[greggf]

"SACD is far superior..

One main reason is how it is mastered. It mastered from the original master session using DSD."


SACD-Man,

There's nothing about SACD that requires that it be "mastered from the original master session."


(It's also not "far superior" in general and practical terms, except on Uranus, but that's another subject.

)

 

[SACD-Man]

If it not master from the original master, then dont buy the SACD!!

Quote:

Originally Posted by greggf /img/forum/go_quote.gif "SACD is far superior.. One main reason is how it is mastered. It mastered from the original master session using DSD." SACD-Man, There's nothing about SACD that requires that it be "mastered from the original master session." (It's also not "far superior" in general and practical terms, except on Uranus, but that's another subject. )

 

[bigshot]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SACD-Man /img/forum/go_quote.gif If it not master from the original master, then dont buy the SACD!!

How do you know whether they used the original master?

Formats are no guarantee of sound quality. All modern formats are capable of high fidelity sound.

See ya
Steve

 

[lacrossebowe8]

I think, as other people in this thread have stated, that the main difference in the quality of sacd is in the better mastering and dsd processing.

I quite enjoy my (small) sacd collection, and it does not ruin my enjoyment of my cd's.

 

[jilgiljongiljing]

In most cases, a good SACD will have an equally good cd layer as well since its usually the same master thats converted to redbook.

Either way, its worth investing in SACD cos there are quite a few good SACD's out there that hold very good versions of some great albums. Surround sound is a nice bonus as well but I have my player connected only to the stereo speakers or headphones. IMO SACD's sound better on a speaker rig compared to headphones, even on the modest insignia speakers, some of the sacd's I have sound really good.

 

[bigshot]

I've found that legacy recordings (analogue masters) of rock music often have different mastering on the redbook layer. The most famous example is Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. The redbook layer has more compression.

See ya
Steve

 

[nnotis]

After investigating a bit, I'm starting to conclude that it's possible to get your 44.1 / 16 audio to sound really close to what the high res version sounds like. That's largely thanks to dithering. I can get my mixes to sound almost identical in 16 bit to what they do in 24 by using the appropriate dithering setting. That said, they're still not quite as good as the 24 bit bounces. Theres a very slight loss of depth. But it's really close. And it's really close while listening with my Lavry DA10 -> B22 -> K1000s setup. While that's not the absolute most resolving setup, it's an extremely revealing way to monitor. If I listened with Sennheisers, I doubt that I'd be able to hear a difference.

Here's part of a post by a mastering engineer on gearslutz.com. His conclusion is consistent with mine.

"I've been doing classical editing, mastering, and other music production "in the box", using floating point math, for over a decade now. Using high resolution converters, I can use a simple flat spectrum TPDF dither in the monitor chain, and not worry about changing it until the end of the process when it's time to make a CD. Until then, the dither is only needed to get from my workstation's internal floating point representation to the fixed point format used by my control room DAC. But when I want to, I can tell the workstation to use POW'R, TPDF, or even no dither at all, and to throttle the word length back to 16 bits on the way to my DAC. That way I can hear what the CD is going to sound like if I make a particular dithering choice. To me, it's a case of "choose your poison", because the result is always a bit worse than my high resolution feed. "
Some heretical ideas about dither... - Gearslutz.com

As far as DSD goes, I've seen several people describe it as smoother and more analogue sounding than PCM. Having never heard DSD, I'll just have to take their word for it. But I do wonder what might account for this difference. The only thing I can think of is that the DACs these people are using do a better job with DSD. Perhaps DSD DACs are currently a step ahead?

But technical stuff aside, it's assuring to pick up a release on SACD or DVDA. Because they're supposed to be audiophile formats, they tend to be extremely well mastered recordings. But it's infuriating that they'd put a different version on the CD layer of the disc. I was going to get that Dark Side of the Moon SACD. But after bigshot's comments, I think I'll pass.

