"thomh" wrote in message


As you well know Scott, Steve Hoffman is the mastering engineer of
all the AF SACDs and he has said on his website that he uses a *split
feed* coming out of the mastering console which feeds *two* different
A/D converters. So, as Steven Sullivan so succinctly put it, "A
mastering chain that bifurcates at the A/D stage is no longer the
same chain." Any comparisons between the two layers have to take this
into account and it then becomes quite difficult to pin the
differences down to the individual formats.

Where did Steve Hoffman say this?

I believe he uses the Meitner stuff for SACD but I am not sure what
converter he uses for the 4416 layer.

Over the last months I have invited over 20 self-proclaimed
audiophiles to bring their hi-res players to my home and record the
analog output from these players to my DAW at 16/44.1kHz inorder to
perform comparative listening tests.

Most of the discs that we have used for these a/b tests have been
good old classics from the analog era remastered again for SACD,
DVD-A or vinyl. Among these discs were some AF Creedence SACDs as
well.

My recording and playback equipment consists of

DAW with a LynxTwo soundcard
NAD amplification
B&W Nautilus 805 speakers
Sennheiser 650 headphones.

The equipment that we have tested so far a

Digital:

Sony DVP-NS900V
Denon 2900
Pioneer DV-868
Philips DV-963SA
Linn Unidisk 1.1

Analog:

VPI Scout w/ Shure V15VxMR
Thorens TD-850 w/Ortofon 540 MK. II
both through a Gram Amp 2 Special Edition phono preamp

The conclusion to all of these tests have been consistent:

When level-matched, *no one* has yet been able to reliably tell the
original from the copy.

Obviously, your system lacks resolution. ;-)

Seriously though, nice job!

I have heard audiophiles talk about the "day and night" differences
between Redbook and SACD/DVD-A but they simply do not manifest
themselves on my equipment and the ears that have listened.

Good show, but nothing new. Over 20 years ago we did level-matched,
time-synched listening tests where we took the output of a high end 2 track
high speed analog tape deck, and sent it through either a short piece of
wire, or a pair of good-quality converters back-to-back.

More details:

http://www.pcavtech.com/abx/abx_digi.htm

No audible differences were found.

I also made some of my own "high res" reocrdings with a high quality
recording system based on the Card Deluxe. Test files based on these
recordings have been downloaded from
http://www.pcabx.com/technical/sample_rates/index.htm by the thousands over
the past three years. No reports of anybody hearing differences under blind
test conditions.


Steve Hoffman has said the following:

"The boundaries of Digital PCM have already been pushed to their
limit if I play back a master tape vs. the PCM copy and hear things
like echo fall off on the digital. If they sounded the same in an A/B
all our problems would be over and my job would be so much easier."

Steve Hoffman has a very large psychological and financial investment in
hearing those echoes sound different.

In our testing we tried hard to listen for these lost echo trails and
other subtleties but failed to notice them.

There is no logical reason to believe that a high quality 16/44 system would
audibly diminish them.