1. Any SACD which was mastered from analog source material will be fine.
Moreover, you can usually tell whether a recording was made using pure DSD
from the label. You should be aware, though, that a number of new SACD's
which have been released come from PCM masters. For example, all of the new
Deutsche Grammophon releases were originally recorded in PCM format,
although the originals were originally 24/48 or 24/96. The DG releases
which were mastered in 24/96 sound, at least to me, every bit as good as
pure DSD recordings.

2. CD's mastered from DSD originals are supposed to be better than CD's
mastered from PCM originals.
"Farrell8882" wrote in message
news:ddeQb.104704$Rc4.713016@attbi_s54...
I found this article on another newsgroup:

http://www.diamondcenter.net/digitalstress.html

Here are (to me) the most significant paragraphs:

"With the advent of Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording, it is
now
possible to conclude that the negative effects I have stated above are due
not
to the digital process per se but to the mode of achieving it, Pulse Code
Modulation (PCM). For DSD recordings do not have these negative effects.

"Although it was suggested, unfortunately the record industry did
not
make analog backups of their digital (PCM) sessions. So now there is a
(very
expensive) twenty year hiatus. Hence some SACDs (the CD format for DSD)
are
being released which have gone through the PCM process and are as negative
as
regular CDs."

I have two questions:

I wonder whether it is possible to find pure DSD recordings, and how to
recognize them.

Also, are DSD CDs -- as opposed to DSD SACDs -- as likely to be free of
the
negative artifacts Diamond cites?

Thanks.