Best audio format

[adam71]

Sound !!!

Why do you guys continue to argue this fact about CD having better resolution when even the guys that like vinyl have agreed with you on this??

In musical enjoyment it is the "END RESULT" that matters most. If all CDs were recorded using the full potential of the medium this would NEVER have been a discussion or debate. I'll admit some vinyl lovers are just that, "vinyl lovers". No matter how good a CD is done they still prefer the sound of vinyl. Then there are guys that were raised up in the dawn of the digital age (me for instance) when CDs were becoming the norm. I thought CDs were the end all be all format for music and "techically" they were. But you can't hear technicall specs and potentials. You hear the music and how well it is being reproduced. I then found vinyl and love it. My vinyl collection is tiny compared to my CD collection but it's slowly and steadily growing.

In short, it doesn't matter what CD is capable of or what it's potential is. What matters is the END RESULT. And what the individual enjoying the music prefers.

 

[Joe Schmoe]

What is ridiculous is the idea that a better-sounding master of a given recording should exist in a different format. The standard should be to start with the best-sounding master possible, and release that in all formats!

 

[adam71]

What is ridiculous is the idea that a better-sounding master of a given recording should exist in a different format. The standard should be to start with the best-sounding master possible, and release that in all formats!

Agreed. And without BS over compression.

 

[TLS Guy]

Perspective using a recording engineers hat.

I will have one last try, putting this issue in perspective, wearing my senior citizens hat and recording engineers hat.

My first phonograph had a handle to wind the spring and had no electronics. I graduated to an electric machine and got hooked. I converted it to play LPs and added an external speaker. From there the addiction went from bad to worse.

In the LP era before noise reduction was added to tape recorders, the LP did a reasonable job of producing a pretty accurate facsimile of the master tape. However even then there was always the goal of reading a disc with light.
I do remember at the audio fair held each Spring in the Russell Hotel Holborn that Klipsch managed to fill their demo rooms playing first generation copies of master tapes that they seemed to have access to. They were on a different level altogether.

In the early 70s I got interested in making recordings. I had a small company that produced commercial recordings. After the introduction of noise reduction, there was there was the continual challenge of trying to squeeze the proverbial quart into the pint pot. It was a huge challenge working with skilled mastering engineers to get an acceptable product in the hands of the consumer.

After the introduction of the CD it was a straightforward process to get into the consumers hands an exact audio copy of the masters.

If you download this CD, which is a master from analog tapes, http://www.drmarksays.com/ you will have to agree that this could not be reproduced like this from any LP, no matter how many thousands of dollars the turntable cost.

Now don't get me wrong. The LP can sound very good and it is a high fidelity medium. However even at its best it can not compare with a properly mastered CD. I still have good LPs of my productions, and I can compare them to the CD. No one I think would say any of the LPs are superior to the CDs.

So where does this leave the LP. First of all the maximal quality obtainable from LP does not justify the huge sums paid for these high end over engineered turntables. I'm totally unimpressed with these creations sporting cartridges in the thousands of dollars. To me most of them are hard edged and over wrought.

Now I and others really enjoy our LP collections. Some of us have been lucky enough to still have our turntables we have had over most of our lifetimes. The pleasure that comes from using the best equipment made during the hey day of the LP is great. In particular the quality of the engineering of my classic Garrard 301 turntables and SME arms is a great pleasure. Especially as they say "Made in England". Yes we could make real quality products in the west at reasonable cost once, and need to again.

http://mdcarter.smugmug.com/gallery/2424008#127077056

So in my view the reasons for owning good LP equipment are to play and or archive your existing collection. If you want certain material that never has or will be transferred to CD. If you want to have the pleasure of having and using fine equipment of what is now a bygone age.

 

[dorokusai]

I'm going to say the best I've heard has been R2R media on a portable Stellavox, a couple years ago. I've never heard tape media sound so good and sound so much better than what I was used to.

It's not something I want to invest in, but I was happy to experience it. A nice benchmark for the brain.

Mark
Polk Audio CS

 

[davidtwotrees]

So, this thread has got me interested in some of my older music. I pulled out all my Todd Rundgren discs, the bulk of which were bought in the late eighties. The recordings were all excellent. The drums, cymbals, and high hats were all clear and present. The vocals seemed to float between the two speakers.
But then Mr. Rundgren was a stickler for good recording practices. His song called "Intro", which he termed "sounds of the studio" lasted just over a minute and demonstrated about ten different sounds that were a product of bad recording......

