"Anthony PDC" wrote in message
On Sun, 31 Aug 2003 05:38:14 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"Anthony PDC" wrote in message
On Sat, 30 Aug 2003 05:59:55 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"Anthony PDC" antdeclan_at_hotmail.com wrote in message
On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 05:50:08 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"Anthony PDC" antdeclan_at_hotmail.com wrote in message
PS: Four years on from that post above-quoted, SACD and
DVD-Audio are genuine advances over CD and high-end LP
playback. Anyone with ears can discern the higher quality
immediately with half-decent amplification/speakers.
The difference you can hear with SACD and DVD-A discs, as
compared to earlier CDs is due to the fact that they were
remastered. The basic technology has zero audible benefits for
listening to music.
Then I am happy they were remastered (if I agree with your basic
assumptions a la Emperor's New Clothes, with which I do not). But
hey, we are all agreed thay sound better, so what's the problem?
I've heard a lot of remastering jobs that were IMO steps
backwards, sonically speaking. Two ways that this can happen
involve adding dynamic range compression, and adding artificial
reverb. I haven't heard that any of the remastered SACD/DVD-A
releases have added artificial reverb, but several of them have
had their dynamic range substantially compressed.
As always, newer does not always mean better.
Hmmm...well, all I can say to you is that IMHO you are mistaken -
profoundly so.
You are unqualified to judge that.
As a cathedral chorister over many years, and a
person who listens to live music regularly, DVD-A and SACD are
immediately, stunningly, better than CD (and LP) in terms both of
dynamic range, resolution, accuracy and...blah. If you cannot hear
the sonic improvement over CD and LP (and all my non-audiophile
friends CAN) then there's something, somewhere, seriously awry!
Yep, and the problem is that:
(a) You don't know how to evaluate audio gear - you've confused
being a musican with being an expert in all aspects of reproducing
music. Music is just another technology/art that no single person
can master all of.
(b) SACD and DVD-A come up as zeros, psychoacoustically speaking.
They were brought to market despite decades of scientific knowledge
that basically said that they can't provide an audible advantage.
Ok - let's discuss this a bit more 
First, and with the greatest respect, as regards the sonic advantages
of DVD-A and SACD, I have never heard any other consumer audio
technology that sounds so true and real and communicative.
Meaningless poetry.
Now, either
I have gone crazy, missed the bus somehow, gone deaf, had my hearing
sabotaged by some Sony/Philips/Warner conspiracy, or otherwise lost my
marbles. Read on...
No, your problem is that you just don't know how to listen to audio gear to
reliably hear if its making a difference.
You know, it doesn't take a musician to appreciate audio technology
that just sounds *right* - natural and accurate.
It is well known that musicans don't know what the music they make sounds
like to the audience, since they can't be in two places at one time.
Faithful sound
reproduction is what we are talking about here of course, as measured
against one's experience of real, live *sound* (not just music). One
can adduce technical measurement evidence in favour of one point of
view or the other, but the litmus test surely has to lie with the
listener.
This is all irrelevant talk anyway because no recording sounds exactly like
live music. So comparting the sound of live music to recorded sound is
interesting and meaningful, but it doesn't involve small differences. I
record live performances for hours every week. I know that the musicans on
stage don't know what they really sound like down in the audience.
I think I am right in saying that charts and tables never
said much about the subjective end result in audio and I know this is
an argument most often deployed by unswervingly loyal devotees of
analogue/valve systems. It's a futile, subjective argument, not
amenable to any objective test that science has produced so far - and
thus this apparently endless mobius strip of a debate continues,
fueled by all kinds of dogma, prejudice, snake oil...one could go on
and on.
This is all futile posturing.
As far as I am concerned, given a good recording, it's really very
easy indeed to judge the quality of any playback system against one's
own reference of what sounds *right* and *true* and *natural* - it's
unmistakable.
What is unmistakable is that the musicans who are recorded have no idea
about what they sound like to the listeners in the room, and all recordings
sound vastly different then the live recordings they are made of. That is
why this sort of discussion is just futile posturing.
And since we can't acquire the masters of the recordings
we want to listen to (even if we possessed the requisite playback
hardware) a facsimile of said tapes in the form of Hi-Res Audio has to
be attractive.
A facsimile may be attractive or not, depending on how good of a facimile it
is, but also depending on how attractive the original was.
Like many readers here, I've heard some playback systems over time
which have made my head turn, as if some *real*, *live* sound event
had taken place. I include high-end LP playback, as well as later CD
sources in this. When a playback system's sonic quality approaches
what one instinctively *knows* to be true to real life, it strikes
like a thunderbolt. I know I am not alone in this - far from it. And
just like one's appreciation for say: art, music, literature,
develops, matures and is refined in small, incremental, steps - so
does one's appreciation of audio playback quality.
This is all futile posturing.
Most members of this Group know that - in absolute terms - the
experience of a live musical performance has *never* been accurately
reproduced by any audio technology. I'm obviously not an
audio-engineer, but I believe this has to do with:
a: dynamic range/amplification/waveform issues, especially in the
average domestic listening environment
You have no clue. Our basic technology today has at least 10 times more
dynamic range than our live performances. So, this isn't a problematical
issue.
b: obscure, as yet scientifically-unproven theories about the
ear-brain interface, for example what goes on above the 20kHz
brick-wall that the CD standard imposes, and why this affects
perceived quality even though humans can't hear much beyond 20kHz
You have no clue. Today, it's painfully easy to make recordings that go up
to 50, 100 KHz. It's painfully easy to make loudspeakers that reproduce
sounds up to 50, 100 KHz. It is well-known that you can take those 50, 100
KHz recordings and play them through those 50, 100 KHz speakers, and
alternately interpose a brick wall filter at 16-20 KHz. Listeners will not
hear whether the filter is there or not.
c: sampling frequency, bitrate (for PCM) and other digital-analogue
conversion technology issues.
Again, modern converters are so good that you can record and re-record very
high quality musical recordings through them 10-20 times with zero audible
effects.
At any rate, we all know that sometimes, rarely, one's attention is
grabbed by a playback technology which makes one's spine tingle. And I
must say, listening to my first DVD-A did exactly that - just like
when I heard a decent hi-fi system for the first time as a kid; when I
first donned a pair of cheap stereo headphones; when I first heard a
high-end analogue system (built around a Linn Sondek LP12 and valve
amplification); heard a pair of Quad Electrostatic speakers; heard
early CD for the first time (it was Vivaldi's Glorias - Decca/Guest/St
John's College Cambridge).
You didn't do a proper level-matched, time-synched blind test. End of story.
As I hinted earlier, I've got no "audio/political" axe to grind (in
this post at least!). So if you have a good stereo amp - or better
still a multichannel 5.1 or higher amp with connectors for all
channels via analogue inputs which go *directly* to the pre-amp (ie
which bypass crappy DSP or other processing) then you really should
give Hi-Resolution audio an audition. It doesn't matter (to my ears at
least) whether it's DVD-A or SACD.
You have no clue about the relevant issues. You don't know how to compare
things like this. You don't know how to set up a proper experiment. All you
have is this irrelevant posturing and anecdotes.
You can educate yourself in these matters at my
www.pcabx.com web site, and
by studying other referneces cited there.