Will a SACD player still sound with sub par speakers?

[Ruggerio79]

Hye guys, i have been tempted by SACD but my speakers go only from 30-30000. Is it worth getting the SACD player?? i am thinking of the cheap Sony 595 but i am wondering if it will sound much better than my current cd set up given that my speakers are not exactly SACD frequency.

 

[trains are bad]

You can't hear above 20khz anyways.

 

[Sovkiller]

But he can below 30Hz.........

Yes it is woth having it even if you have a pair of stock earbuds, you will thank your self later on when you get better gear...the difference is not only in the freq response, also in details, black background, instruments separation, and they usually are overall better processed recordings......

 

[soundboy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ruggerio79 Hye guys, i have been tempted by SACD but my speakers go only from 30-30000. Is it worth getting the SACD player?? i am thinking of the cheap Sony 595 but i am wondering if it will sound much better than my current cd set up given that my speakers are not exactly SACD frequency.

First of all, buy into SACD only if sufficient amount of music you like appear on the format. You can go to sa-cd.net and see if SACD has your favorite music.

Don't buy into specs. None of us have "perfect hearing", so specs can only give a hint of what a component sound like. Given that, the Sony 595 is a very good performer with both CD and SACD. It is a bit slow in terms of loading and recognizing discs....not to mention a minimal remote. However, I still think it's quite a bargain.

 

[Sovkiller]

Other source for SACDs is Acoustic Sounds not very cheap though...

 

[Garbz]

I'm going to say no. But you haven't defined sub-par. What speakers have you got? Does sub-par mean you bought them for $300 at Wallmart? Or just the frequency response. Afterall the old B&W Nautilus 800s had a frequency response up to 22.5khz and they were $25000 a pair.

Personally I don't buy much into SACD. Many people here upgrade their cheap cdplayers to cheap SACDs and then think where was SACD all my life. The same applies to DVD-A. Most have not heard a truly good CD player (some people here have) and I for one have yet to find any audible advantages of SACD. My neighbors dog may but my speakers don't go that high.

 

[Sovkiller]

The freq is just one aspect, not a big deal here, you barely can hear above 17KHz probably, as I stead above, but all the SACDs I own sounds far better than the original version in CDs, a real sahme the selection is really poor for my taste.
It seems that the process in which they remaster or remix, from the master tapes is dfferent, but the improvement is not so subtle, of course the same could apply to any very well recorded media, but unfortunatelly this is not the case most fo the times, it seems that with the high resolution formats engineers take more care on what they are doing, same case of Mobil Fidelity Cd versions, if you get a very good CD, the difference will be less, but even between the DSD CD version and SACD there is a difference sometimes...

 

[bigshot]

A good equalizer will improve your sound a lot more than an SACD player will. Even on the best systems, SACDs are pretty much the same as redbook. The reason people hear a difference is because most SACDs are carefully remastered, while most current CDs are hot mastered to the point of distortion. Go ahead and buy the hybrid SACDs and play the CD layer on your regular CD player. It will sound just as good.

By the way, the RANGE of frequency response is much less important than the relative BALANCE of frequency response. Your speakers may go from 30 to 30, but they don't produce even amounts of sound throughout the spectrum. There are dips and peaks that can be evened out with an equalizer to improve the sound greatly.

See ya
Steve

 

[bhjazz]

The CD transport and the DVD transport (that is required to play an SACD) are totally different products, so they do have a different sonic signature. A lot of people who love their CDs on CD players are surprised at how they sound on an SACD or DVD player. Personal taste, I suppose.

You might get better responses with this question if you tell us what else you have in your system.

And, like others have said: never mind about the frequency response of your speakers. I heard a pair of Totem Model 1 speakers once. Stand mounted, small, unassuming. Their frequency response is somewhere around 50 - 20K. But they were absolute magic, and this was with an off the shelf CD, and an old tube preamp. Magic, I'm tellin ya. Would SACD work good in this situation: absolutely. The blacker backgrounds behind the music, better dynamics and overall smoother sound would have definitely taken the whole system a notch up.

So, if the player is affordable, sure, give it a try. Just don't bank your whole system on one piece of gear. Go for synergy instead.

 

[infinitesymphony]

Here are the reasons for creating and using high-resolution formats:

1. More samples per second. For example, up to 192,000 samples/sec on DVD-Audio compared to 44,100 samples/sec on a CD. More samples means less artifacts or smearing introduced by interpolation between samples. It's like comparing a video at 15 frames per second with motion blur to one at 60 frames per second with motion blur. The one at 60 fps will seem more realistic and less smeared because there's less time for blurring between actual frames.

2. Higher sample rates mean that the cutoff frequency of a device's filter can be pushed into the higher frequencies, further away from the audible spectrum. According to the Nyquist theorem, a CD can represent tones up to 22,050 Hz, around the range of human hearing. However, the filter needs to return to zero before the end of that range. When the first CD players came out in the '80s, manufacturers decided to set the cutoff frequency near the top of the spectrum with a steep slope downward. This is known as a "brick wall" filter because of the slope's near-vertical drop. Unfortunately, the slope was so steep that it caused very audible artifacts and distortion at lower frequencies. Manufacturers then decided on a softer slope that began further back in the frequency spectrum. This solved the problems that the brick wall filter had caused, but also meant that there was a necessary dip in the high frequencies. Now, at 192,000 Hz, the cutoff frequency can be set closer to 96,000 Hz, which means that the audio in the audible spectrum (~20 Hz to 20 kHz) is unmolested by the filter.

