"RobbH" wrote in message
news
On Fri, 25 Jun 2004 08:35:14 -0400, Arny Krueger wrote:

One little dirty not-so-secret dirty aspect of the production of
dual-format high resolution recordings has been the fact that the
legacy (CD) and high-resolution (DVD-A or SACD) portions of
virtually all of these recordings distributed until recently, have
been produced in ways that are sufficiently different that it is
reasonable to expect them to sound different. This audible
difference would be aside from any purported benefits of high
resolution formats.

IOW, the high resolution layers sound different from the legacy
format layers because they were produced in such a way that they
would sound different, even if distributed in the same format. On
the one hand they invite comparison of the two formats, but behind
the scenes they stack the deck.

So, what do you get when you convert the DVD-A or SACD audio to
16-bit, 44.1KHz? If you A-B it with the original CD layer, which sounds
better?

In a nutshell, the DVD-A or SACD layer has and/or the CD layer are altered
in such a way that there is no simple transformation like conversion to 16
bits, that will make them sound the same.

More significantly, if you take the DVD-A or SACD layer and convert it to
16/44, the 16/44 version won't sound any different from the high-bitrate
DVD-A or SACD origional.

You can find examples of origional recordings made in the DVD-A format of
24/96 stereo, and downconverted to various vastly lower bitrates for you to
compare for yourself, at
http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm . This site also
provides a number of Double Blind Test Comparators, which will enable you to
perform highly-controlled bias-controlled listening tests, if you have a PC
with a high-bitrate audio interface.