SACD,DVD-A DEAD due to analogue outs? (1 Viewer)

[RobertR]

my assumption is that neither of you have 'listened' to SACD

Wrong assumption in my case, Joe.

 

[PaulKH]

So KeithH - do you prefer vinyl or SACD?

 

[KeithH]

Robert, the point I keep trying to make and that you don't seem to understand is that, as Joe said, the difference between CD and SACD is so obvious, that going to the trouble of doing a double-blind, level-matched test is completely unnecessary. I'm not afraid of setting up such a test in my system, but there is simply no need to do it. I would rather spend the time enjoying SACDs. Do I need to conduct a double-blind, level-matched test to determine if CD is better than minidisc? No. CD beats minidisc, and SACD beats CD. These conclusions are not fueled by a bias, but they are drawn from listening. There is no need to break out the level meters and look at the specs. in these cases.
By the way, just as you swear that a double-blind, level-matched test of CD and SACD yields no difference, there are many others who say it does, and in SACD's favor.
As for specs., no I am not enamoured by SACDs specs. Frankly, I don't really pay much attention to the numbers. However, I don't know what you find in the specs. that is dubious.
What do I have to gain by convincing myself that SACD is better if it really isn't? I put the CD and SACD versions of the same albums in my SACD changer and listen. The better sound of SACD is plain as day. There is no voodoo or anything contrived here. SACD simply sounds better. Yes, I own SACD players, but if I really felt that SACD sounded no better than CD, I could sell my SACDs and use the players strictly for CD playback. As I said, they are excellent in that role.
You say that you are listening when conducting a double-blind test, but you are not listening objectively. You have decided that SACD is no better than CD. Don't waste your time doing any more double-blind tests of the two formats. It is obvious that you cannot in any way approach this matter objectively. Unfortunately, I feel you have been biased in a negative sense by a less than optimal demo (equipmentwise) or just by the belief that one digital format cannot sound better than another.
When I bought my first SACD player (SCD-777ES), I was skeptical about this new format. I thought to myself that the two discs look the same and that both formats are digital, so I figured there wouldn't be a difference. Digital audio was supposed to be pure, I thought. When I got the '777ES, I listened to it with many CDs for the first few days, waiting for SACDs to arrive by mail. When the SACDs arrived, I listened to the corresponding CDs first. To that point, I was thrilled with the way CDs sounded on the '777ES. However, when I listened to the SACDs, being skeptical, mind you, I was instantly floored by the more open and lively presentation from the SACDs. The difference was obvious, and this was on a modest HT system! As I upgraded my amp and speakers, the difference became more apparent (CDs sounded better too on the better equipment, but the capability of SACD came through).
It is obvious that we are not going to agree on this matter, and that is fine. I will urge you to listen objectively to SACD, but that is your choice. I will enjoy my SACDs, while you enjoy your CDs.
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My:
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KeithH: Saving the Home Theater World Before Bedtime

 

[KeithH]

Paul, admittedly, I have some experience listening to vinyl on quality equipment, but have not been in a situation to compare vinyl to SACD, so I cannot pass judgment. I have an inexpensive, but decent manual Sony turntable, but I do not have it hooked up right now because I do not have a phono pre-amp for my stereo amp. I only have about 100 LPs anyway. My father has over 1000 classical LPs, but does not have an SACD player to enable me to compare the two formats. Many audiophiles believe that LPs on high-end equipment, which usually means much more expensive than high-end digital gear, are better than SACDs, but that SACD significantly closes the gap between the CD and LP. Some have said that SACD sounds better than vinyl, but most say that SACD comes close. Many people I have spoken to who believe that vinyl sounds better than SACD still choose SACD due to lower cost and convenience. Again, I cannot offer my opinion on the matter. When I got into music in the late '80s (I'm 31), vinyl was already fading out, so I went with digital. Sometimes, I wish I had bought up LPs when they were available in every record store on close-out for $2-3.
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My:
HT Pics ; Equipment List ; DVD Collection ; LD Collection
KeithH: Saving the Home Theater World Before Bedtime

 

[ReggieW]

Vinyl sounds better than CD? Perhaps I'm missing something, but I have never heard a vinyl LP sound as clean as a well mastered CD. I must admit that i couldn't compare directly anymore because my turntable is long gone.
On the DVD-A/SACD front, I have the redbook CD of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours and just recently purchased the DVD-A of the album. As Keith and other supporters have stated, the difference is immediately obvious, and I would have to say a bit more than subtle. My system is pretty modest: Denon AVR-1802 and JBL Northridge series speakers. I have heard SACD at a friends, and I can also vouch for the superior sound of this format over redbook cd as well.

