Duke Ellington and John Coltrane - SACD or HDtracks?

Still kind of new to the HD world. When a title is available on both SACD and HDtracks are they one in the same? HDtracks is offering two versions: one at 96khz/24bit and then 192khz/24bit. I'm assuming the 192khz version is a higher quality than the SACD because doesn't SACD only go up to about 100khz maximum?

Either way, if anyone has heard either or both...any tips would be great!

 

Forget the bitrate. The APO hybrid SACD mastered by Kevin Gray gets my vote for best digital mastering, even if I'm just playing the redbook layer. It's warmer and much more emotionally involving than the hi-res, which was probably mastered by a Universal in-house engineer.

 

Thanks!

For my future reference would you know anything about the bitrate for SACD versus HDtracks? SACD does have a limit on the bit rate, no?

 

SACD is DSD, while the redbook layer and HDtracks are both PCM, so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. To further complicate matters, some SACDs were sourced from PCM files, and some hi-res from DSD. I'll leave the bitrate debate to the physics experts. I decide which release sounds best to me based on the mastering.

 

Ugh just when I thought I kinda had a handle on all this stuff. Looks like I'll need to do more educatin'. Thanks for the info!

 

The issue is that when you go higher resolution than redbook CD, there is no consensus as to what kind of sonic benefits you get.

SACD is based on a different (though closely related) digital encoding system than PCM, so it's partially apples to oranges. That said, 96kHz PCM, 192kHz PCM, and DSD64 (which is SACD) all provide frequency extension way above the 20kHz upper limit of human hearing. Similarly all three formats allow for a noise floor well in excess of the dynamic range of pretty much any recording, and often in excess of the electrical noise floor of one's equipment - and certainly in excess of what the human ear can make use of, since to hear the quietest passages in a recording with 120dB (or even 100dB) of dynamic range, you'd have to be in a very quiet room and turn up the volume enough that you'd risk damaging your hearing during the loudest parts.

Honestly, you're never going to hear the difference between a 24/96 and 24/192 version of the same recording/mastering. And if you do hear a difference, it's far more likely to be because of phantom frequencies in the audible range created by intermodulation distortion in your equipment, than from any extra fidelity from the 192 version. Ditto for SACD - if it sounds different and it's the identical mastering, the difference is usually down to the PCM-DSD conversion and/or the aggressive noise-shaping and different digital filtering of SACD compared to PCM.

And to complicate things further, the majority of modern DACs (standalone, and the ones built into disc players, computers, and receivers and amps) use a system called multibit Delta-Sigma Modulation, which is a hybrid of DSD and PCM. So no matter if you're playing a CD, an SACD, or high-res PCM, internally the DAC is converting it to a different digital format before spitting it out in analogue form to the rest of your stereo system.

The bottom line is that mastering is far more determinative of the sonics than the particular high-res format. In fact, mastering is far more determinative even than CD versus any high-res format.

The bad news is that this means everyone argues all the time about this stuff. The good news is that you don't have to worry about it if you don't want to - a good mastering of a well-recorded album is going to sound good on CD, 24/96 PCM, 24/192 PCM and SACD - and all four versions are going to sound far closer to each other than online discussions might lead you to believe.

 

Glad someone finally said this. I care more about the mastering, sound quality than the 24/96 thing. If it doesn't sound good to my ears then I'm not forking over extra for a HD download.

EDIT: But in your opinion, is the regular cd for Duke and Coltrane that came in 2008 good enough?