Randy Yates wrote in message news:bTXxb.250002$9E1.1349810@attbi_s52...
Are they? If you walk into the living rooms of most people at this
point in time, you will find CDs - not DVD-A or SACD. And I think the
average consumer, who finds compressed MP3s sound just fine and makes
around $30,000/year, isn't going to be willing to shuck out a few
thousand dollars for new equipment and replacement media to gain an
extra 20 kHz of bandwidth that he never missed in the first place.

Yes this true, but many receivers and surround pre-pros are running
internally at higher sampling rates already. Some Pioneer receivers
run at 88.2 kHz, for example, and current Lexicons run at 96 kHz.
They often use A/Ds at high sampling rates, so analog sources are
digitized at high rates and are processed that way. CDs are dealt,
usually, in their native rates.

I would also suggest that most high-end audio design isn't aimed at
your average consumer. I'm not saying it's necessarily economically
viable, but I think DVD-A and SACD compatibility looms large on their
design specs. Besides, didn't you know Meridian upsamples MP3s? :-)

Frankly, I hope these (SACD and DVD-A) formats fail. CDs are more than
adequate for audio reproduction in any venue barring perhaps a laboratory,
and creating a profuse array of formats does nothing but confuse consumers
and dissipate resources.

I hope not. DVD-A and SACD are very useful in providing high-quality,
non-lossy encoded multichannel music. Processing them digitally is
another matter altogether unfortunately.

DSP engineers know how to properly design and implement a low pass
filter. Filtering is one of the most basic tasks for a DSP engineer,
and lowpass is the most basic type of filter.

Yes, but there are so many tradeoffs to make --- will they make the
right choices, perceptually speaking? One of our fellow rahe members,
Bruno Putzeys, recently described on the pro-audio list his
experiences with a TI SRC4192 chip, where in the inband ripple
produced possibly large amounts of pre- and post-echo, but TI thought
their customers couldn't deal with the large group delay if they
lowered the in-band ripple. I would copy his post, replete in
technical detail, here, but the pro-audio list restricts such usage.
Perhaps Bruno would repost his report here --- the original article
appeared on November 18, 2003 if you have access to the archive.

This was in a discussion about using ASRCs as jitter-suppression
devices, and their possible consequences if cascaded with other ASRCs
or other processing.

It is my experience that bugs are best dealt with by repairing
rather than covering up.

Yes, but only if they're under your control. Shoddy mastering and
engineering practices abound. Higher sampling rates, and deeper bit
depths can deal with some common audio engineering problems.

--Andre