 

[RobertR]

the belief that one digital format cannot sound better than another.

I've expressed no such belief.
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[Randy G]

Keith and JoeCasey,
What you both don't seem to understand is that if the mixing is done differently for SACD and CD, then there is no basis for which to objectively compare the two. That is, IF the SACD mixer is hyping the bass or treble a bit(in order to create a "difference"), then you can't say that the higher resolution makes it sound better, the mixer just hyped the bass or treble. If the mixes are the same, there should be ZERO difference in loudness in ANY segment of the audible spectrum...PERIOD. Joe, read this thread from the beginning and perhaps you'll understand. Keith, you just don't seem to get it.- It may be just that you like the SACD mix better, but not the resolution. IF Sony is just creating different mixes, then it's a shame that they're making people purchase NEW machines just to hear them.
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[KeithH]

Randy, I am not an idiot, and I have gotten your point from the beginning. I just don't agree with you. I am not claiming louder bass or hyped treble. I am hearing vocals with no edge or harshness with SACDs as opposed to edgy, thin-sounding vocals with CDs. I am hearing layering and body in harmony vocals (each voice) with SACDs that I don't hear on CDs. Simply put, the whole musical presentation is clearer on SACD. It's not any one aspect (bass, treble). It's everything. It's also not just things being louder or hyped, it's hearing decay of instruments or vocals. It's hard to convey in words what SACD offers.
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My:
HT Pics ; Equipment List ; DVD Collection ; LD Collection
KeithH: Saving the Home Theater World Before Bedtime

 

[RobertR]

quote: I am not claiming louder bass or hyped treble[/quote]
It's been shown psychoacoustically that minor adjustments in the frequency balance can be experienced subjectively as "greater transparency", "tighter bass", "sweeter highs", "more focused midrange", "less edginess", and many other such subjective terms in the audio lexicon.
[Edited last by RobertR on October 25, 2001 at 12:16 AM]

 

[Randy G]

"It's hard to convey in words what SACD offers"
Illusion, perhaps?
Enjoy anyway.
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[John Morris]

I went to our local dealer bankrupcy sale with the intent on buying their remaining SCD-C333es SACD player. Just for the heck of it, I took along my Denon 370 CD Player. It has been my poor man's audiophile CD player for about 3 months now and I love the CD playback from its' onboard DACs. BTW, I am an old vinyl lover and still have a TT and about 200 albums which I listen to regularly. Still... CDs sure are convenient and quiet. I also recently bought James Taylor's CD and then SACD after I recently attended his concert; and I took them along too for a bit of AB testing.
The base setup was:
- Sony C333es OR my Denon 370
- Acurus RL-11? Preamp
- Acurus A200 stereo Amplifier
- Dynaudio 3.3 Speakers
I tried to use the best stuff that I thought they still had left in the store.
Keeping in mind that I REALLY liked the sound of my Denon 370 CD player, I hooked that up first and listened to JT on CD............ NICE!
Then I switched units... the switch took all of about 1 minute since I stacked the units and just switched the two interconnects and adjusted for volume.
IMHO, the 333 was cleaner, deeper, wider and more enveloping than the plain CD in the 370.
As expressed earlier, it IS hard to explain. It just sounds better.
Then I thought, hmmmm, lets try the same plain JT CD in each player.
Here again, the Sony unit was cleaner and less "rounded off"? The guys who were unpacking gear agreed with me... of course they would though, since they wanted to sell the sony to me.
In the end, maybe because of my very positive comparison, they would go no lower than $470, so I walked away. If it comes down to $400, they've got me. Otherwise, I'm waiting till Onecall has the 555es at the $800/12month/no no plan and I'm a new SACD owner....
So, in my short, unscientific, informal trial... I'm sold on SACD.... almost!
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Take Care,
merc
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God Bless America!!!
[Edited last by John Morris on October 25, 2001 at 12:14 AM]

 

[John Kotches]

Earlier Robert R was curious about life above 20kHz.
Well, here's a nice little pointer for him.
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm
In this paper, Mr. Boyk examines the spectra of many musical instruments and determines there's a good bit of activity above 20k.
In addition, Mr. Boyk cites references to psychoacoustic studies which showed variations in EEGs based on presence or absence of ultrasonic materials.
Care to comment on Mr. Boyk's measurements that cymbals are in fact going strong out to at least 102.4kHz?
Regards,
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John Kotches
Contributing Writer
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[Brian-W]

