[terriblepaulz]

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If you CAN NOT hear a difference in SACD, DVD-A, and even HDCD over Red Book Disc, Somethings wrong with your Equipment, Or Hearing....PS I'm not trying to be a smart ass..JMO

I assume you have some DBT evidence of your own to back up your ability to tell the difference between say an SACD and the signal from the same SACD downsampled to 16/44.1 - otherwise it is hard to make sensible comparisons due to other differences, frankly I am more inclined to think the results of a set of carefully proctored DBT trials (512 trials and 60 subjects) more credible than the endless unsupported and methodologically sloppy anecdotes going around.

Why would anyone waste their time trying to find the "ability to tell the difference in say a SACD and the signal from the same SACD down sampled to 16/44.1??? A sensible comparison, due to other differences"????? "results of a set of carefully proctored DBT trials (512 trials and 60 subjects) more credible than the endless unsupported and methodologically sloppy anecdotes going on"......WOW!  Did you see the part where I said "JMO" Just My Opinion!!!!!   I'll step off of this thread, I thought we were "Listening" to the music.....I am thank-you..... 
 

Don't be so touchy.  The purpose of the Sound Science sub-forum is to introduce a little rigor into the discussion.  Posting your opinion without any evidence to back it up is antithetical to that purpose and a waste of everyone's time.  Elsewhere on head-fi, "just" your opinion is welcome.  Here...not so much.    
 

 

[terriblepaulz]

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There are very easy to define technical reasons why both SACD and HDCD are superior to redbook CD, from a purely technical perspective. So what you are suggesting is that while these technical reasons exist, that they are of no value because people cannot tell the difference in double blind tests.But does that really make them of no value? First of all, is there any real penalty to be paid for them? In the main, no. HDCD encoded discs were never marketed at premium prices. SACD's often were and are, but as mentioned before, many of these offered multi-channel tracks, and better mastering, even if that had nothing to do with the SACD technology itself.So how, exactly, are either HDCD or SACD anything but good things, even if there are no relaible DNT differences? Shall we crap upon every attempt that gets maxi to provide better sound, and which at least mathematically actually does, at no cost penalty?

With all due respect Rob, crapping on deceptive marketing is a valuable endeavor.  There are good reasons to purchase these products (e.g. the superior mastering, or 5.1 and 7.1 applications), but those reasons are not the basis of the sales pitch.  And I respectfully suggest that an inability to produce audible differences in double blind testing is precisely what makes an audio product "of no value". 
 

 

[Skylab]

I don't think we've established that there was any deceptive marketing. Mathematically both formats are superior. HDCD was simply a mastering technique - most HDCD encoded CDs were not even advertised as being so encoded. SACD did carry discernible benefits. I'm not seeing the deception.

I tell you what I DO object to - sites that sell 96/24 FLACs for a premium over the 16/44.1 FLACs.

 

[9pintube]

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I don't think we've established that there was any deceptive marketing. Mathematically both formats are superior. HDCD was simply a mastering technique - most HDCD encoded CDs were not even advertised as being so encoded. SACD did carry discernible benefits. I'm not seeing the deception.

I tell you what I DO object to - sites that sell 96/24 FLACs for a premium over the 16/44.1 FLACs.

I'd agree with your thoughts, Skylab,but I have no evidence to back it up! NO RIGOR to bring to these thoughts, let alone any diametrically opposed thoughts/findings. Sorry, to all, if I added wasted time to your schedules.  Yours truly, TOUCHY

 

[Uncle Erik]

No, SACD, DVD-A and HDCD are legitimate. Whether or not people can hear the difference is irrelevant.

SACD is what it says it is. It is technically different and works as advertised. It is not of those "trust me, it's different, existing science is wrong, now give me $500 for $10 of materials" things.

The difference might very well lie in mastering. But isn't great mastering something that should be encouraged? Further, don't we want to have the boundaries pushed towards the best possible recording? This is why I support the format. Every dollar spent is a way of saying that I will pay for high quality. In these days of the Loudness War and awful MP3 downloads, buying a high quality recording is a statement.

