If SACD is Superior Then Why is Sony Playing Games? (1 Viewer)

[FeisalK]

I'd say SACD and DVDA has already gotten off the ground. It's mass market acceptance that determines whether the technology/format flies, or crashes and burns (the early adopters )

 

[Jack Briggs]

At least in the world of popular music, the problem lies with the recording engineers. Their model for "excellence" is other recordings from years gone by — not the sound of live music being played in a live venue. And since popular music is so damn processed and since most people listen to pop music and nothing else, there's no incentive to strive for excellence.

Such a view does not prevail in the world of serious music, however. And it's serious music that has driven the quest for accurate reproduction in the home. All for a fringe audience, in essence.

As Angelo noted, this relegates any attempt at raising the bar of audio excellence to a niche format.

Remember the era of "audiophile" recordings? Direct-to-disc vinyl? Half-speed mastering? Most of the releases were orchestral and piano and organ music. But even Telarc's celebrated release of the bombastic 1812 Overture was strictly a fringe release by industry standards, though it was a "best seller" by serious-music standards.

All along, bear in mind most people think standard CD is "perfect."

 

[Eric F]

And why do people think that? Because the music industry marketed it that way!

So, when a new format comes around it's "better than perfect". There's the problem.

 

[Jonathan Dagmar]

Now now, I am no big fan of the Mp3 craze, the one that's created a generation of people who don't like it unless it's free, but Mp3s do have a place. For instance, I would much rather carry a tiny little stick shaped mp3 player with me at the gym than a discman...

 

[Craig_Kg]

Given that there seems to be agreement that recording/producing/mastering is often (always?) the issue, what do people think of the recording techniques described by RobertAG in this thread when I debated the advantage of 24 bit recording with him? (see bottom part of the linked page)

 

[Adil M]

I don't know if either format will make it. It's interesting, b/c whenever I compare HDCD to the Cd or SACD to the CD layer I always find the redbook louder/hotter. This makes it really annoying to compare unless you have two identical receivers and players, which I have done before only to come to the conclusion that I was not sure which version of Norah Jones I liked better.

SACD's sound different to me, more lush, more smeared, but I do not really like it. I usually like the multichannel, but that's not a fair comparison and I'm still warming up to multichannel for music.
I've only gone through about 10 DVDA disks, but they all sounded better then the original cd.

Anyone here worked w/ studio masters and done comparisons w/ them?
If DVDA and SACD is not it, what is the next step we can take in Higher Fidelity?

Right now, I don't really care that much. I have been pretty happy w/ CD and won't "completely" upgrade, but will dabble.

 

[HienD]

I own a lot of Chinese CDs and most of them are in the average or poorly recorded/mastered category. I have bought a few compilations disks encoded in HDCD and they do sound a little better then the non-HDCD counterpart. Don't know if it's the better mastering or HDCD encoding. Most Chinese CDs coming out are HDCD encoded and there are still quite a few bad sounding discs. Not as many though.

I also have noticed that most my HDCDs are encoded at lower volumes. I haven't heard a SACD yet but don't have an urge to. SACD and DVD-A advantage seems to be for its mulitichannel capabilities. I might be interested in the format if there were older CDs that I love but have poor sound quality. But the consensus here tells me the difference isn’t that great and could be attributed to the mastering process then the technology being used.

 

[Chu Gai]

Well everything being equal Craig, you can throw away a couple of bits and not even notice. Although it's my opinion that 16 bits is enough, it doesn't bother me if the industry moves away from this even if it's for completely stupid and illogical reasons so long as there was a big time substantial leap in recording quality. I'm a little tired of reading interviews about some record producer patting himself on the back because he/she released a critically acclaimed digital recording. As far as I'm concerned, it's your job to do that. The fact that such interviews exist strongly suggests how abysmal and ho hum usual recordings are. 'Scuse me now while I look at some trashy Britney Spears videos.

 

[David Judah]

I think the whole idea is that by sampling higher with longer word lengths a "multitude of sins" can be covered during production. It would be nice if it didn't have to be that way(that 16 bits could be fully exploited), but as we can see(or hear rather)it's usually not the case.

