"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
. ..
"Soundhaspriority" wrote in message
"paul packer" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 5 Mar 2007 21:41:34 -0500, "Soundhaspriority"
wrote:
It bests my Musical Fidelity $2K 192K oversampling
DAC, at 5% of the price.
That must be somewhat upsetting.
All of us have that instinct.
No, just the people who don't know digital technology and psychoacoustics
well enough.
Progress is unsettling.
It can be, for those who find keeping up to be challenging. Personally, I
relish true technological advances. As far as that goes, I relish the
pseudo-technological advances because they provide an opportunity to clear
the newly-fouled air.
But it really is a remark about SACD versus CD. Remember when
"upsampling DAC" was the buzz phrase?
Upsampling DAC was also snake oil. That's in contrast to oversampling DAC
which was a true technological advance, because it vastly improved the
price/performance of DACs.
I'm saddened that
progress in audio appears to be coming to an end, caused
by the lack of interest in the young.
Or alternatively, many people smartened up.
I am going to satisfy this niche in my brain by making
DVD-A recordings with which I can experience much of the
benefit of SACD.
The alleged superiority of the SACD over DVD-A is just more snake oil. In
fact SACD has less dynamic range for music than either 192/24 or 96/24
DVD-A.
Arny continues to extoll the merits of S/N as if a) that is all that
matters, and b) it doesn't matter where such S/N lies, in or out of the
audible spectrum.
AS to dynamics, as opposed to dynamic range.....take a look at the 3us
impulse response on the following charts....notice which one mimics the
actual impulse...both height (strength) of the impulse and lack of
pre-ripple and time-smear. Notice that this holds true even against
352kh/32bit DXD pcm processing. Notice that this holds true whether or not
we are speaking of 64fse DSD (SACD) or 128fse DSD (mastering). It is
inherent in the technology. Notice also that the inherent higher noise of
SACD (a so-called detriment) takes place well above 20khz and peaks
at -80db. Even Arny will have trouble arguing that those are audibly
significant (although that doesn't keep him from using them to belittle
SACD).
http://www.digitalaudio.dk/ax24.htm
Now bear with me for a paragraph or two of comparison listening comment from
one of the earliest such descriptions I published on Usenet, from early
2003:
(quote from response to post by the late Stewart Pinkerton)
Unfortunately, it is technically vastly inferior to DVD-A.
It appears, that despite its limitations, SACD seems to be taking off.
Put that down to Sony marketing muscle.
That being said, nonetheless to my ears the SACD sounds better.
I have two SACDs with DVD-A counterparts. in the case of "3 Doors Down" the
mix is identical by admission of the mixing engineer and the only difference
is that in the workstations the output was feed into DSD files and PCM
files. The DVD-A PCM is all 24/96. This is a current recording recorded
directly into ProTools at 24/192 In the case of Swing Live, the same
microphone (a soundfield) was apparently used directly into a PCM
workstation and a DSD workstation.
In both cases, the results sound different. The difference can best be
described as follows:
* the DVD-A sounds like a "cleaner" CD..cleaner in the sense that the treble
is smoother, their is more apparent depth, and the bass seems to be a little
more dimensional than on CD.
* the SACD sounds much more like live music...in the sense that there is a
complete freedom from "mechanical" and high frequencies seem completely
natural and "float" in space very much like the real thing. In addition,
their is a greater apparent sense of dynamics and dimensionality,
particularly in the bass.
I've also had a chance to compare the SACD of Verdi's Requiem (Philadelphia
Orchestra) to a 7.5ips prerecorded tape from the '60's (fourth generation by
my estimation). They both obviously derive from the same source and sound
very much the same...with that same effortless floating quality that live
music has. The SACD is actually more transparent (as it should be if they
went back to the master tape) while the pre-recorded tape has slightly
enhanced voices, IMO a result of somewhat built up harmonic distortion from
the tape copies.
IMO opinion and in the opinion of many others, SACD sounds "more real"
despite whatever theoretical limitations it might have, versus DVD-A. At
least as implemented in reasonably priced low-end high-end front-end
equipment.
(end quote)
*THAT* is how the cleaner, more accurate transient response of DSD (SACD)
shows up even against the already excellent hi-rez 96/24 PCM and against
excellent quality pre-recorded tape Against CD's the contrast is even
greater. As I concluded later in another thread:
(quote in response to Chung)
I'm not sure what your point is here. My issues have always largely been
with the high-end of the CD standard. And secondarily with CD's tendency to
have less depth and a 'flatter' bass and lower midrange dimensionality.
SACD solves these problems wonderfully. So does DVD-A. Both assuming
equipment that allows the advantage to come through, of course.
(end quote)
Arny's POV is increasingly becoming a minority POV among audio
professionals, who increasingly embrace the idea that DSD is an audibly (but
not commercially) superior means of recording and archiving sound. It's
clean, accurate transient behavior and universality, both due to its one-bit
nature, is the reason.