Some SACDs are too expensive. But I've found hundreds that were priced within a dollar or two of a regular CD. Of course I'll buy them. My SACD player was about $600 used, which is pretty fair for a CD player. My DVD-A player was $100 used. It's an early model that has hi-rez digital out, too.

 

[Headdie]

Another way to see it : SACD is a format to copy protect high quality audio tracks.

 

[Uncle Erik]

You're right. I don't think the SACD copy protection has been broken yet.

Interesting that the music industry flushes so much cash on litigation, when they could have simply adopted SACD. If they scaled up the pressings, I'm sure the cost of manufacturing would have gone down.

 

[Ham Sandwich]

 
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Originally Posted by revolink24 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
 
I have Dark Side of the Moon on SACD and red book, as well as MoFi vinyl, and the SACD is clearly superior.
 

 
The mastering of the hybrid SACD version of DSotM is indeed very nice.  They did an excellent job with that one.  If you only have one version of DSotM the hybrid SACD version is the one to get.
 
But it's also an example of a hybrid SACD release where the CD layer and SACD layer are not exactly the same.  Stereophile did a review and analysis of the DSotM SACD and determined that the CD layer and SACD layer are indeed slightly different.  The CD layer got some subtle loudnessing.  So if you use the DSotM SACD as a test to see if SACD or redbook sounds better it is not a fair test because the SACD layer is different and better.
 
That sort of game playing where the CD layer and SACD layer are not the same on a hybrid SACD is unfortunately common.

 

[ClieOS]

You're right. I don't think the SACD copy protection has been broken yet.

Interesting that the music industry flushes so much cash on litigation, when they could have simply adopted SACD. If they scaled up the pressings, I'm sure the cost of manufacturing would have gone down.

The way I see this is, it isn't that SACD is much more secure, but the lack of interest in breaking the protection. Given that music download (legit or not) already way ahead in market share over hard copy media, lossless is already a fairly common sight and there are HD files available for download, not to mention SACD isn't made compatible as PC media in any convenient way, breaking the code just isn't much of any interest for hacker. On the other hand, BluRay, which also claimed to be very difficult to crack, has been cracked. I can pick up a cracked / pirated BluRay movie for less than 1/5 the price of a real BluRay in my country, but I can't even find a CD store without traveling at least 100km - yes, the local don't buy CD anymore, but they do buy pirated movie. Where the is demand, there is supply.

 

[uofmtiger]

I think the main point is that it is often the best mastered version of the album. For that reason alone it is worth owning something that will play the format. Many are hybrids, so you get a digital version of the album and you often get multi tracks. I had plenty of the RCA living stereo SACDs sent to me from yourmusic.com without any extra cost. ( I think it was 5.99 including shipping at the time). Many contain the third track that was laid down in the studio,too...what are the shaded dog versions on used vinyl selling for these days?

More importantly, I couldn't care less if I can hear the difference between SACD and down sampled SACD because the down sampled version would not exist without the SACD.

Also, the tests contained a wide sample of people including some professional engineers. However, I would be more interested in results of pros and audio enthusiasts only. The non-audio enthusiast ( for lack of a better description) probably never spent time comparing equipment, so they most likely would not know what to listen for. Also, a 50 percent accuracy could mean that those people that could tell the difference were just better at listening than those that couldn't (scientifically speaking). If 30 people took a drug and half died, I would think we would conclude that under certain tests 50 percent means something.

 

[nick_charles]

 
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Also, the tests contained a wide sample of people including some professional engineers. However, I would be more interested in results of pros and audio enthusiasts only. The non-audio enthusiast ( for lack of a better description) probably never spent time comparing equipment, so they most likely would not know what to listen for. Also, a 50 percent accuracy could mean that those people that could tell the difference were just better at listening than those that couldn't (scientifically speaking). If 30 people took a drug and half died, I would think we would conclude that under certain tests 50 percent means something.

