Best recording of Tchaikovsky's 6th?

[postgrungejunky]

Hi! Can anyone recommend a "definitive" hi-res release of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony? This one always gets overshadowed by 1812! From looking around on the web, I found highfidelityreview.com's review:
http://www.highfidelityreview.com/reviews/review.asp?reviewnumber=14394207

for this release. Unfortunately, the 5.1 program is in 44.1kHz/16-bit MLP. Thats the resolution of redbook! Can someone recommend some better fidelity/performance/interpretations? Thanks! I love this symphony to death and I can't wait to hear it in glorious mlp or dsd.

 

[WmAx]

Hi! Can anyone recommend a "definitive" hi-res release of Tchaikovsky's 6th symphony? This one always gets overshadowed by 1812! From looking around on the web, I found highfidelityreview.com's review:
http://www.highfidelityreview.com/reviews/review.asp?reviewnumber=14394207

for this release. Unfortunately, the 5.1 program is in 44.1kHz/16-bit MLP. Thats the resolution of redbook! Can someone recommend some better fidelity/performance/interpretations? Thanks! I love this symphony to death and I can't wait to hear it in glorious mlp or dsd.

I have not used the 5.1 program, but so far as the 2 channel version, I consider it a superlative performance and sound quality combination.

There is nothing wrong with 44.1/16 PCM for playback purposes. That is transparent to human ears for the purposes of musical reproduction according to established perceptual research.

If you are worred about it 44.1/16 being insufficient because of personal experiences, please note that the high-resolution versions may not be produced from the same master as the redbook version. In fact, this has been shows to be the case on some releases when the matter was investigated(you can find analysis of some albums on this site in the technical archive). In at least one case Telarc purposely changed the master of one of their SACDs vs. CD layer(Tierney Sutton, Dancing In The Dark) according to the admission of the head recording engineer at Telarc. Another factor is level-matching and mental biasing(which is subconscious, and can not be bypassed in a sighted listening test).


If you are worred about it 44.1/16 being insufficientt because of so-called expert claims, then please refer to their citations supporting that a wider bandwidth and SNR are needed -- do they provide references to scientifically valid, conclusive studies? Or do they refer to speculative(at best) whitepapers and poorly produced listening tests? Do they cite anything? I will cite studies that were carefully produced in labratory settings, that fail to demonstrate the requirement for anything exceeding 44.1kHz/16 bit digital audio: [1][2][3][4]. I will pre-emptively cite[5] the *only* peer-reviewed test that ever demonstrated any evidence of detection of supersonic bandwidth; but note this study was not a valid listening test(though it did have some small portion of listening test involved, but these tests were not sufficiently documented in the paper to carry any weight), but instead a brainwave activity study(so it is not specifically about being able to detect supersonic information on a level that one will realize, but instead showing detection via brainwaves). In a slightly more intensive listening test performed by NHK Labs[3] in direct response to the implication that supersonic information was audible as suggested in [5], NHK could not replicate the claims of audibility made by [5] in labratory listening tests. It should be noted that the statistical significance of the NHK labs test was rather low(due to insufficient number of trials per sample), even though the technical aspects and methodology was otherwise excellent. But this test was extensive in comparison to the barely mentioned listening test mentioned in [5].

-Chris

Footnotes

[1]Which Bandwidth Is Necessary for Optimal Sound Transmission?
G. PLENGE, H. JAKUBOWSKI, AND P. SCHONE
JAES, Volume 28 Number 3 pp. 114-119; March 1980

[2]Signal-to-Noise Ratio Requirement for Digital Transmission Systems
Spikofski, Gerhard
AES Preprint: 2196

[3]Perceptual Discrimination between Musical Sounds with and without Very High Frequency Components
AES Preprint: 5876
Toshiyuki Nishiguchi, Kimio Hamasaki, Masakazu Iwaki, and Akio Ando

[4]Perception of Phase Distortion in Anti-Alias Filters
D. Preis and P. J. Bloom
J. Audio Engineering Society, vol 32, number 11, p842, November 1984

[5]Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect
Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda, Yoshiharu Yonekura, Yo****aka Fuwamoto, Norie Kawai, Tadao Maekawa, Satoshi Nakamura, Hidenao Fukuyama, and Hiroshi Shibasaki
The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 83 No. 6 June 2000, pp. 3548-3558

 

[postgrungejunky]

WmAx, I think I understand what you're trying to say. Thanks for the thoroughness. I'm not a true "audiophile" I'm just new to hi-resolution audio and would like to take advantage of the new format. But like you say, I suppose 44/16 is all thats needed for this recording to sound good. I'll look into it. Thanks!

