John Marks of Stereophile attacked for article on Norah Jones SACD. Defends himself.

Recall that the November issue of Stereophile has an article by John Marks wherein he states that the stereo SACD track on Norah Jones Come Away With Me was prepared from the 16/44.1 PCM master used to produce the CD. Marks used his own comparisons of the CD and SACD tracks and comments from Blue Note as the basis of his article. John Atkinson of Stereophile supported Marks' assertions by analyzing data from the CD and SACD. Marks came under fire on another forum for his assertions, among other things, and is now firing back. Read this:

http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/t.pl?f=hirez&m=191931

 

I'd just like to know who the sources were. Managers? PR hacks? Engineers who actually mastered the SACD? You can still hint at this in journalism without naming names.

 

I was thinking this too. I can understand why Marks would not reveal his sources, but he could lend some credence to his assertions by providing the roles of the individuals involved.

 

(After reading the thread on AA)

Man, and I thought we were anal around here...

 

Wow! One black mark for the SACD boys. One thing, there is no place (that I ever remember seeing) that states the sampling rate or source on an SACD. How does the buyer know just what they are getting? Is it implied, or is it a crap shoot?

 

I think it's a good thing that an industry person is speaking up about this. Other people of some prominence when audio BS is foisted upon us should do so as well, instead of indifference or praise (ex. Paul Seydor in TAS re the Norberg Sinatra CD's, and whoever that was in Stereophile with Let It Be...Naked).

 

Rudy, you don't trust anyone. Marks is an honourable man.

 

AA, home of the "fan boys". When you get attacked over there you would expect the "Mod" to stop the attacks....no, he joins in. It is funny to see members of the AA over here on SH. Most of them would be banned if they posted the same posts here. Thank God for SH fourm!!!!

 

They are both excellent forums, each in their own way.

 

But that would effectively reveal his sources to anyone associated with the release. Presumably he has strong reasons to protect these people.

Personally, I would round up the guilty parties and make them listen to white noise (in 16/44.1 of course) for all eternity - but that's just me .

 

Wow, some serious doodoo on that forum. I can't say personally it's my cup of tea. Seems to take the fun out of music.

 

Sense hinting wouldn't provide a specific name, which means you wouldn't be able to verify anything, what would hinting accomplish from a credibility standpoint? Nothing in my opinion. Common sense would tell you that even hinting would make it easy for those in the know, to figure out who was giving information to him and could cause all kinds of problems. You either choose to believe him or you don't. You can do that with the facts and statements he presented in the article.

 

I agree with you. Plus he makes some great sounding recordings too.

 

That's fair. I'd be happy to help in any way possible.

 

Between this, Ashlee Simpson bombing, and the Yankees losing this is a GREAT week.

I'm truly disappointed there seems to be no panic over which other SACD's are sourced from 16-bit PCM.

 

Oh, I'm wondering this myself. Perhaps Stereophile will dedicate a section of each issue to a hi-rez watchdog report. That would be very interesting, though depressing at the same time.

 

That sound is you hitting the nail on the head.

I'm getting to the point where I don't wanna know certain things anymore...

 

Another case in point is that very few of the Sony/Legacy jazz reissues on SACD are direct analog-to-DSD transfers. Almost all of them are, in fact, sourced from the same 20- or 24-bit/48kHz or 88.2kHz SBM PCM digital transfers used in the 1996-2003 remastered CDs. So, why weren't some of those SACDs criticized?

 

Where did you read this? If you are correct, then those SACDs should be criticized. I have a number of these jazz SACDs, and I think they sound excellent. However, maybe they aren't as good as they could be. I had always thought that Sony went analog to DSD and then downconverted the DSD masters to 16/44.1 for the CDs. Sony originally developed DSD for archival purposes, so I assumed that they made DSD masters of the jazz titles first. Furthermore, I thought Sony's SBM (Super-Bit Mapping) process had a DSD step in the mastering chain.

 

Okay, if ProTools or any audio editing program is used in the transferring process, as is the case with many of those titles, then PCM is involved. And what that does is convert analog to PCM first, then PCM to DSD.

SBM is, in fact, a PCM-based noise-shaping alogarithm.

Oh, by the way, those Legacy jazz titles in question are sourced from those PCM masters that were prepared before any downconversion to Redbook CD was made.

 

I wasn't aware that ProTools was used either. Thanks for the info. As I said, I like the jazz SACDs from Sony that I have. It seems like they could have made them better, though. In time, I fear we will find many instances where the major record labels did not master their SACDs as they should have. It's not like we haven't been through this before. The big labels have been using nth-generation tapes as sources for CD releases for years. They just don't learn from their mistakes...or they just don't care.

 

If SACD/DSD was originally developed as Sony's means of archiving their own aging tape catalogs, seems like those jazz titles they actually own would be done from the original analog master tapes, would it not?

 

That's what I was saying. Why would Sony bother making PCM masters from the analog tapes, even hi-rez PCM masters?