 

The overall 50% is discussed in the paper, none of the individual listeners managed a statistically significant score for their set of trials. Many of the listeners (60) were audio enthusiasts, viz members of the BAS.  However you do raise an interesting question, are audio enthusiasts actually any better ? well, we may assume this as a priori but in fact when Harman tested different listeners they found that audio reviewers were actually pretty rubbish and strangely hifi sales staff were better at detecting differences. When you look over the reviews from Stereophile you see quite common cases of these (paid) enthusiasts being incapable of detecting glaring flaws, go figure.

 

[akart]

This reminds me of a study conducted by a University (I forget the name, I guess we can Google it up) where they had about 50 reputed wine tasters and gave then different wines (from 100 year old very expensive wines to cheap wines found at the local grocery store) - and they could not tell the difference. In fact, the result was slightly skewed towards them claiming that the cheap wine tasted better.
 
I am inclined to believe that SACDs are mastered better (and hence sound better), but when people say "Oh, SACD has higher fidelity because of the encoding" , I think that's rubbish. I would be happy if people gave credit to the person who was mastering the CD/SACD than the SACD/HDCD itself.
 
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Also, the tests contained a wide sample of people including some professional engineers. However, I would be more interested in results of pros and audio enthusiasts only. The non-audio enthusiast ( for lack of a better description) probably never spent time comparing equipment, so they most likely would not know what to listen for. Also, a 50 percent accuracy could mean that those people that could tell the difference were just better at listening than those that couldn't (scientifically speaking). If 30 people took a drug and half died, I would think we would conclude that under certain tests 50 percent means something.

 

The overall 50% is discussed in the paper, none of the individual listeners managed a statistically significant score for their set of trials. Many of the listeners (60) were audio enthusiasts, viz members of the BAS.  However you do raise an interesting question, are audio enthusiasts actually any better ? well, we may assume this as a priori but in fact when Harman tested different listeners they found that audio reviewers were actually pretty rubbish and strangely hifi sales staff were better at detecting differences. When you look over the reviews from Stereophile you see quite common cases of these (paid) enthusiasts being incapable of detecting glaring flaws, go figure.

 

[Headdie]

Finally akart, you did your part in the SACD marketing, because you've lead me to order the Zenph Art Tatum and Glen Gould SACDs

 

[Uncle Erik]

akart, my understanding is that SACD really is superior to Red Book. The contentious part is whether or not a human can distinguish the two.

That doesn't bother me too much. For me, SACD is sort of a guarantee that the disc was mastered by someone who knows what they're doing and that the disc isn't brickwalled. I have a few that are a little hot, but nothing as bad as what is on a lot of CDs. If it costs me a few dollars extra to get a great disc, I'll pay up.

My biggest gripe is that we cannot (yet) rip the hi-rez layer. I'm planning a move to a music server for Red Book (too many discs ), but will need to keep a rack out for SACD. I'd love to put all the discs in storage and be able to feed SACD to a DAC.

 

[uofmtiger]

This article is several years old and there are many posts on Audio Asylum with challenges to the science behind the methods used, the equipment used, the effectiveness of ABX for testing for audio, the SACDs chosen, the lack of data from the trials, etc.. Audio theory and statistics are not my specialty, so I would suggest that anyone interested in the test should try to dig up the posts on AA. However, there are many challenges to the test's final conclusions.

I still believe that there is practice required for what to listen for in these type of tests. However, even if I take the article at face value, it still does not persuade me from listening to or buying SACDs. The fact that many engineers are mastering them with an attempt at great sound ( which the author acknowledges) rather than loudness would be the top reason for buying the format. However, I also like multichannel like you get on "Love", LAGQ albums or even just the third channel on RCA and Mercury albums. The fact that most of them have a CD layer and are priced similarly to CDs leaves me with very little reason to want a CD only version when SACD is available.

Until CDs are mastered with SQ in mind and have multichannel tracks, the test results are irrelevant to me. As for the wine comparison...in this case the wine is already known to be better tasting than other wines in the test. This test is only trying to find out why....or eliminating one of the common beliefs as to why it tastes better. If cheap wines still don't have the ingredient that makes the other wine better, the better tasting wine will continue to be worthwhile to discriminating wine drinkers everywhere.