Here's what Meitner (I'm sure you know of him jefemeister, but for others, he's a digital uber-guru, maker of professional gear and very expensive audiophile gear) said about modern PCM DACs that I clumsily tried to paraphrase (these are 2 separate quotes): Quote:
Meitner: … well, if you have it in the one bit DSD format, you can, (A) you have a pretty robust storage that way, (B) you can now convert it to any other format that may come about, PCM 96/24, whatever. So it’s a very versatile format to begin with. And don’t forget that every A to D converter that you see on the market today starts off as a DSD modulator. So then you have the DSD signal on the A to D that just goes to the PCM down sampler or decimator and gets turned into PCM, so the life of the audio in the digital world really starts off as a one-bit signal.
Meitner: Yes. And you know the funny thing is, on top of it, you know all the converter people who started off in the multi-bit scene, have all changed to single bit. Phillips with their bitstream; and look at the vendors of DAC chips and A to D chips and it’s all gone to single bit. You would be hard-pressed today to still find multi-bit converters because of the added problems of them not being enabled to do zero crossing and stuff like that properly. |
Here's a link to the whole article from Positive Feedback, 90% of this goes over my head:
http://www.positive-feedback.com/pfb...r.rev.8n2.html
Quote:
I definitely prefer DVD-A. |
Speaking as an engineer of digital gear or as an audiophile/music lover? How many SACDs have you listened to, on how many pieces of gear? Not an attack at all, just curious how you reached this conclusion. I have around 30-40 SACDs, and about a dozen DVD-As. I've owned 2 DVD-A players and 2 SACDPs ($1000-$1800 range). At this stage, I don't feel I have nearly enough info to pick a favorite format yet. I do know that I like them both over the CD. I have noticed what I believe is a trend in the way they sound, SACDs tend to be much more "analog-y" and natural whereas DVD-As tend to be uber-digital, very hi-rez sounding, more impressive at first, but maybe not as "real". Quote:
In fact they only problem I have with DVD-A at all is that it is multichannel. I'm a firm believer that music in more than two channels is a travesty. |
I'm sure that's what they said about 2-channel stereo. "Two channels???? What do I need two channels for? It's all a scheme to force me to buy more amplification and speakers!" In addition to being a music-lover, I'm a movie-lover as well, with a pretty good HT rig, so I've grown accustomed to surround. I sincerely enjoy the surround-sound experience. I also enjoy the multi-channel music experience. No, these recordings don't sound the same as the more familiar stereo versions, but if I'd heard them first in MC, would the stereo version sound "wrong" to me, or collaped, compressed, compacted together and muddled? Then again, a lot of the music I like, is very carefully mixed, multi-tracked with lots of cool stereo panning and phasing effects, it lends itself to surround sound. Turn these geniuses at the mixing desk loose on 5.1 channels and look out! Think what they can do with all those extra channels. Think of future masterpieces, equivalents to Dark Side of the Moon that will be created natively in 5.1, conceived originally as a MC experience, by people who think in 5.1, not stereo. What an amzing experience that will be! I think ultimately, the future of music is multi-channel. Maybe far into the future (20-30 years), but it is coming.
Also, with all those additional channels, you get 3X the resolution you than you can get by compacting all those tracks into two channels. Sounds can have greater separation, and more ambience, bigger, wider soundstages, etc. OK, you get my point, I think MC music can be wonderful. We're only just now learning how to mix music into 5.1. Think of how bad and funny early stereo recordings sound to us today, it took them a couple decades to get it right.
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I'm not sure I follow you. An analog tape is no different than a singer in a booth. It still has to get from analog to DSD somehow. |
Yes, it is still a conversion of analog to digital. But a DSD copy of a 24/96 recording can only ever have 24/96 resolution. A DSD version of an analog master tape is a much closer approximation to analog with more samples/information than 24/96 PCM. Again, Sony developed SACD specifically to best preserve aging, brittle analog tapes before they disintegrated. They weren't thinking about new, modern 24/96 recordings when they came up with the format. Here again is Meitner: Quote:
Meitner: To convert audio into PCM is a very alien thing, whereas if you look at the convert audio into one-bit format, it’s a very natural thing. In any form of conversion, you will lose something. You have to choose the format where you lose the least, which means the format that’s the friendliest to audio, which is definitely DSD over PCM.
For sound quality, here’s one simple test. I’m doing some transfers of vinyl LPs onto DSD. And, you know, in DSD this is a conversion with a minimal amount of damage to the original sound. If you consider playing back vinyl and liking all the good things about it, now we can have it in DSD format. We could possibly take some of the clicks and pops out of it and still have the general good flavor preserved. The same holds true for analogue tapes and any kind of conversion. So it’s really a very nice thing. |