 

[Johnd]

What is ridiculous is the idea that a better-sounding master of a given recording should exist in a different format. The standard should be to start with the best-sounding master possible, and release that in all formats!

Ahhhh. But at what cost? Therein lies the rub. Optimal mastering in different formats are different things, and the ultimate question to the producer is what will they buy (the most of...or enough of for us to turn a profit)?

 

[Johnd]

So, this thread has got me interested in some of my older music. I pulled out all my Todd Rundgren discs, the bulk of which were bought in the late eighties. The recordings were all excellent. The drums, cymbals, and high hats were all clear and present. The vocals seemed to float between the two speakers.
But then Mr. Rundgren was a stickler for good recording practices. His song called "Intro", which he termed "sounds of the studio" lasted just over a minute and demonstrated about ten different sounds that were a product of bad recording......

I have a lot of that "backgound" noise on my quite rare, very old Hendrix Nine To The Universe album... In this case, I wouldn't change it for a thing.

 

[krabapple]

Please read the previous posts in this thread. SACD is not a PCM based system and a PCM decoder will not recognize it. It requires a DSP decoder. This is a very different animal. The problem is cheaper gear fakes it. To play a SCAD properly you need a player that has good DSP decoding and use the multichannel analog out to the Multichannel in. Generally this means no bass management and no channel level control, it is pass through. Also for classical SACDs there will be no sub out. You have to go to a lot of trouble to play an SACD properly.

He's not asking a PCM decoder to read an SACD. He's asking an SACD player (which of course also plays CDs) to read an SACD -- specifically, the DSD (not 'DSP') layer of the SACD. And it's not rocket science. To get te player to access the DSD layer automatically, he needs to find whatever control on his Denon sets the 'default' behavior for hybrid SACD discs, and set it to DSD. And multichannel analog out is not necessary these days for playing SACDs, we now can send DSD via HDMI (either natively, with HDMI 1.2, or converted to hi-rez PCM first, via HDMI 1.1). THis allows for digital bass management and delay in the AVR (where it belongs). Prior to HDMI, firewire/ilink and propriety stuff like Denonlink were also an option for digital transfer. And there can indeed be LFE ('sub out') for a classical SACD, if it has been mixed in X.1 (versus X.0).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_signal_processing

There seems massive misunderstanding in these forums about what SACD actually is and how to correctly handle it. I doubt many posting on these forums are hearing the SACD decoded by DSP as intended.

The massive misunderstanding is yours. DSP, as commonly meant, can be applied to DSD sources, but is not necessary. DSP means things like bass management, digital delay, room correction, phase control, hall emulation, surround synthesis, ambience recovery. In fact, applying DSP to SACD usually requires converting DSD to PCM first, because of the extraordinarily high sample rates (and this, computational load) involved in DSD.

 

[krabapple]

I think this whole issue we are dealing with is related to information contained in this thread.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=37634

I think if a player truly outputs from a DSP decoder, that's the way the signals will appear.

You are confusing 'DSP' and 'DSD'. There is no such thing as a 'DSP decoder'.

 

[krabapple]

You can't hear compression unless it is overdone to the point that the compressor starts pumping. That is pretty rare in my experience. You also can't really compare the compression to something unless you heard the live performance. So I would take the compression hearing thing will a little salt.

However, virtually every recording is compressed a little at recording time and more during the mastering. The reason is that most playback systems can't reproduce the available dynamic range without losing the quiet parts in the noise and loud parts to distortion or quantization errors. Rock recordings don't need and don't get much compression because there isn't much dynamic range. Classical orchestral recordings need and get more because the dynamic range can exceed 100 db. and very few recordings will provide that kind of range.

The amount of compression in a modern digital recording is quite a bit less than with an analog recording to be mastered to vinyl. No question about that.

Big question about that. It's true that signals were often compressed on LP, but you couldn't achieve the levels of compression available (and often used) today, on LPs back. Today's 'hot' CDs are MUCH hotter than LPs were...though 45s were another story.

And the rise in RMS level that accompanies modern compression practices is very often audible in a blind ABX, if the recording is compared to an pre-compression version.