Dave,
I've heard some SACD's that weren't any better than a good Redbook standard CD. A "good" SACD is very nice however, but there don't seem to by many of them.
FIM's Winston Ma has just released some of his catalog in the new JVC K2 mastering format, which conforms to the Redbook standard, but the sound of these is "much" better than SACD. He demo'd the K2 release along with his XRCD24 and SACD to our Audio Club and the concensus was that the K2 sound much better. BTW: all of them were the same music, just different formats.
My question is: Are they better than vinyl?
I don't think so, but the gap has been narrowed quite a bit.
Best Regards,
TerryO
I've heard some SACD's that weren't any better than a good Redbook standard CD. A "good" SACD is very nice however, but there don't seem to by many of them.
FIM's Winston Ma has just released some of his catalog in the new JVC K2 mastering format, which conforms to the Redbook standard, but the sound of these is "much" better than SACD. He demo'd the K2 release along with his XRCD24 and SACD to our Audio Club and the concensus was that the K2 sound much better. BTW: all of them were the same music, just different formats.
My question is: Are they better than vinyl?
I don't think so, but the gap has been narrowed quite a bit.
Best Regards,
TerryO
TerryO said:
There are a lot of crappy SACDs. Some literally just copied the CD layer to the SACD layer (Norah Jones)
When the Sony CD white paper came out i was taking a senior level math course in sampling... at that point i said that they would need to get the sampling rate to at least 4x higher before it had any chance of going head-to-head with vinyl. As 24/192 is becoming available and 24/384 is staring to see the light of day, that prediction seems to be being bourne out.
DSD/SACD is going to die... primarily because mastering stations are not easy, and Sony has left it to die. Any advantages it may have had will be buried by brute force as sampling rates climb.
dave
"I thought the Boston Audio Society determined that there was no difference whatsoever between any of them and 16/44.1."
No, they determined that they are not capable of commanding a simple test which meets any "scientifical" standards.
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm
is the url for the more detailed informaton of the "experiment".
I think that even _I_ could supply some interesting articles to JAES if that "experiment" qualifies. Why are they publishing crap like this?
I always thought JAES being a pretty serious and respectable effort.
No, they determined that they are not capable of commanding a simple test which meets any "scientifical" standards.
http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm
is the url for the more detailed informaton of the "experiment".
I think that even _I_ could supply some interesting articles to JAES if that "experiment" qualifies. Why are they publishing crap like this?
I always thought JAES being a pretty serious and respectable effort.
Dismaying even for my low expectations. Some obvious questions:
- Did the disc playback equipment meet performance spec for DVD and SACD? The Yamaha DVD-S1500 for example from what published reviews I could find doesn't do better than 18 bit rez very best case, 16.5-17 unweighted typical (Dr. David Rich's tech overview in the Sensible Sound.)
- What sources were used to master the test material? Was it full SACD/DVD-A rez, the CD master, etc.? Many predate digital.
- How was surround mixdown handled? Many of those discs were surround, how were the players set to handle the extra channels? My Oppo for example mixes the back channels into the mains for 2-channel playback by default. Most DVD players, since they're intended for movies, do as well.
- Were the 2-channel and surround front channel mixes on the discs identical?
This is basic trivial stuff. The last two items are particularly telling. Were they inadvertently comparing 2-channel against a surround-to-2 mixdown and didn't hear a difference?
If the BAS was more concerned with doing science than proving they're right and audiophiles are idiots, how hard would it have been to rent a few basic musical intruments - a triangle, a snare - and some adequate recording equipment to make unambiguous simultaneous recording in CD and hi rez formats for source material? What have they proved here?
- Did the disc playback equipment meet performance spec for DVD and SACD? The Yamaha DVD-S1500 for example from what published reviews I could find doesn't do better than 18 bit rez very best case, 16.5-17 unweighted typical (Dr. David Rich's tech overview in the Sensible Sound.)
- What sources were used to master the test material? Was it full SACD/DVD-A rez, the CD master, etc.? Many predate digital.
- How was surround mixdown handled? Many of those discs were surround, how were the players set to handle the extra channels? My Oppo for example mixes the back channels into the mains for 2-channel playback by default. Most DVD players, since they're intended for movies, do as well.
- Were the 2-channel and surround front channel mixes on the discs identical?
This is basic trivial stuff. The last two items are particularly telling. Were they inadvertently comparing 2-channel against a surround-to-2 mixdown and didn't hear a difference?
If the BAS was more concerned with doing science than proving they're right and audiophiles are idiots, how hard would it have been to rent a few basic musical intruments - a triangle, a snare - and some adequate recording equipment to make unambiguous simultaneous recording in CD and hi rez formats for source material? What have they proved here?
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