80 replies to this topic

[AcuraTLSQ]

Hello!

It is official. MECA will start using the Eric Bibb track & Janis Ian track starting with Spring Break Nationals in Daytona Florida next month as additional tracks to the Chesky CD.

Are either of these the best I have ever heard, no. Will they work for our purpose, yes. I suggest everyone add Shine On to their listening rotation regardless of origin.

Very interesting reading indeed! Carry on.

Kirk

[Riley.]

itunes FTW!

[impure]

Today i was fortunate enough to pick up a Original Master Recording of pink floyd dark side of the moon, the disc is 24 carrat gold plated, Ultra disc II made by Mobile fidelity sound lab. I read the inner jacket and the statement made interested me and i thought " if only this still happened".

i quote from the inner jacket.
" In any digital recording medium there is an absolute limit to the maximum level that can be encoded. Any peak exceeding that level results in distortion. In the analog to digital conversion process the levels MUST be set so that the highest peak in the programme is near to, but does not exceed the maximum allowable level.

In a programme with a wide dynamic range, the peaks are higher with respect to the average level, than in one with a lesser dynamic range, Therefore, the average level of a programme with a wide dynamic range must be lower than that of a programme with a narrow dynamic range, in order to avoid distortion.

The next is the bit i find ace lol.

Limiting the peaks, compressing the overall signal, or allowing the highest peaks to distort, are methods of increasing the average programme levels on a cd of music with a wide dynamic range. None of these methods are acceptable! We believe that the best sonic quality is achieved by encoding material at the required lower level.

I know its a long read but i found it a good read and very relevant to pulse r statement, if i have interpreted it wrong shoot me down lol

[Damo95]

interesting!

[Drifte.au]

Just confirms whats already (convincingly) been posted.

As the great samuel said:

" Well allow me to retort "

[br85]

I am still fairly green when it comes to this sort of thing, but it does seem that is SACD was the standard instead of redbook CD, we wouldn't at all be having this issue. I know there are a lot of cool things about SACD, but I don't care too much for 5.1 in my car (which is where I listen to most of my music). Not only does SACD have the equivalent of a PCM 20 bit, 192kHz encode (which means we can hear a 120dB dynamic range!!! and almost 100Hz signals would be reproduced if any speakers could put it out!!!) but check THIS out.

From wikipedia:

"Conversely, the properties of DSD and the authoring process tend to discourage the kind of extreme compression and unpleasant-sounding hard digital clipping often found on PCM recordings. Unlike CD, which sets the 0 dB level right at the theoretical PCM signal limit, and doesn't take into account oversampling, SACD sets the 0 dB level at 6 dB below the theoretical full-scale DSD signal, and prohibits peaks above +3 dB. DSD processing is less amenable to simple clipping to meet these limits, forcing more care to be taken during mastering. The extra headroom also eases the job of DACs in playback equipment, which often suffer overload distortion when fed the full-scale PCM common on heavily-compressed CDs. Thus, improved quality may result from simply preventing the kinds of poor mastering often found on PCM, rather than from any fundamental audible difference between DSD and PCM; PCM mastered several dB lower would also obtain the same benefit."

Basically, with SACD, if you're an engineer, you shouldn't hit +3dB (equivalent to -3dB on CD's) at all, and even if you do, you're still 3dB away from the maximum signal level the DSD signal can carry! What a perfect world that would be. We should all demand that every high end HU manufacturer bring out an SACD HU with no ability to play anything lower quality than that found on redbook CD's (i.e. have no mp3/bluetooth playback etc.) I would buy one in a heartbeat if the DAC's were good.

Edited by br85, 29 February 2008 - 12:52 AM.