Giving up on DVD-A? (1 Viewer)

[Mike Broadman]

Yeah, that's been on my list for a while. My music money has been diverted away from DVDs...

 

[Michael St. Clair]

I think you are smoking some really strong crack down in Georgia.

 

[Mike Broadman]

Michael, what would you say is the best Synchronicity? I sold the SACD because it didn't impress me and is single layer. Are you referring to the MFSL?

 

[gene c]

All I'm looking to do is replace some of my favorite cd's with m/c. Whether it be DVD-A, SACD, DD, or DTS makes no difference to me. I currently have about 20 DVD-A's and 7 DTS's of which I could live without 1/2 of. The other 1/2 have made this whole mess worth it though as I much prefer m/c over stereo when done right (to me). As for SACD, after returning two! of the new Toshiba 6915's in two days :frowning: I pretty much said "the hell with it" and bought a Pioneer 563 on closeout as I needed a pro scan anyway. Picked up Toto IV and Spyro Gyro and although these are nice, not much difference between hi and standard res to me. Maybe better stuff and a quieter environment would help. As for SACD titles, only a handful I'm going to get right away. As for DVD-A verses SACD? Both have good and bad points so it's mostly the titles of which DVD-A so far has more of what I like since it's all m/c. Much of what I would like to get on SACD is only stereo (like Boston). When Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons etc. comes out in m/c, I will buy it regardless of format.

 

[AricB]

They could stop focusing and people like myself would stop buying. Not that it seems they really have been focusing, but then again that explains why I havent been buying. I have both formats, and will continue using both, until one wins and/or the other player dies. Sacd has plenty of good surround titles, I have not noticed a huge difference in the amount of quality surround titles on each format, at least within the pop/rock genre. Bowies-Heathen and Ziggy stardust, Beck's sea change, Peter Gabriels Up, Miles Davis-kind of blue, Elton John and Tommy, Joe Satriani's strange beautiful music, Billy Joel-stranger, all surround sacd's that sound very good IMO. Sure some of them recently came out on DVDA, but it took 6-12 months?

My stance is regardless of if I want to listen to surround or not, I'm not buying a disc, that's not, just to have to re-purchase it down the road if the format takes off. I'm already hearing about a SRV-couldnt stand the weather surround disc, after its been released stereo? I have a couple stereo only, Bowie's scary monsters and lets dance, just doesnt seem worth the value nearly as much.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

That's fine, we just have an honest disagreement.

Let me explain why I think format is important. In the 90s when we worked with Chesky Records we had Jeremy Kipnis doing much of the mastering and he is superb and does things as realistic and flat as possible. He is an audiophile's audiophile in terms of recording. No matter what he did, I was always disappointed with the high frequency range on normal 44.1khz. When we went to (and we were among the first) 96k, things improved considerably. So you had a situation where the original recording was superb, the mastering was superb, and the sampling rate more than doubled. Jeremy was very excited about the 96k sound and so was David who records in it today, albeit with even more refined equipment. Ten years is a lifetime in digital converter evolution...

My view is maybe to consider the original recording 50%, the sampling rate 25%, and the mastering 25%. Sometimes mastering can make a huge difference that seems more than 25% but this can be due to other factors like the CD was done early in the Red Book history on poor sounding ADCs, etc.

There are indeed several cases in both SACD and DVDA where sloppy mastering has produced an inferior product than the Red Book, but in my experience it is a very rare occurance.

As for the Synchronicity SACD I like it but it only fair as a new version. It has oodles more detail than the Red Book but to my ears sounds a bit shrill on a couple of tracks. I would not say it is uniformly worse than the Red Book. I am comparing to the Mobile Fidelity and the last remaster.

I guess we just have an honest disagreement.

By the way, you sometimes can control the original recording aspect in that you can often select between LPs mastered from analog and CDs from PCM. Many specialty labels lay down analog and PCM tapes and often the analog tape is the better of the two.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Ah, there you go again. You always use boutique audiophile examples, where proper mastering can be taken for granted.

I, like many of us, buy mostly mainstream pop/rock, both classic and contemporary. In that market, you cannot ever take it for granted that a given release will be mastered properly.

There's a reason why previous masters of albums like 'Highway 61' and 'Pet Sounds' still fetch big bucks on eBay (despite newer high-res releases), and it isn't because of a handful of folks over at the SH forums.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Thank you for the hommage to my hero President Reagan.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

It's also a completely meaningless for those of us who listen primarily to pop/rock, where mastering quality varies widely between disc issues/pressings. Of course in the boutique world format will be more important than mastering, because virtually ever release is well-mastered!