3. Higher resolution or bit-depth means that a greater range of amplitudes can be represented. In pulse code modulation (PCM), each pulse can be represented by a 1 or 0. For a CD, which is 16-bit, there will be 2^16 values. 2^24 for 24-bit.

16-bit = 65,536 possible values.
24-bit = 16,777,216 possible values.

Therefore, a 24-bit stream's amplitude is roughly 256 times more accurate than 16-bit.

***

Sorry for the long post, but I feel that high-res doesn't get enough respect. Hope you enjoyed it! Maybe it will clear up some concepts for people who are "on the fence" about pursuing new formats.

Edited for accuracy.

 

[dhp]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot A good equalizer will improve your sound a lot more than an SACD player will. Even on the best systems, SACDs are pretty much the same as redbook. The reason people hear a difference is because most SACDs are carefully remastered, while most current CDs are hot mastered to the point of distortion. Go ahead and buy the hybrid SACDs and play the CD layer on your regular CD player. It will sound just as good. By the way, the RANGE of frequency response is much less important than the relative BALANCE of frequency response. Your speakers may go from 30 to 30, but they don't produce even amounts of sound throughout the spectrum. There are dips and peaks that can be evened out with an equalizer to improve the sound greatly. See ya Steve

On hybrid SACDs, SACD layers often have different masterings than the redbook layer, so no, they won't always sound the same

 

[Ruggerio79]

ok guys ..thanks for the feedback..i think i will get the sacd player but i am torn between the 595 and the scd xe 597? the latter is cheaper but doesnt come with a 5 disc changer. By the way for those with the 595 is there a headphone jack?

 

[Mr_Sukebe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot A good equalizer will improve your sound a lot more than an SACD player will. Even on the best systems, SACDs are pretty much the same as redbook. The reason people hear a difference is because most SACDs are carefully remastered, while most current CDs are hot mastered to the point of distortion. Go ahead and buy the hybrid SACDs and play the CD layer on your regular CD player. It will sound just as good. By the way, the RANGE of frequency response is much less important than the relative BALANCE of frequency response. Your speakers may go from 30 to 30, but they don't produce even amounts of sound throughout the spectrum. There are dips and peaks that can be evened out with an equalizer to improve the sound greatly. See ya Steve

With ref to your comment about an equaliser, you're kidding us aren't you?
An equaliser might "change" the sound, but as it's just another component in a system that might induce signal loss, I can't see how it would "improve" it.
Of course if you know better, please let us know.

Ref SACD vs CD. I've compared some reasonable level SACD units, and did find that as a format, it has benefits over CD, regardless of the specs. Mid-range appeared to be the key area that benefitted.

Having said that, I personally wouldn't chose to buy an SACD unit, as I'd rather focus on getting the best out of my reasonably sized CD collection than worrying about a new format that Sony appear to be quietly killing.

 

[Garbz]

I personally think that bigshot is the only sane person on this board with regards to his recomendations. I would much sooner buy an equaliser than spend money on a source upgrade.

The reason is quite simple. Your recording is at the mercy of the engineer. The recording engineer is the tallented guy who makes beautiful music, the mastering engineer is then the one using the crap speakers to make the mix as "transportable" as possible all the while having the producer scream into his ear "make it louder!" The result is that every consumer CD has such a very different tonal balance that not using an equaliser is like using a camera lens without a focusing ring.

The EQ may be another component in the signal path, but that does not mean it has to be a crap component that damages the sound. Infact there are plenty out there which are almost transparent with the levels zeroed and often they even have a bypass switch. But in the end given the choice of the extra component or listening to music through my flat speakers or headphones that was anything but flat when mastered, the EQ wins every time. Asside from that if you use speakers you can gain all sorts of benefits to correct for room interactions.

Don't believe me? Play Kate Bush - Ariel, then a Keane album. Yes the kate bush album was purposely mastered a bit dark, but the differences are so extreme that for a truly flat system both of these CDs don't sound good at all in my experience.

 

[trains are bad]

Quote:

1. More samples per second. For example, up to 192,000 samples/sec on DVD-Audio compared to 44,100 samples/sec on a CD. More samples means less artifacts or smearing introduced by interpolation between samples. It's like comparing a video at 15 frames per second with motion blur to one at 60 frames per second with motion blur. The one at 60 fps will seem more realistic and less smeared because there's less time for blurring between actual frames.

Actually not. By sampling a waveform at higher than the nyquist frequency, the ENTIRE waveform can be recovered. Not just an approximation. The exact waveform. Raising the sampling rate absolutely does allow the high end filter to be moved up as you described however, but I can't say I know if that makes it sound better or not.

Quote:

An equaliser might "change" the sound, but as it's just another component in a system that might induce signal loss, I can't see how it would "improve" it. Of course if you know better, please let us know.

A modern equalizer is not going to induce signal loss, except of course where you set it to cut the amplitude

. Equalizers are a good tool, an extemely underrepresented one in hi-fi circles, but I do have one caution, and that is to use your ears rather than an instrument. I have experienced situations in which setting frequency response via RTA or similar results in an obviously peaky sound. It is my suspicion that the RTA analyzes reflections off the walls that your ears consider reflections and not part of the main sound, or some similar psychoacoustic phenomenon. So bottom line is to use an EQ so that it SOUNDS flat (or whatever you favor) rather than measures flat. An RTA can make for a good starting point.