A very fascinating read! SACD gets trashed pretty badly.
http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm
http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm
A very fascinating read! SACD gets trashed pretty badly.
http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm
I remember being shocked when I discovered that SACD wasn't as high resolution as it was marketed as. On my early Pioneer 565AV, DVD-A was much better than SACD, I then got a Denon DVD-A/SACD/CD and the difference was less marked, and on my new Denon Universal player the difference is about the same. Some SACDs seem to be good (good mastering techniques I think), and from an ease of use in the early days they were better than some of the DVD-A disks. But now the Denon automatically finds the highest resolution stream so that advantage has gone. Overall I prefer LPCM (the higher the sampling frequency the better) to SACD. Noise shaping for SACD is complex and if not quite right - the article says it all!!
....and fredblue you were right on an different thread I should have typed 88kHz!
also Duncan, you make the most important point of all (afai'mc'd!) mastering is the key factor.. you can have a brickwalled SA-CD vs. a well-mastered redbook and the CD wipes the floor with the SA-CD! we've seen/heard it many times!
Here's a damning assessment of SA-CD (and glowing praise for DVD-Audio) I stumbled upon the other night..
http://www.iar-80.com/page17.html
An easy read it is not.. but (depressingly) worthwhile!
SA-CD..
- is seriously compromised with treble frequencies above 8khz,
- is a 6-bit format,
- has a quarter of the resolution of redbook CD at certain frequencies,
- has severely reduced dynamic range compared to even redbook CD..
just horribly précis'd soundbites, the whole lot of articles is incredibly detailed.
for those of you on QQ who, like myself, have wondered why their SA-CDs of the same albums & masterings sound inferior to their DVD-A counterparts, now you know why.
please don't shoot the messenger, just I found an amazingly in-depth set of findings online (while looking for something different!) that conclude SA-CD is fundamentally flawed as both an archive & playback Hi-Rez format.
Happy reading! @:
Someone posted a double blind test a while back where many people participating preferred MP3 (can not remember the bitrate) to CD.
Could it be the same with many audiophiles liking SACD... ie there is some "forgiveness" or blunting of resolution that makes it more pleasing to listen to?
1.)
mastering & source are the most important factors in the end product sounding as good as poss far as I'm concerned but I just cannot accept anyone who says that the SA-CD sounds the same (or even "as good as") as the DVD-A of the exact same mastering & source material.. there's a load of Universal albums that got released on both SA-CD & DVD-A, I suggest anyone who is on the fence about it all buys them and checks for themselves (YMMV of course but I'm sticking to my guns on this!).
Amen.Not worth the back and forth arguing. Must move on. This was a discussion for 2001-2-3-4-5.
No one is going to change anyone's mind at this point. No need to convince anyone of anything. Enjoy what you have and be happy you have it.
PEACE!!!!
Amen.Not worth the back and forth arguing. Must move on. This was a discussion for 2001-2-3-4-5.
No one is going to change anyone's mind at this point. No need to convince anyone of anything. Enjoy what you have and be happy you have it.
PEACE!!!!
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