From CD to SACD how much of difference - Page 8

as always, for every conceivable topic, there are differring opinions.

Keep reading. The added resolution in high bitrate recording is all in increased clarity at extremely low volume levels and frequencies beyond the range of human hearing. The part of the music you actually hear is *exactly* the same.

Lots of audiophile sales pitch will try to play on your OCD to try to make you believe that things you can't hear are important, but it's not true. Redbook is capable of sounding just as good for all intents and purposes as SACD.

See ya
Steve

anything in particular (links).

Given the same mastering, an SACD will sound the same as redbook being played on a reasonably good midpriced CD player with no tweaking at all. There's a level with bitrates and electronics where you stop getting significant improvements in the sound. The master is what the master is. That's when you should stop buying fancy electronics and start working on your frequency response balance, room acoustics and speakers/headphones. If you've already exhausted that avenue (which takes a LOT more effort than most people put into it), the next direction to pursue for better sound would be getting some high end audio editing programs and do your own remastering. That will definitely keep you busy for the rest of your life.

Splitting the difference over and over by continually upgrading expensive equipment for barely discernable improvements is a waste of time. The reason a lot of music sounds bad is because of the *settings* and the *room* and the *mastering*, not some fraction of a fraction on a spec sheet.

See ya
Steve

bigshot,
Acually I have used two of the same players with the same cds. We had two SCD-1s and two Modwright 999es. We would run the same cds (new not burned cd) at the same time. the remote was used to start the players at the same time. Cabling, evrything the same. With SCD-1s we would run sacd layer on one, redbook layer on the other. Hit play and they both would run at the same time. No wait at all. Just switch inputs on the preamps. This is also the way we would test redbook/hybred against redbook only cds. Not sure why you came to your conclusions but myself and others have not had the same results using several players from many price points. I have found the big majority of the time that the sacd format is much better than the redbook. This has been my impressions using several systems with a varietry of gear over a long period of time.

Rather than just give you a page that tells you this, I'm going to explain the thought process for determining it for yourself. Go look at Wikipedia for the definition of high bitrate sound and redbook. Google up the various formats and figure out the specs on each of them. When you've got all that info, search for studies of human hearing that give "audible threshold" or "JDD (Just Discernable Difference)" for those specs and determine where these formats fall in the range of human hearing.

Here's a solid perspective to help you know what all the numbers mean... The range of human hearing is from 20Hz to 20kHz. The range of dynamics that we can tolerate without suffering hearing loss is well below 100dB(#). However, recorded music occupies only a part of this range. The most important specs for music are the frequencies between 40Hz and 10kHz, and a dynamic range of about 40dB. This covers 99% of all recorded music. If you can have headroom of a full octave of frequency extension on each end and about double the dynamics to allow for momentary peaks, you have your bases completely covered. Compare the performance of redbook to high bitrate sound within these ranges and see what the difference is.

You'll find that the only way to convince yourself that high bitrate sound is important is to convince yourself that you can hear things that are beyond the scope of recorded music by a full order of magnitude, and beyond the range of human hearing by a considerable amount. Once you've figured all this out, then ask me how to figure out how to achieve better sound if the format itself can't be improved. I'll be happy to give you the thought process on that one too.

See ya
Steve

(#) Hearing loss at 100dB will occur in 15 minutes of exposure.

What CDs did you use?

See ya
Steve

Lots of cds. samplings from P. Barber, Allison krause, Norah Jones, Moody Blues, Police, Peter Gabriel, Santana, Eric Clapton, more piano contertos than I care to think about, Lots of differnt stuff. We try to keep varied. We also spend alot of time with recordings we know are not very good. Wether it be sacd or cd or vinyl. try to see what is the best of the worst. All of this (with two of the same CDPs)has been done with speakers systems. I have also compared sacd to redbook on my headphone systems but dont think its as useful as when more people are involved hearing the same thing at the same time. I think you miss out on the feel of the music when sopundstage, air and feel of the club, hall, etc., etc. cant not be produced as good as they should. I dont think headphones come close to speaker systems on any of these three things.
Anyway I have given my findings here on the sacd compared to redbook thread. They are based on what I have said in my other posts. Hope they can help out some who are on the fence.
BTW: One last thing...go vinyl, 45RPM if you can get it and then you wont have to worry about which digital format is better.

thanks for the responses.

