willbill writes:
Arny Krueger wrote:
Hardly anybody buys into the pseudo-science behind those overpriced,
oversold toys. Note that the SACD and DVD-A formats are slowly dying
in the marketplace.
i'm sure that others here know the answer,
but are you a fan of SACD, or not?
again, i'm not trolling! if you think that
SACD has little merit, then what does have merit?
at this point i have no opinion one way or the other!
tia, bill
Bill, you asked Arny, but in my opinion, good-ol' 16-bit "Redbook" CD
audio "done right" is incredibly good. If reasonable care was taken in
the recording process (good equipment, the mastering engineer doing his
job right, etc.), the reproduction of stereo audio on many (most?) CD
players will be as close to perfection (in terms of frequency response,
dynamic range, and D/A conversion accuracy) as required outside of a
laboratory environment.
Let me put it to you this way. I own a pair of Klipschorns that are
capable of producing over 110 dB SPL (unweighted) in my living room.
That means that if I were to listen to material at 110 dB SPL on a
well-made CD, the quantization noise floor would be at about 30 dB SPL,
allowing for 10 dB of headroom in the digital recording and a few dB
derating below the ideal quantization floor for the dither levels.
Understand the signficance of this performance level: the quantization
noise will be wideband, "white" (uncorrelated) noise with a _total_
power of 30 dB SPL. Now you may know from the old Fletcher/Munson curves
that 0 dB SPL is the threshold of human hearing, but that was for a
SINE WAVE at around 3 or 4 kHz (our most sensitive area of hearing).
Then if you averaged 30 dB of wideband noise in a narrow band, say, 10
Hz, you'd be BELOW the threshold of hearing in that band.
So what you would experience in my living room is music at
ear-splitting, damaging levels with a corresponding noise level that is
(since it is wideband) *BELOW* the threshold of hearing when that noise
is measured in 10 Hz bands.
Do ya' think that's good enough?
--
% Randy Yates % "Though you ride on the wheels of tomorrow,
%% Fuquay-Varina, NC % you still wander the fields of your
%%% 919-577-9882 % sorrow."
%%%% % '21st Century Man', *Time*, ELO
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