogue tape, whilst the Hemolia Records SACD version is like a boosted vinyl record. It is also more reminiscent of the Audionautes UHQCD version. It is slightly more saturated, but also less resolving. In this respect, both the Crystal Disc and the UHQCD, even though they are ‘merely’ Compact Discs, offer something more. The Italian SACD, on the other hand, is brilliantly saturated and tangible, something the other two lack. It is also the only one to deliver such powerful low end.

SBM Gold-CD (1994) • I’ve saved the comparison with the classic CD version for the end, though on a gold-plated disc. I’m very fond of the Super Bit Mapping technique used to prepare the digital material. It results in depth and fullness – which is exactly what I’ve got here. And yet this is a rather sparse version in terms of detail. All the more recent releases, particularly those from Hemolia Records and Audionautes Recordings, are far richer, denser, more tangible and deeper. They are simply much better.

The 1994 version is rather shallow in terms of harmonics and spatial depth. It’s also ‘thin’ when it comes to the filling of sounds, even though the bass is powerful, almost as powerful as in the latest version. It’s just that it’s more defined and less full-bodied. And the edition is brighter, without much detail in the treble. It’s not bad, but still…

▓  Conclusions

It’s fascinating to gain an insight into how the same audio material can be interpreted using different methods of transfer and processing (mastering). Each of the three new versions is interesting and each has something intriguing to offer. The most important thing for me was to compare the SACD from Hemolia Records with the UHQCD and Crystal Disc from Audionautes Recordings. In my view, these offer the very best digital versions of Kind of Blue available. I should add that the Mobile Fidelity SACD is also quite good, yet it is not the ‘right’ one.

Of these two SACDs, the Hemolia version is more powerful, denser and more tangible. Its bass is more distinct. The CD version also sounds like this; it simply lacks a little of that tangibility, though it is equally dense and full-bodied. Crystal Disc delivers smoother and warmer sound with even greater precision. This is the best release of this title that I know of.

‖ Premiere of Hemolia Records edition during the High End Vienna 2026 exhibition

The closest, most reliable comparison will therefore be between the Italian releases – the SACD and the UHQCD. The latter is more subtle, presenting the sound with greater distance. It isn’t quite as rich at the lower end of the frequency range, but it isn’t thin either. In my opinion, these are equivalent ways of presenting this material, even though they are so different. That is why I would like to have both, provided I no longer have the Crystal Disc.

If we are asked about the differences between the single-layer SACD and the CD from the same box set, we could say: very similar, but not quite the same. The Compact Disc is just as energetic, but less tangible. In this respect, the Audionautes UHQCD version is superior. But there is a great deal of warmth and fullness in the sound of the CD from the Hemolia Records box set, which also comes across so well in the SACD version. It really is an excellent release and, were it not for the Crystal Disc version, it would be on a par – for me – with the UHQCD, or perhaps even better.  ‖ WP

» Sound quality: SACD 10/10 ‖ CD 9/10

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‖ HOW WE LISTENED • The listening session was carried out using the ‘High Fidelity’ reference system. The discs were played on the Ayon Audio CD-35 HF Edition SACD player. The signal was fed to the Ayon Audio Spheris Evo line preamplifier via a Siltech Triple Crown RCA interconnect. The system also included a Soulution 710 power amplifier and Harbeth M40.1 speakers. Cabling comprised Crystal Cable Absolute Dream and Siltech Triple Crown, with power cables from Siltech, Acoustic Revive and Acrolink.

→ www.HEMIOLIARECORDS.com

text WOJCIECH PACUŁA

pictures “High Fidelity”

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