CD beats minidisc, and SACD beats CD

Actually with Sony's last rendition of ATRAC-4.5, practically every audio magazine couldn't discerne MiniDisc from DAT that's how good the compression was.
Personally, I want SACD to suceed. But it's already fighting an uphill battle. Face it, consumers (mass market = format success) are tickled to death not only at MP3 quality but the fact that most enjoy ripping the music off for free. Consumers for years have been whining and complaining at $17.99 for a CD, and now they're supposed to pony up $21.99 for SACD and $25.99 for DVD-Audio discs? Phuleeeeeeze.....
Sony also touted one of the best features of SACD which was the dual layer backward compatible red-book layer, yet NOT ONE Sony release supports this feature. So there is little incentive for non-SACD owning consumers to start building a collection of discs that work with their existing equipment.
Consumers are thrilled with CD and they're not moving over to either format anytime soon. If anything they're too busy pirating and ripping their current CDs into MP3 which MOST think is a 'better' sounding format.
If SACD doesn't sound better than CD on K-Mart (excuse the expression) audio equipment, then the benefits of SACD/DVD are moot. Most people on HTF do NOT represent the J6Ps of the world.
If J6P were into quality and paying for it, laserdisc would have had a much larger penetration as would S-VHS.
-Brian

 

[Randy G]

Well, if you smack them cymbals hard enough and modulate their frequency a little bit(FM), I should be able to pick up their sound quite nicely on my pocket FM radio.
Seriously John, how about I put a pair of headphones on ya and you raise your hand when you hear that 102,000 hz tone, okay? Or how about a 51,000 hz tone? Okay, a 25,000 hz tone? Oh alright, an 18,000 hz tone? I don't know how old you are, but if you're over 40, being able to hear 18,000 hz is pretty damned good. Ah,.....but what about our ability to sense those subtle harmonics and overtones, you say? Well, there IS some anecdotal evidence that there may be some truth to it, but realistically, it'd be damned hard to measure it in an objective way, and even so, not at the looney frequencies YOU'RE mentioning. Those are radio frequencies, and since I'm too lazy to get out my calculator, I'd guess that the wavelengths are probably smaller than the width of the cilia inside your ears.(kidding, almost)
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[John Kotches]

Randy,
It's great when you take the info out of context.
Did you actually read the whole paper? Based on your snide comments it would appear not.
Subjects were tested blind, and hooked up to EEGs. A supertweeter above 26kHz was either on or off.
The EEGs were different when the supertweeter was on. I'm sorry the evidence doesn't jive with what you want to read.
Please feel free to offer a contradictory study to Mr. Boyk's research.
Otherwise, your commentary is totally off base, as the test wasn't about what the highest perceived fundamental frequency was, but rather whether inclusion of ultrasonic harmonics had a demonstrable effect -- which the EEGs showed conclusively.
Regards,
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John Kotches
Contributing Writer
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[RobertR]

John:
Notwithstanding your "nice little pointer" remark, I was aware of the Boyk study. Here's an exchange from Rec.audio.High-end in response to it:
"Frequencies emitted by the trumpet and other instruments have been measured at greater than 100kHz."
"At EXTREMELY close ranges, at levels FAR below the in-band components"
"Sorry, no. The work of James Boyk and others proves you wrong. Like any frequency, ultrasonic waves travel beyond "close ranges".
"The work of Tom Holman and others proves you wrong. THX re-equalisation exists precisely because high frequencies *do* attenuate rapidly in air. This applies to the 2-20kHz region in movie theatres, so consider how much more rapidly it applies to your claims for 100kHz transmission."
Boyk's study shows close range (4 feet) response out to 100k. What's it like at a typical listening distance?
What's the typical response of a recording microphone? Do they commonly have response out to 100 KHz?
Also, I'd be curious to see the ACTUAL spectral content of a SACD, as opposed to a study (gosh, I wonder if Keith will decide that scientific studies are ok after all). Actually, I did find such a graph:

CD in red, SACD in blue. Not exactly flat out to 100 kHz.
Finally, I'll quote two more things from rec.audio.high-end:
"(1)It is a verifiable fact that increasing the bit depth of distributed digital media over 16 bits and increasing sample rate over 44 KHz has no, none, zero, void effect on sound quality. Anybody who wants to can verify this with his own listening tests using materials that they can freely download from http://www.cdabx.com/technical/bits44/index.htm , http://www.pcabx.com/technical/low_pass/index.htm , and http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm .
(2) It is a verifiable effect, frequently discussed in the scientific literature, written into documents from international standards organizations, that people's expectations can profoundly effect their perceptions.
And:
"Under penalty of some mysterious sanction, HDCD decoded disks HAVE to be played 6 dB louder than non-HDCD disks on the same player, making fair comparisons absolutely impossible. There is NO good technical reason for this."
"Your charge is very different from the individual midfi audio salon salesperson who might willfully crank up the volume for the speaker he wants to push. You seem to be talking about a very common, if not widespread, ploy among record companies which seek to differentiate their product from the competition (or from lower priced recordings in their own product line) by turning up the record volume on the higher priced product."
"Consider the fact that more and more recordings are made with heavier and more oppressive compression and limiting, all for one reason: too mkae them grossly louder than the competition. And the competition does, in fact, respond in kind, leading to an overall fealing of nothing but unintelligable grunge."
"SACDs. Do you believe that these companies also routinely engage in this sort of consumer deception? That is, do believe that these companies market as "high resolution" recordings whose chief benefit is "help" from rhetorical questions. I would like your response?
Don't take his word for it, don't take mine. Next AES or NAMM convention, buy a ticket to the exhibit floor, and LISTEN for yourself what is being sold. GO to the seminars on making "pounchier albums and see the level of gain games and compression and limiting that is par for the course and how much equipment for making things louder, Louder, LOUDER is actually being sold at every level of the recording industry. GO get a copy of MIX magazine. GO get a brochure from someplace like Sonic FOundry or Digidesign and look how much stuff is available, propoted and pushed for just the the engineer who juiced up the recording level?
If so, what is your basis to support your charge?"
"Publically stated industry policy, that's what. Actual measured performance, that's what."
"Also, why don't the mainstream recording retaliate by doing the same thing to level the playing field? Or do they? And if they do why don't these recording, on the whole, do not measure up to SACDs, JVCs, and others (in the opinion of most reviewers and users that have those comparisons)?"
"Because most "reviewers" are really no better at understanding the fact that most popular CD's have no "live" counterpart with which to compare, and it simply comes down to a loudness war. These are not simply kind of stuff you want verification for. THE hot plug-in market is for dynamics processing right now. It's hardly a charge, Robert, it's a fact of business life."
[Edited last by RobertR on October 25, 2001 at 02:05 AM]

 

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Randy - frequency of sound waves has nothing to do with the frequency of radio waves. Sound waves require a medium, like air, to propogate while radio waves are electromagentic radiation and can travel through vacuum. The two are completely unrelated to each other and you can be sure that you will not pick up a cymbal's high frequency sound waves on your radio.
My opinion on SACDs is that I love DTS CDs and will only purchase multi-channel SACDs (and DVD-As) and will rip them to DTS CDs for playback in my car and other rooms. If they sound better than normal CDs, well that's great, but a distant 2nd to being multichannel. That probably makes me a blasphemer in the eyes of most SACD owners, but that's what floats my boat.

 

[John Kotches]

Robert,
I haven't bothered with Rec.Audio.High-End in ages because I got tired of their heavy handed moderation tactics, which make the world conform to an inane and horribly outdated 80 char line limitation.
The graph does not ring true for CD. Where's the effects of the anti-aliasing filter which should brickwall content from 22k on out? Properly implemented there should be almost literally nothing for CD from 21 or 22K on out.
It would also appear that this was a CD master, converted to DSD. Do you have source information? A converted to DSD from PCM recording will almost exactly parrot the CD anyway, as DSD cannot create information that is already lost.
If you look at some of Atkinson's measurements in S'phile, he's showing content into the 40kHz region for recordings that are truly sampled at 96K for DVD-Audio. But I don't have a handy dandy pointer to the graphs. Atkinson also showed that some of the WB titles (most notably Steely Dan's Two Against Nature) were originally recorded at 48K and resampled to 96K for DVD-Audio.
"At levels far below the in-band components" is true for most instruments, although Cymbals certainly can't be placed in that category, as they radiate 40% of their energy above 20K.
I see everyone is quoting back the gospel according to Arny Kruger and his good old PCABX stuff.
Ever read Bob Stuart's papers on Acoustic Renasissance for Audio? The best tested human hearing was measured around 25k at the upper end. Why not plan for that? They've worked with lots of Psychoacoustic data in the AES as well.
The point of going beyond 16 bits is two fold. 1st it allows for digital manipulations to preserve more of the signal, ie "bits to spare". To totally vanquish the potential for noise within the system beyond audibility you need to deliver about 20-21 bits for the consumer.
Let me see if I can drag up a pointer to that paper for you.
Ahh yes, here we go:
http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF
And yes, Stuart thinks that above 20K is a waste in terms of "audibility" but yet still advocates higher than 48K sampling for total transparency.
Interesting reading and discussion.
Regards,
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John Kotches
Contributing Writer
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[RobertR]

