SACD vs DVD AUDIO

Hi,

I am new to this board and this is my first post,I apologize if this has been gone over before.

I was at the store today to pick up John Hiatt Bring the Family SACD and saw that is just came out on DVD-AUDIO.

Do you all think that one format sound better then the other? When you have a choice which format do you buy on the few that you can get both SACD or DVD AUDIO

My player can handle both formats,The DVD-AUDIO come with videos,But I rather have the best sound.

I did not get either,Just confused...I did buy John Coltarne Soultrane on SACD..It is AWESOME.

Thanks,

Seth

 

Welcome to the forum, but this subject is sort of taboo. It has been gone over many times, and is frowned upon by now.

 

Dude, do you know what you're doing??
You're starting a format war-thread...

I don't even know how to address the question lol.

I prefer sacd but that's me.

Maybe a good question would be which format do you prefer: cd or well-kept vinyl?
sacd has vinyl qualities to it and dvd-a has cd qualities to it.

Let the multi-page thread begin!

 

Both sound great! Don't let the naysayers tell you different.

The DVD-A will have a bit more info besides music, but if all you do is listen, either will sound wonderful.

 

Yup!

Both are winners in my book, each with thier own advantages............

 

Have to say that I like both equally well. However, given that my Marantz Universal player is an outstanding DVD-A player and SACD on it is just "Very Good", I opt for DVD-A when given the choice. You should read reviews on your player and listen yourself.

 

I believe that 95% of the people who buy that same disc in the two different formats will have a very hard time telling them apart. That is, if they hear the hi-res version of the DVD-A and not the Dolby Digital or DTS layer of the same programme.

BTW, you can play the SACD in your portables or in the car - albeit in stereo and at 16k 44.1.
No pictures or video, though!

 

The mastering is more important than the format. Both formats can sound excellent. There really aren't hardly any titles to truly compare the two formats, anyway...you really need the same album, mastered by the same person at the same time. A recording sourced directly from analog tapes would be great...but the few titles that exist on both formats are typically sourced from low res PCM anyway.

 

The industry simply confuses consumers by using two formats for essentially the same market. And as I've been saying all along, if the majors got behind one or the other in a semi-serious way instead of mucking around with both, guys like Seth would be coming home with product instead of confusion.

And the confusion has an insidious effect on discussion forums like this. For example, I can't state a preference and back it up with valid reasons or I'll end up reprimanded by gorts. Go figure.

 

Given the problem that both formats have in establishing themselves on the market, the discussion is pretty theoretical, even when there are now a couple of Universal titles available in both formats.

If they are hybrid, SACDs have the big advantage of being compatible with CD players, whereas current DVD-As can only be played in DVD players.

 

The only thing I can add to Michael's post here is that the equipment involved would both (SACDP & DVD-AP) have to be proven to be completely neutral without any coloration of the sound in any way. This would definitely involve the higher end individual players.

 

Maybe if they change it to HD audio, Seth's confusion will clear up

Sorry...I couldn't resist.

 

Seth, I have SACD's that sound like garbage, and I have DVD-A's that sound like garbage.....and of course, the opposite for either format. It all comes down to how it was recorded and mastered. For me, it comes down to price at times.....Tommy was $42CND for the SACD, $28CND for the DVD-A.....easy decision!

The only instance where I preferred one over the other was Ryan Adams' Gold. It's a 4.0 mix, no sub. The SACD allowed me to set all speakers to small and get some bass out of the sub, the DVD-A didn't let me do that. But this was more of a bass management issue rather than a fidelity issue.

 

Yeah, the sound issue isn't a the thing. It's a matter of what you consider convenient.

I personally am done with DVD-A because portability is important to me and I'm no longer willing to buy multiple copies of an album (I also refuse to get single-layer SACDs). I also don't care about video or any such thing.

 

A lot of us over the years have gone full into both formats. Yes, the mastering is where it's at.

I *like* the idea of SACD over DVD-A for reasons that you don't have to navigate menus on a TV to get what you want, but there are DVD-A's I won't ever give up.

Hi-Rez is a lot of fun. Second passion next to vinyl, for me. I think most of us has listened to much of both formats to not start a war. We like what we like, et al.

 

Seth, if you think Soultrane sounds awesome on the SACD, you should hear Steve's version on DCC Compact Classics. Stunning I personally like it a lot better than the SACD.

 

Both are great formats but I prefer SACD over DVDA.

The higher sampling rate can have just as much and sometimes more impact than mastering in my opinion (particularly on specialty labels where the mastering is generally good), but having both is a home run.

 

Let's just hope one or both are around in a few years.

 

So you are saying that format is more important than mastering...as long as the mastering is good.

 

Stop the presses...........

 

I tend to favor SACD too. However, I do own some DVD-A CDs. I like to play CDs in the car, so I will always grab a Hybrid SACD over a DVD-A if one is available.

 

I saw an interesting thing one time on the net where someone took
a test signal generator and an oscilloscope and fed it into
various convertors (hi-bit rate PCM and DSD) and then looked
back at the signal on the scope.

His signal of choice was a 20 Khz square wave. Not very
musical - but certainly a good torture test signal.

When he fed the 20 Khz square wave into a CD style convertor
(44.1 Khz, 16 bit), the end wave looked like a 20 Khz sine
wave... yep - that's what theory predicts - but it was still
kind of wierd to see the square wave mangled into a sine
wave...

