A thorough review that shows SACD to be very inferior to DVD-A (1 Viewer)

[Lee Scoggins]

John,
Surprise! We agree on something here. Some of the new digital technology amps are really cool and sound amazing!
As for tubes, there is just something for acoustic guitar played backed with tubes on Maggies that feels right.

Lee

 

[John Kotches]

Lee,

After working with Bel Canto's eVo recently, and a Sharp integrated prior to that, I've come to the conclusion I have purchased my last analog amplifier.

I look forward to some other digital amps, and hope to get my hands on the Tact Audio stuff before year's end.

Regards,

 

[Lee Scoggins]

John,

We used the TACT Audio amp for an album recently and it sounded great.

Lee

 

[John Kotches]

Lee,

I like that with Tact, the signal is kept in the digital domain all the way to the speaker outputs.

Regards,

 

[Lee Scoggins]

John,

I have been thinking about your comments about the ease to downconvert from DSD to PCM. I reread the Mike Bishop interview in TAS and they have been doing this since 1998.

The SBM Direct Process gave us the ability to retain much of the added resolution of the DSD recording in the 16 bit/44.1khz PCM copy. In careful comparisons to encoding at 24-bit/44.1khz PCM at the original session, we were getting better results by downconverting to 44.1khz from the DSD source....CD will never equal the DSD, but we want to be as close as possible.

A very interesting observation, no?

Lee

 

[John Kotches]

This assumes that it isn't just awareness of the technique that is gving Michael the perception that it's better.

You can do a straight out linear reduction for going from DSD to PCM -- which you cannot do going to 24bit/44.1k. Perhaps Michael prefers the simplicity of the conversion?

What would he have done with 24bit/44.1K anyway, it's not like it's a common sampling depth and rate.

24/48 is another story.

Regards,

 

[Larry B]

John:

Nothing wrong with your preferences, but IMO, the stereotyping you demonstrated in your previous reply was quite off base.

My statement was based on my own experiences and observations, and I stand by it. If your own observations differ, so be it. In any event, as a generalization, it was not meant to extend to all individuals, and I'm sorry that you took offense at it.

Larry