Higher bitrate technology allows more bits for each and every frequency which in the end results in more resolution period; not only in the high treble where the bits to encode the 16 bit waveform are lacking .... but in the critical midrange as well. Look a a 16 bit sine wave vs a 24 bit sinewave; which one looks more like an analog sine wave? If you have a cd player that truly has enough resolution combined with higher bitrates you do hear the differences .... and easily.

If I remember you have a stock Philips 963sa and I can tell you that player doesn't have resolution near the level of the better stock or modded players people are mentioning in this thread. How do I know .... I owned one. I even modded the 963sa witha zap filter output stage and a better power supply. Compared to my Sony players with the same mods, plus an aftermarket clock I eventually determined the resolution of the 963sa was still lacking and sold the player. Even with some mods the 963sa never captured the realness of vocals and the true timbre of many instruments. No wonder you think everything sounds the same.

All this propoganda you propogate about what we / I can hear. You have no idea what we hear and you have no idea about about what the better players sound like because you have made up your mind there is no difference before you ever listen. When you have actually owned and spent some time with a superior source then I will seriously listen to your opinion. I once followed advise like what you spew and I have learned there is much more to the equation than statistics and theory. Theory is a good starting point but WHEN YOU LISTEN you soon discover that audio doesnt always follow theory amd what is supposedly adequate on paper. Some components are just superior and combined with higher resolution software you do hear things that other equipment cant resolve.

Some of your points, though generic, do have merit. But, you sound like an advertisement for the old cd ads of "perfect sound forever".

Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear. I didn't mean what types of music you sampled, I meant what specific recordings. In particular, which DSD recordings did you use? Recordings that were made on 16 bit equipment, or legacy recordings that can have huge mastering differences aren't representative of the format itself.

See ya
Steve

That isn't true. Higher sampling rate increases resolution in all frequencies, but higher bitrate just increases the bandwidth, which translates into dynamic range and frequency extension. If the dynamics and response exceed what's necessary for listening with human ears, it's overkill and offers no advantage over a format that also exceeds those limits, just to a lesser degree. More isn't necessarily better.

I'm not going to respond to the rest of your post, because it misses the point of the post it's responding to. Here's the problem with our communication here...

I'm not telling you WHAT to think. I'm trying to share a process for HOW to think. Unless you define the limits of human hearing and the precise benefits of a particular format, you will never be able to translate theoretical information into practical info that will make a difference. As I said before...

Define the benefits
Define the limits of human hearing
Prioritize what is most important
Apply the benefits to the limits and your priorities and see how it comes out.

I did that. I bought a highly rated SACD player and I spent over a month testing it on my own equipment and a friend's best rig (a professional sound engineer). When I tell you the results we came up with, it isn't propaganda and I'm not just making it up. It's practical experience and applied knowledge filtered through a carefully controlled analytical process.

As a person who strives to get good sound, practical experience and applied knowledge are exactly what I'm looking for. I don't care if it tells me that I totally wasted my money buying an SACD player... I want the facts. Do the legwork I did and use a logical process of analysis and get the facts for yourself.

See ya
Steve

Interesting thread.

Also interesting. Based on your experience, what digitial sources, i.e., CD players, SACD players, MP3 players, etc. have you found to provide audible sound quality differences for two channel playback? In other words, I note that you said earlier in this thread that "there's no difference in audible sound quality between CD and SACD for two channel playback." Would it also be true in your opinion that there is no difference in audible sound between one redbood CD player and another for two channel playback? Between one MP3 player and another? Between an MP3 player and a CD player?

Or are there certain assumptions or conditions that you would apply first before stating that there is no audible difference between certain of the the listed components?

I do notice an improvement in sound from SACD to Cd, though not huge, since most cd layers are also mastered very well and are derived from dsd recordings. One thing I notice the biggest differences between the two mediums is the amount of "ambience" or spatial cues that sacd has over cd. I'm no expert in sound, but I'm hypothesizing this improvement is due to the higher sampling rate. Specifically, I would imagine the relative phase of high frequency music would be noticeable. This could be a reason for why we need higher sampling of music. Surely two out of phase high frequency sounds would produce an audible effect, but if the sampling rate is limited to 44khz, this would limit the accuracy to which the phase of high frequency sound can be reproduced. Does this hypothesis make any sense?

There are huge differences between CD players. I just purchased a Redbook-only player, but I have not closed the book on high-res audio.

Hearing varies greatly from one person to the next. Testing methods are not infallible and are subject to many limitations.