When he fed the 20 Khz square wave into a 96 Khz, 24 bit
convertor, he got something that looked sort of square,
but it was still very sine wavey... it's the sort of picture
most electrical engineering students have seen in a
college textbook. Not very square - but definetly on
the way to becoming square...

When he fed the 20 Khz square wave into a 192 Khz, 24 bit
convertor, the thing FINALLY looked almost like the original
square wave... just a small amount of ringing on the corners.
It was very close to the orignal square wave...

When he fed the 20 Khz square ave into a DSD convertor,
he got something I found very interesting to look at it. The
resultant wave was almost identical to the one previous
(192 Khz, 24 bit) but it had a lot of what I would describe
as "fuzz" on the wave. Clearly this is very high frequency
noise. I believe this is normal for DSD. I believe this
is a result of "noise shaping" - which the literature says
comes from an attempt to shift noise into the higher
frequencies... what I felt looked like "fuzz" was clearly
just that...


So - using this approach - it would be quite easy to rank
the four types of coding.

Best: 192 Khz, 24 bit
Next Best: DSD
3rd Best: 96 Khz, 24 bit
4th Best: 44.1 Khz, 16 bit

And if I had to group these - I say that the top two are
VERY CLOSE - and the bottom one (CD style PCM) is
clearly the worst.

Where it now gets confusing is as follows:

DVD-A doesn't support 192 Khz, 24 bit for multichannel.

That rate is purely for stereo!


So there does appear to be a big theoretical edge
for sacd for multichannel.

BUT

The reality is that 96 Khz, 24 bit is apparently
above the amount that a human ear can hear !!
I'd be very surprised if you could find someone who
can tell the difference between an equivalent
sacd and its cousin dvd-a in a double blind test.


I'd say that both are damn good

My only real complaint with dvd-a is I have to be
patient and wait till I get home before I play it.

My only real complaint with sacd is sometimes
the equivalent dvd-a has video on it. For example,
I'd be hard pressed to find a reason to purchase
Beck's "Sea Change" on sacd now that the dvd-a
is available - with SIX - VERY interesting videos
on it... and a cool animated "screen saver" you
can watch (if you so desire) while the music is
playing...


I own approx 75 sacds - and approx 25 dvd-a's.

But that's not a reflection of any preference
in technology. I enjoy both.

I am probably rooting for sacd to win the
format war... but that's because I think
sacd has a pricing advantage. In my opinion,
retailers are much more likely to think of dvd-a
as a premium product (with a higher price
tag). In contrast, sacd has the potential to be
priced at levels equal to cd.

The real thing I'm rooting for is BOTH formats
to succeed and BOTH formats to be priced
competively.

If the CD format died tommorow,
I wouldn't shed a single tear. It was invented
when "pong" was considered a hi-tech video game.

DVD-A and SACD are like the xbox or PS-2 of
audio And I wish CDs would disappear
from shelves as quickly as dreamcast
did (which wasnt too bad of a system)


And the reality is this - XBOX and PS-2 are
killing the music bizness. Because that's
where kids are spending their money.

Albums are for all farts - who still use
the term "album"

 

And i think a lot of the problem with recorded sound formats is just what your post was all about....these folks are "looking at sine waves" and making decisions based on THAT instead of LISTENING. If the people making decisions LISTENED, maybe we would have a High Fidelity ANALOG disk of some kind, like a Laserdisk but smaller, that would gives us 100% analog reproduction. Just because its a disk doesnt mean is HAS to be digital.

 

I am saying if the mastering is decent, you still get a nice step up with more sampling. Nothing can take away from the fact you are recording more original information...

The danger on this forum is that we have seen and discussed Steve's superb work over and over, which is a good thing, but may be shading our perspective on the correspondingly high value of better sampling rates.

When I was at Chesky Records, we switched to 96khz sampling and it was a huge improvement. Of course such audiophile labels generally have superb, minimalist mastering processes so that was not really an issue (my friend did the mastering sometimes with me listening or at the helm).

Mastering is also limited by the original recording. Some recordings are so bad, that even Steve might only be able to get mediocre sound. My experience is that if there is an original analog tape found, then results can be good.

So I would say that sampling rate (either hirez format) is just as important as mastering. You could find examples where mastering was more important and examples where sampling rate was more important.

You get both right, however, and expect absolute magic.

 

This quickly gets into a technical format war discussion. I am weary of these arguments but I often point out that this refers to Craig's presentation linked to by SMR. Craig is a noted consultant for Warner, the inventor of DVDA so there is bias there.

My experience is that I cannot hear the ultrasonic noise at all nor can many engineers like Bob Ludwig. DSD pushes this noise out into the inaudible ranges.

There is another which shows the opposite view:

http://www.merging.com/

Click on DSD in left column and note how much closer in this example that DSD comes to the analog signal versus 24/192. By the way, there are literally only a handful of DVDAs recorded at this fast a rate.

This company sells both PCM and DSD based equipment as well.

The bottom line of all these discussions is that there are good people on both sides of the debate. I do personally believe that DSD has an advantage because ADC and DAC PCM chips are very difficult to implement and the DSD signal path is inherently simpler and shorter. I have on some occasions been able to hear pure DSD recordings and DVDA recordings in a studio environment and compare to the live event. Every time I felt DSD sounded better.

Hopefully universal players will stay around and we will have both. You can say with confidence that Super Audio has captured the hearts of most audiophiles so far...