Interestingly, Bob Stuart of Meridian in one of his papers said that a digital channel, to be sufficiently transparent, needs to be at least 18.2/58kHz, but that integers of existing rates are easier to work with so 20-24/88.2-96kHz would be better in practice.

DJ

 

[John Kotches]

David,

Depending on which part of the paper you're reading, it was 20 bits, at ~65kHz. Here's the paper. Heading is "Sampling Rate Issues" on page 11

In either case the goal was a delivered datastream that surpasses the acuity of even the best tested humans to date.

Best Regards,

 

[Phil Rose]

Last time I looked, music wasn't made up of periodic sine waves which is what your Nyquist argument is based on. It is a complex waveform which may, or may not be, periodic and requires frequencies well above 20KHz to reconstruct.

If you perform a Fourier transform of a square wave you find it is made up of the fundamental frequency and odd-order harmonics of the fundamental frequency at 1/3 the amplitude of fundamental or previous harmonic. Eliminate the harmonics and you are left with a sine wave which does not represent the orignal waveform very well. If we apply your 44.1KHz sampling to that 20KHz square wave we'll get representation of a 20KHz sine wave, assuming that we have proper anti-aliasing filters on the input.

Tests have shown that the upper limits of human hearing are generally not in excess of 20KHz (sine tones I suspect) however, many claim to be able to perceive the effects of extended frequency range or lack thereof in recordings. I for one welcome the new technologies that extend the sample frequency and word lengths of digital recordings. It does get us closer to the original signal than the current 16bit 44.1KHz sample rate material that we have today.

That said, SACD and DVD-A are driven by the music industry for financial reasons and not quality reasons. They want secure digital formats and to place a format in place that will produce royalties since I'm sure you know the Sony/Phillips patents are due to expire on the CD format soon. Still, a better format won't help a poor recording/engineering job.

 

[RobertR]

Anecdotal evidence is not a sound basis for these claims. They'd have to participate in a proper scientific study to contradict the tests you mentioned. Otherwise there's no reason to act according to their claims.

 

[David Judah]

Yes, John, I saw that as well, but mentioned the minimum. Regardless, he feels 16/44.1 is insufficient.

To add what Phil said, Nyquist also assumes perfect ADC & DAC filters.

DJ

 

[RobertR]

Which don't become more "perfect" using any particular sampling frequency.

 

[Chu Gai]

and even if we had perfect ones, the recording engineers would find a way to clip the waveforms prior to mastering like in the European DSOM release.

 

[Phil Rose]

I suspect that none of the companies involved would have proceeded on anecdotal evidence alone. Case in point is the fact that most of the recording industry uses tools that employ 24 bits at rates much higher than 44.1KHz. Why would they invest in high resolution tools if there was no benefit? Why should we be limited to a truncated format when the big guys are using the "good stuff"?

I welcome the new formats but, still appreciate the old CD and vinyl formats that I listen to daily. I would certianly love to have one hi-rez format, not two, and am really intrigued by the multi-channel capabilities. However, as with early stereo, the engineers need to figure out how to properly record in MC. I'm not a fan of ping-pong effects.

 

[RobertR]

 

[Phil Rose]

 

[Chu Gai]

A brief explanation of what superposition is Phil is as follows. Let's say we've just recorded something and look at the various signals as a function of frequency. We get something that resembles waves that are definitely not symmetrical. The superposition theorem says we can reconstruct those signals as the summation of various sine waves, differing in amplitude, duration, etc. which gives us a mathematical way of creating the same picture. Further if you look at say the performance of various SACD players over at Stereophile, you'll find that even if there were signals that went beyond say 20 kHz, the circuitry is designed such that it's rolling off the response quite rapidly.

 

[Phil Rose]

so is HDTV (edit - by the TV/Mfgs/Govt) which, certianly provides enhanced quality over SDTV. I don't see why we can't enjoy the benefits of improved hi-res audio if it's available. The bottom line is, I don't really care what format "wins", hopefully the best will, I just want great audio.