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In the Forum: Didital Things
In the Thread: DVD for pop, SACD for classics
Post Subject: SACD, DVD-A, CD - all the same if a disk involved.Posted by Romy the Cat on: 2/14/2008

The product range is unfortunately growing. I have seen quite a few recordings that I was interested but they were recorded in SACD and therefore were compromised by the format. I would not give a lot of credit to association between format and the musical genre – if some recording labels go with one or other format then it has very little to do with consideration  of actual sonic result but it is driver by other, mostly business, factors.

Here is my very brief observation of formats. There are well documented expert analyses about the SACD vs. DVD with measurements, knowledge and evidences – my observation is nothing like that. My observation is just a user experience and reflects what I personally have witnessed.

SACD – very bad format. The original, phenomenally sounding (I heard it), brilliantly conceptualized, 4-bit DSD conceived by Ed Meitner in 90s was trashed out and replaced by a cheap commercial adaptation of 1-bit SACD that is just “not enough” for good sound. There are no good sounding SACD players, not good SACD DACs, no good SACD recorders - the entire SACD world is a huge unfortunate lead astray. The PCM 16/44 layer that is typically released on the SACD disks usually is horrible.

DVD-A - strangely bad format. Any single DVD-A disk I head sounded wrong – I have no idea why. If I have a good 24/94 files and put in DVD-A disk then the quality of sound go down to drain.

CD – very bad format. 16-bit is very low resolution, it is just not enough. Still, the 16/44 file might do relatively acceptable but as soon I convert it into CD files then all quality evaporates.

Some generalizations

1)    The physical disks that require file transformation are evil

2)      Sampling rate or resolution conversion are evil

3)      Any DSP activation is evil

4)      The raw files (regardless of format) should be juts copied to disks, distributed and then just played as raw files.

The subject of change the quality of sound after a raw file was copied and re-saved is under investigation.

Rgs, Romy the Cat

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