 

[bigshot]

The only advantage to the SACD format itself is multichannel playback. That makes a huge difference if it's mixed well for surround.

If CDs are capable of sounding as good as an SACD, why should we have to pay more for a dying format to get good sound? They should just put the good mastering on CDs and charge a normal price for it. Deliberately hobbling redbook to make SACD sound better is crooked and dishonest. I won't support that. And totally remixing a classic album never sounds better. It only sounds different. If I'm going to buy a record from the 1970s, I want it to sound the way the original artists approved it sounding back then. I don't want some current engineer's "reimagining".

I've stopped buying SACDs unless they are DSD and only available in that format. No more legacy titles on SACD for me.

See ya
Steve

 

[Godziltw]

I owned Marantz SA-11S1 and the sound quality of SACD is far superior to CD. The most noticeable difference is that the strings sound smooth in SACD while a bit harsh in CD. (I listen to Classical music only)

 

[SACD-Man]

guys...the main reason that SACD is far superior is that is mastered form the original mastered tapes, then transferred via DSD to its hi-rez format.

 

[wavoman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just do not understand this. Would you mind bringing this to the Science Forum. I have trouble understanding how it works. As I understand it if you have a 44.1Khz signal you cannot gain any more information by changing the sampling rate post-hoc, well you can but it is technically interpolated noise (aka distortion) as you are adding samples that were not there in the original signal

It's not interpolated noise, it's interpolated signal. Think about it this way: D/A conversion is all about interpolation of the discrete digital time series to yield a continuous waveform. Lots of ways to do this. To start with a time-domain interpolation is not necessarily bad. Take out a piece of graph paper, put 16-bit values on it, and draw a smooth curve. Then interpolate between every other pont and draw your smooth curve again. See what I mean?

Now I like to think that one engineering team designs all facets of the A/D conversion, so I want my upsampling and D/A done in the same box, and I have that. However it may well be that a particular DAC that does not upsample on its own benefits from upsampling before it takes over ... makes sense to me.

 

[nnotis]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SACD-Man /img/forum/go_quote.gif guys...the main reason that SACD is far superior is that is mastered form the original mastered tapes, then transferred via DSD to its hi-rez format.

That's exactly what was supposedly done for the two Pixies albums remastered to DSD. They just took the signal strait off of the tape. Because of the high sample rate and better dynamic range, I expect that the DSD layer sounds better than still excellent sounding CD layer. I haven’t been able to directly compare them though.

But bigshot makes an excellent point. It’s incredibly deceiving for record labels to put a crappy mastered version on the CD layer of an SACD. It’s as though they’re trying to artificially exaggerate the sonic differences between the two formats.

 

[Leporello]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nick_charles /img/forum/go_quote.gif As I understand it if you have a 44.1Khz signal you cannot gain any more information by changing the sampling rate post-hoc, well you can but it is technically interpolated noise (aka distortion) as you are adding samples that were not there in the original signal

You are probably right. Check out this ancient usenet thread. Richard Pierce´s posts are particularly enlightening.


Regards,

L.

 

[SACD-Man]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nnotis /img/forum/go_quote.gif That's exactly what was supposedly done for the two Pixies albums remastered to DSD. They just took the signal strait off of the tape. Because of the high sample rate and better dynamic range, I expect that the DSD layer sounds better than still excellent sounding CD layer. I haven’t been able to directly compare them though. But bigshot makes an excellent point. It’s incredibly deceiving for record labels to put a crappy mastered version on the CD layer of an SACD. It’s as though they’re trying to artificially exaggerate the sonic differences between the two formats.

You can always use examples where the technology is not perfect OR the Producer cut corners, etc. If anyone has listened to a recording that was captured in DSD directly, then there is no argument...

 

[bigshot]

I have directly compared the layers of a SACD hybrid that was recorded and mixed DSD. It sounded wonderful, but there was absolutely no difference between the layers. They both sounded great.

Great engineering makes for great recordings, not formats.

See ya
Steve