 

[Pat D]

I have not used the 5.1 program, but so far as the 2 channel version, I consider it a superlative performance and sound quality combination.

There is nothing wrong with 44.1/16 PCM for playback purposes. That is transparent to human ears for the purposes of musical reproduction according to established perceptual research.

If you are worred about it 44.1/16 being insufficient because of personal experiences, please note that the high-resolution versions may not be produced from the same master as the redbook version. In fact, this has been shows to be the case on some releases when the matter was investigated(you can find analysis of some albums on this site in the technical archive). In at least one case Telarc purposely changed the master of one of their SACDs vs. CD layer(Tierney Sutton, Dancing In The Dark) according to the admission of the head recording engineer at Telarc. Another factor is level-matching and mental biasing(which is subconscious, and can not be bypassed in a sighted listening test).


If you are worred about it 44.1/16 being insufficientt because of so-called expert claims, then please refer to their citations supporting that a wider bandwidth and SNR are needed -- do they provide references to scientifically valid, conclusive studies? Or do they refer to speculative(at best) whitepapers and poorly produced listening tests? Do they cite anything? I will cite studies that were carefully produced in labratory settings, that fail to demonstrate the requirement for anything exceeding 44.1kHz/16 bit digital audio: [1][2][3][4]. I will pre-emptively cite[5] the *only* peer-reviewed test that ever demonstrated any evidence of detection of supersonic bandwidth; but note this study was not a valid listening test(though it did have some small portion of listening test involved, but these tests were not sufficiently documented in the paper to carry any weight), but instead a brainwave activity study(so it is not specifically about being able to detect supersonic information on a level that one will realize, but instead showing detection via brainwaves). In a slightly more intensive listening test performed by NHK Labs[3] in direct response to the implication that supersonic information was audible as suggested in [5], NHK could not replicate the claims of audibility made by [5] in labratory listening tests. It should be noted that the statistical significance of the NHK labs test was rather low(due to insufficient number of trials per sample), even though the technical aspects and methodology was otherwise excellent. But this test was extensive in comparison to the barely mentioned listening test mentioned in [5].

-Chris

Footnotes

[1]Which Bandwidth Is Necessary for Optimal Sound Transmission?
G. PLENGE, H. JAKUBOWSKI, AND P. SCHONE
JAES, Volume 28 Number 3 pp. 114-119; March 1980

[2]Signal-to-Noise Ratio Requirement for Digital Transmission Systems
Spikofski, Gerhard
AES Preprint: 2196

[3]Perceptual Discrimination between Musical Sounds with and without Very High Frequency Components
AES Preprint: 5876
Toshiyuki Nishiguchi, Kimio Hamasaki, Masakazu Iwaki, and Akio Ando

[4]Perception of Phase Distortion in Anti-Alias Filters
D. Preis and P. J. Bloom
J. Audio Engineering Society, vol 32, number 11, p842, November 1984

[5]Inaudible High-Frequency Sounds Affect Brain Activity: Hypersonic Effect
Tsutomu Oohashi, Emi Nishina, Manabu Honda, Yoshiharu Yonekura, Yo****aka Fuwamoto, Norie Kawai, Tadao Maekawa, Satoshi Nakamura, Hidenao Fukuyama, and Hiroshi Shibasaki
The Journal of Neurophysiology Vol. 83 No. 6 June 2000, pp. 3548-3558

Ultrasonic hearing has apparently not been proven. Kaoru and Shogu have shown that ultrasonic components can intermodulate with signals in the audible range and produce intermodulation products in the audible range. And that seems to have been what was heard in the DBTs. When the ultrasonic components were sent to separate drivers, intermodulation was avoided, and the DBTs no longer showed that the listeners could detect the presence of ultrasonic components.

Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper 5401, presented at the 110th Convention, 2001 May 12-15, Amsterdam, The Netherlands:

"Detection threshold for tones above 22 kHz," by Ashihara Kaoru and Kiryu Shogo, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.

Mtrycrafts has a copy.

 

[WmAx]

Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper 5401, presented at the 110th Convention, 2001 May 12-15, Amsterdam, The Netherlands:

"Detection threshold for tones above 22 kHz," by Ashihara Kaoru and Kiryu Shogo, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology 1-1-4 Umezono Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8568, Japan.

Mtrycrafts has a copy.

I am familar with this research. I did refer to the Oohashi paper(I assume this is why you mentioned the Kaoru and Shogo paper), but I specifically qualified the scope of it's applicability.

-Chris