The lie of the hi-rez formats

[eyeteeth]

Whatever remains on the scene I liked in principle the headline of some artical I saw somewhere regarding high-rez being ignored by the mass market, 'Less Bach, More britney'.
But that's a different issue.

 

[daycart1]

Hmmm, I think I'm happy I resisted temptation and stuck with vinyl (and a few ceedees!).

 

[bifcake]

It's amazing to me that you guys don't mind being lied to by the record companies.

 

[GoRedwings19]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bifcake It's amazing to me that you guys don't mind being lied to by the record companies.

I have been reading this thread with lots of interest seeming I just bought a tri-vista sacd player. It's worrying that record companies can get away with this when people invest their hard earned cash in dedicated dvd machines.

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bifcake It's amazing to me that you guys don't mind being lied to by the record companies.

So, what do you propose?

Maybe withhold your purchase of any Blue Note SACD....if there's any.

 

[bifcake]

How about a letter writing campaign, inundating the offending companies? It may fall on deaf ears, but it's a start.

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bifcake How about a letter writing campaign, inundating the offending companies? It may fall on deaf ears, but it's a start.

Besides Blue Note, do we know of any other record companies that have done this? I don't have an SACD player but I'm certainly not happy about this.

Here's kind of a funny story. I was talking with a friend of mine who's an audio dealer about SACD. He was saying that he didn't think the Super Audio layer was available in two channel audio - that even if you have a SACD player if you were outputting to two channel, you're not hearing anything different than a standard two channel output. It's only in Surround Sound that SACD makes a difference. He was speaking from his experience listening and I was speaking from research. My friend's a really bright guy but he's really busy these days dealing with selling and installing. He doesn't have time to do any research, while I spend sleepless nights online. He's going only by what he hears. Turns out, he's probably right.

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bifcake How about a letter writing campaign, inundating the offending companies? It may fall on deaf ears, but it's a start.

I wouldn't mind doing that.

Quote:

I was talking with a friend of mine who's an audio dealer about SACD. He was saying that he didn't think the Super Audio layer was available in two channel audio - that even if you have a SACD player if you were outputting to two channel, you're not hearing anything different than a standard two channel output.

And this man is a dealer? If the SACD was carefully remastered, using the best possible source, then even the stereo SACD layer can be quite amazing. Example....Steely Dan's "Gaucho" or Spandau Ballet's "True". I even have SACDs with very clean vinyl records as sources, and they sound amazing if the mastering is done right.

 

[erikzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soundboy And this man is a dealer?

OK, let's call him a working stiff. Actually, he's an engineer and a lot of what he's doing is home automation but a big part of that is audio and home theater. My point is that he's probably hearing SACDs that have not been mastered properly. It doesn't matter what the manufacturers tell you. It's what your ears tell you that counts. That's not to say that there aren't some fine sounding SACDs out there. I just think that the problem that bifcake brings up is probably more widespread than we know.

 

[Wodgy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by erikzen Besides Blue Note, do we know of any other record companies that have done this?

In Stereophile's analysis of a few SACD and DVD-A titles, they found two that were made from 48kHz masters, and at least one more that was made from an analog master with no bandwidth beyond 20kHz. The two culprit labels there were EMI and Rounder. The Alison Krauss recording seems especially disappointing, since it was fairly recent material.

The article is here:
http://www.stereophile.com/features/...cs/index2.html

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

I just think that the problem that bifcake brings up is probably more widespread than we know.

I agree.

 

[jefemeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bifcake As I'm reading these posts, it's amazing to me that none of you guys are outraged by the fact that the record companies are essentially lying to consumers by converting 16bit encodings into DSD adn calling it SACD, and charging more for it. That really burns me, but it seems as though I'm the only one.

The majority of SACDs were in PCM at one point or another. No digital processing can be done on straight DSD. It has to be converted to PCM first. this includes gain, mixing, filtering, effects, etc. So, although this is a special case since the master is analog, I argue what's the point of SACD in general?

 

[Glassman]

the point is in the bandwidth.. we shouldn't talk about DSD or PCM but rather about samplerate in which the signal is recorded, mixed, edited and then stored, because as Jeff said, DSD is nothing else than noise shaped PCM, no matter how many bits are used.. today it's a no problem to edit in 2.8MHz samplerate with a few bits of resolution and it's better than editing in lower samplerates.. way better for transient response I suppose..

 

[Budley007]

Wow! I was way offtopic...sry folks

 

[robert]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soundboy So, what do you propose? Maybe withhold your purchase of any Blue Note SACD....if there's any.

well, if anyone knows of a truthful list of SACDs (those either mastered from analogue, or created as DSD), that would help. then we can all decide whether there's enough software to justify buying these machines. updated monthly would be nice.

being a left-wing, commie, pinko, fruit; i sure don't trust 'em to tell the truth (and Shrub's friends in the voting machine industry stole this election to boot.... but that's off topic, a bit)