 

[Rich Malloy]

I totally agree with you that mastering is key, but we're leaving aside the original recording process, which is clearly just as important (can't really polish a turd and all that). But, that aside, a well-mastered CD will sound better than a poorly mastered SACD/DVD-A.

Fortunately, some of the best engineers and boutique studios present well-mastered material on SACD/DVD-A: Steve Hoffman, Bob Ludwig, Doug Sax, the folks at Telarc, Chesky, AIX, etc. Invariably, the higher resolution formats allow these engineers to better the work they do on CD.

So, yes, mastering is key. And good mastering to a hi-res format is best of all.

 

[Mike Broadman]

I'm gonna have to agree with Michael on this one, despite my love of SACD. Granted, I haven't done the detailed listening you guys have, but when I think of my favorite SACDs, it's definitely the mastering.

The CCR discs are done by Steve Hoffman, who is the man, and already did them before for the DCC gold discs. Another example: Relaxin', Cookin', and Steamin', all Miles Davis titles from Prestige, recorded at about the same time (mid-50s), all released as SACDs by different labels and mastering engineers and studios. All sound good, but the differences are quite noticeable. Cookin' is the warmest, with the sweetest cymbal sound. Relaxin' is relatively the weakest, though still better than the redbooks (though I haven't heard DCC's gold disc of this).

 

[Paul.S]

Rich:
The Synchronicity SACD, while "only fair," has "oodles more detail" than both the 1995 A&M remaster and the MFSL?

MSC, what Toto IV do you recommend (presumably the MFSL or the Sony SBM?) over the apparently disastrous SACDs?

-p

 

[Phil A]

I don't have the same specific recordings on CD or SACD but with a quality playback system there's not a doubt that a well mastered CD can be better than a mediocre or poor quality DVD-A or SACD. In the below thread which had a recent article:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=200503

John Atkinson said

"Both can produce very high-quality audio, when done right," Atkinson said. "Inherently, they can sound better than CDs."


Unfortunately, lax recording techniques can negate the technical advantages of the new formats, he said. "


My Dire Strits "Brothers in Arms" XRCD2 sounds better than many (if not more than half) of the my (200) hi-rez discs. I certainly am not playing them back on a low res system using a Modwright modded XA-777ES and other quality CD playback in the same league via an outboard DAC via Thiel 7.2s with a Brsyton 14BSST. I've also taken stuff into the store and helped my friend do probably 250 set-ups on things as expensive as $85k main speakers and associated equipment. I been in several home with more than $100k in a 2-channel only system.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Yes, and in the case of Ludwig, Hoffman and Chesky they claim to a person that higher sampling allows them to get the most out of the recording. Wait until you hear the new latin album at 24/96k I heard being recorded in NYC...

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Quite true in both cases. JA is a recording engineer of some merit by the way.

Logically, however, agreeing that mastering can negate the benefits of sampling rates is different from agreeing that one is more important than the other.

It seems most here would agree that, all else being equal, we would prefer for most pop/rock releases in this order:

1. Higher sampling rate, well mastered.
2. Well mastered, low sampling rate.
3. Poorly mastered, low sampling rate.

However in the case of #2, you might prefer a mediocre mastering with higher sampling rate depending on source. Generally this does not happen often as hirez discs are usually given a bit more care.

 

[PhilBoy]

Crime Of The Century (remaster)CD has got to be a shining example of what can be accomplished with a quality re-master and it should set a goal for today's engineers.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Yes. The sampling adds detail very consistently in either of the hirez formats.

 

[Paul.S]

Thx for reply, Lee. Esp. interesting since Synchronicity was one of the early digital rock recordings . . . -p

 

[Michael St. Clair]

Actually I have an older Japanese pressing that I prefer, but I kept the SACD for the surround, which also has better fidelity IMO.

Oh, and my initials are MTS...St. Clair is my last name, and my middle initial is 'T'

 

[Matt Levy]

I love the multi-channel SACD and DVD-A stuff. However, the new releases are coming out slower and slower and it is discouraging. What seems to be the deal with this? There are so many titles, old and new, that would sound incredible with the new formats. When I listen to CDs now, it is a downer compared to SACD and DVD-A, just like watching analog TV instead of HDTV.