John,
The moderation restrictions on RAHE never bothered me. I’ve always thought they do a good job of allowing free and open debate without the silliness seen in rec.audio.opinion.
I’m not sure we’re reading the graph the same way. As I interpret it, that vertical black line just to the left of the rightmost vertical blue line is the 20 kHz mark, and we indeed see nothing above what looks to be 22 kHz. The SACD curve clearly shows that it’s going down precipitously at that point.
I don’t have much source information other than what Stereophile gave (that’s where I got it). I don’t think you can assume that the source was bandwidth limited to 22 kHz. But as I said, I’d like to see spectral graphs of DSD sourced recordings.
I think it would be more useful to provide a good sound critique of Krueger’s methods than to simply refer to them as “gospel” (I mean, he gives people the means to do exactly what they always SAY they want–namely, listen for themselves). Unfortunately, the typical critical response to the posts made by the engineers in RAHE eschews science and engineering, and indeed attempts to belittle them by withdrawing into an agnostic philosophical position along the lines of “yeah, well, they’ve shown that my subjective beliefs have no scientific basis, but it doesn’t matter because science doesn’t know everything”. I’m glad to see you’re not doing that.
Interesting data you have from Atkinson and Audio. But I’ll take a page from the subjectivists and say ok, you have graphs and test data, but can you point to an actual audible difference in an actual commercial recording (under proper double blind controlled variable methodology, of course).
From my reading of the “how many bits is enough” issue on RAHE, there’s acknowledgment that you indeed need 20 bits to allow for manipulation during the recording and mastering process, but really only to ensure a true 16 bits delivered to the consumer (actually, it’s my understanding that noise-shaping will yield an effective 20 bits even with a “16 bit” CD.). Purely in terms of peak level vs. the noise floor, it’s hard to see why one would need more than that. At a peak level of, say, 115 dB, the noise level would be 96 dB down, or at a level of 19 dB. From what I’ve read, it is extremely difficult to achieve such a low noise floor in a typical residence (the typical level for a very quiet house is more like 30). Also, it seems to me that at some point, the limits of the other electronics becomes important (this is certainly the case with 24 bits. I mean, does ANYONE have a practical system with a 145 dB dynamic range?).
Having said all that, I don’t really have an objection to SACD or DVD-A (actually, there’s been severe criticism of SACD in favor of DVD-A by engineers on RAHE, but that’s another debate) as long as I’m not asked to shell out more for it ($25 seems excessive). Sure, I think 24 bits is overkill, but not any more harmful than any other aspect of the “more MUST be better” attitude in American culture.
Finally, what you said about Stuart is logically bothersome. If he really does say that above 20 kHz doesn’t affect audibility, then above 48k can’t have an audible effect, so it can’t affect “transparency” or any other audible quality.
Regards.
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[Ben_L]

Damn, so much talk about khz this and khz that. Lets talk logically for a second. The way i look at DVD-A is even if DVD-A quality has no noticeably better fidelity than a CD, it would have a cleaner sound anyways. My theory is that 2 speakers would have more of a burden producing clean textured sound of each instrument in song than a 5 spkrs setup. Whereas with 5 speakers, each instrument can be discretely channeled to the appropriate spkr to give a more distinct and clean sound. The cones/tweeters dont have to struggle to produce every nuance of sound from 2channel media. Instead in a multichannel setup, each spkr can specialize in an instrument or two for each song. Same mentality goes for DTS-CDs as well. The point of DVD-A is not just its gazillion range of hertz, but its multichannel ability to envelope the listener in a more believable soundstage. So i dunno what you guys are talking about when u say DVD-A is just for audiophiles. But ya, for SACD i might agree with that, since 99% of SACDs are stereo.
OK, now back to the ORIGINAL subject. I might be talkin out of my ass, but Isnt the reason why they use analog connections for dvd-a/sacd is because its the only method that can carry 96khz signals? And current digital connectors are limited to 48khz?