There are many supporters of PCM against DSD system
I would to know where is possible to find a good (not only technical)
documentation pros and contras PCM and DSD that allow to understand
the truth about hi-rez rumours in digital world.

Thank you.
PostLot

PostLot wrote:

There are many supporters of PCM against DSD system
I would to know where is possible to find a good (not only technical)
documentation pros and contras PCM and DSD that allow to understand
the truth about hi-rez rumors in digital world.

As a practical matter, any of the popular digital formats you mention,
whether classic CD audio, SACD, HDCD, or any of the various DVD-A formats,
vastly outperform the master recordings for all of the commercial recordings
that they play, and vastly exceed the capabilities of virtually all of the
home audio systems they play over. Therefore the sound quality of the
formats has never been an issue, in these recent format wars.

It looks to me like SACD and DVD-A formats were contrived to provide a means
for Japanese manufacturers to continue to make money selling optical
players, given that Chinese players were pricing their standard CD and DVD
players off of the market.

AFAIK, there still aren't any Apex or other Chinese-branded DVD-A or SACD
players on the market, even though Apex once announced a universal format
player. OTOH, the Japanese-branded SACD and DVD-A players no doubt have
considerable Chinese content. So it seems that in some sense, DVD-A and SACD
were cover stories for Japanese protectionism, specifically against Chinese
brands but not necessarily against Chinese manufacturers or workers.

The idea that the SACD and DVD=A formats are all about extended frequency
response and dynamic range is belied by all of the re-releases of recordings
made from legacy masters that have limited dynamic range and frequency
response.

Major financial beneficiaries of the SACD and DVD-A formats were the
mastering engineers who were paid to remaster the same old golden-oldie hit
recordings, some for the third or fourth time.

About a year ago some record company executives were bragging about
remastering their entire catalogs for one of the new formats, but AFAIK
those companies were resold and/or reorganized and some of those same guys a
re now looking for jobs.

These recent audio format wars shouldn't be confused with past format wars
like VHS versus Beta, where both formats vastly underperformed the movies
people watched with them and where there were readily-apparent difference
between them.