| sauuuuuce |
| I have been out of it for a while. (Seriously) SACD or DVD AUdio? Who's winning? This fence post is starting to hurt. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| very interesting.....It seems even many people on this forum have high regard for SACD. I am thinking to maximize available materials a universal player is the way to go...... |
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| Keruskerfuerst |
You should wait for Bluy-Ray Audio/Video disc.
Should be availaible soon. |
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| planet10 |
With the new foramt wars, internet downloads of 24/96 and better may well gain ascendency. No Audio standards yet for BlueRay or HDDVD, but it seems Sony has given up on DSD (ie SACD)
dave |
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| JRace |
No one won...especially us.
Just get a good universal player, the Oppo 981 will output full res SACD thru the HDMI...all for less than $250 |
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| sauuuuuce |
| Some times it kills me that the music media market is so big. Means that most consumers are fine with CD's and MP3's. No one wants to throw alot of money at R&D for new BETTER for formats.......because there aren't enough people who care. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| quote: | Originally posted by planet10
With the new foramt wars, internet downloads of 24/96 and better may well gain ascendency. No Audio standards yet for BlueRay or HDDVD, but it seems Sony has given up on DSD (ie SACD)
dave |
This would probably be ok with me......To be honest I am not too interested in the multichannel aspect of a new format for music. It's interesting....but stereo is the way to listen. My PC has the ability to play DVD-Audio. I bought FZ qAUDIOphelia and it is awesome. But I think the surround stuff is tooo.....forced. Doesn't add much to the experience to me. |
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| rdf |
| Backwards thinking that is. New formats drive new sales of things you already own, except when format wars do the opposite. Blame Sony for once again trying to lock up a consumer format. A pox on their house. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| quote: | Originally posted by rdf
Backwards thinking that is. New formats drive new sales of things you already own, except when format wars do the opposite. Blame Sony for once again trying to lock up a consumer format. A pox on their house. |
Backwards? SO you think jo blow that thinks the MTV top 40 is good cares about a higher bit resolution or sample rate. If people don't buy stuff corporations don't care about it........maybe i am to much of a pecimist...............I agree about Sony though.....they are probably still ****ed about the minidisc. |
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| scott wurcer |
| I thought the Boston Audio Society determined that there was no difference whatsoever between any of them and 16/44.1. |
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| rdf |
Do I think the 'MTV' gen lives and dies by fidelity? No. Do I think had DVD-A for example become the defacto standard and CD players slowly fell out of production that people would buy old favourites again? Absolutely. Most people forget that vinyl died quicker than pure market considerations would have dictated because the majors simply stopped releasing product. Choice was removed, buy a CD player or listen to 'Bat Out of Hell' forever. Framing the discussion solely in terms of fidelity isn't really correct.
I haven't seen the paper but, judging from what I have seen of Brad Meyer's past experimental protocols, colour me skeptical for now. |
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| sauuuuuce |
I see your point but I am infact not basing this solely on fidelity. Marketablilty is the mane thing from a $$$ stand point. Most of the people buying the records see no DEMAND for something other than a CD or iTunes......Thus they majors feel no need to SUPPLY it.
As for Vinyl......I think durability was the deciding factor there. Records just don't take a beating like a CD....kind of. I am still amazed that SOME people say that is a superior format. If it's so superior why does it have a massive EQ curve put in it when it's cut and then a reverse curne to reproduce. The less signal processing the better eh?
I do see what you are saying though. If the "man" could just pick a new format people definitely would re-buy all of the Zeppelin's and Steely Dan's....etc..... |
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| sauuuuuce |
| Somewhat related....the 8 track is before my time....my dad had one in his truck when we were growing up................but the Minidisc and the 8 track are kinda the same story different generation no? |
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| rdf |
The reasoning regarding MP3 vs. better formats is arguably valid when comparing vinyl to CD. Most people were accustomed to the flaws and if I recall an insane number of turntables were in circulation in the mid-Eighties. High hundreds of millions. People don't care much about audio and didn't care much about CD back then either. Unless you were into tiny indie labels CD was the only choice, and the indies were eventually bought out.
8-track vs. minidisc? Not a bad comaprison, though I think MD did very well in the Japanese consumer market. 8-track was much more popular in comparison here, eventually killed off by Jack Valenti's nemesis the compact cassette. MD was another example of the Sony bozos trying to lock the music market into their proprietary IP, this time ATRAC. Later models were capable of recording linear PCM but I never saw MD expand much beyond semi-pro audio and news gathering. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| I see. You'll have to forgive me some.......I was born in 1980.....so the death of vinyl to the cassete tape was something that was ancient history to me at the time. I Do remember the CD takeoever though........or rather....I remember my dad *****ing about having to buy a CD player.........They were still pretty expensive when he decided he was going to need one. This is really the first format battle i have been a part of........the laser disc vs VHS thing was still a little before my time.................. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| quote: | Originally posted by rdf
Get off my lawn! ;) |
I nearly threw up I was laughing so hard!!! |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by sauuuuuce
SO you think jo blow that thinks the MTV top 40 is good cares about a higher bit resolution or sample rate. |
If given proper explosure yes. The kids at the puter shop i work at part time are starting to toss their MP3s as they get more exposure to the little mFonken based "computer speaker system" i brought in for them to sell. And today when i brought the little TubeMan hybrid amp in to replace the Trends you can be sure they paid attention.
dave |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by scott wurcer
I thought the Boston Audio Society determined that there was no difference whatsoever between any of them and 16/44.1. |
That certainly blew away the last shred of credibility that they may have had.
dave |
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| sauuuuuce |
| I have never even heard of the Boston Audio Society......Googlage will occur. |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by rdf
an insane number of turntables were in circulation in the mid-Eighties. High hundreds of millions. |
Today the ubiquitous Japanese low-end TT is all but gone, but for anyone wanting a quality vinyl engine there are over 100 times as many choices today as when vinyl was declared dead.
dave |
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| sauuuuuce |
BTW thanks for the link....very interesting stuff! |
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| TerryO |
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 |
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| planet10 |
| quote: | Originally posted by 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. |
There are a lot of crappy SACDs. Some literally just copied the CD layer to the SACD layer (Norah Jones)
| quote: |
My question is: Are they better than vinyl?
I don't think so, but the gap has been narrowed quite a bit. |
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 |
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| Geek |
| quote: | Originally posted by planet10
There are a lot of crappy SACDs. Some literally just copied the CD layer to the SACD layer (Norah Jones) |
Sacrelidge! :eek: |
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| phase_accurate |
| quote: | | I thought the Boston Audio Society determined that there was no difference whatsoever between any of them and 16/44.1. |
| quote: | | That certainly blew away the last shred of credibility that they may have had. |
They were even allowed to publish a paper on that in last year's September issue of the JAES !!!!:eek: :bawling:
Regards
Charles |
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| miksin |
"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 **** like this?
I always thought JAES being a pretty serious and respectable effort. |
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| sauuuuuce |
| Indeed. This experiment doesn't seem to prove anything to me. I could set this up in my basement and do it twice a year and get different results everytime. |
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| rdf |
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? |
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