Not really. The actual performance and underlying sonic signatures of delta-sigma DAC's are constantly debated in the technical realm. Despite both being "1-bit", PCM and PWM (DSD) are fundamentally different means of digitizing an analog signal. Plenty of places to read about either the math or the audio characteristics, Wikipedia and its references are an easy place to start if you are interested. Another thing to always keep in mind regarding digital audio is that the real world performance of digital audio hardware and software rarely if ever actually matches the underlying mathematics.
Wow I wonder how many here have ever even heard a DTS CD. They sound excellent. Yes, it is lossy compression, but it is certainly not "poor audio quality". The 1.4Mb stream divided into 5.1 channels allows for the equivalent of 256K for each channel. The native format is 20 bit. Have you heard 256Kbit MP3? It sounds pretty good. DTS is a proprietary compression format that's much newer than, and more sophisticated than, and better sounding than MP3. I've got lots of DTS CDs and they sound magnificent.
I own a few and I'm not impressed. Also have some DTS LDs, not sure how they compare to the nitrate of DTS CD, It's more for the rare content than anything. Even then I generally don't listen to them, don't have much patience for lossy audio and much of the material has already been duplicated on other releases in better quality. Now I keep them as an interesting technical example of something strange that was done within the limits of a 16/44.1 audio stream.
Hello, I am also not impressed by the sound quality of DTS CDs, because there is nothing special about it. It just does what it is expected to do: To sound tranparent to the human hearing, just like the standard CD does.
DTS has been around since 1993, I don't think MP3 wasn't invented in 1993. The most similar to MP3 there was in 1993, bcause set some of the basis for MP3, was Digital Compact Cassette's PASC, which I had and didn't sound bad at all.
Especially considering that the bitrate for DCC in MP3 terms (if I remember and have calculated correctly) was a little under 256kbps.
Yeah, but I don't consider them particularly high-fidelity. They're acceptable for portable use. At high enough bitrates they can even sound alright in the home, but I wouldn't rely on them for critical listening. I have. They sound OK, but I always thought there was something a bit artificial about the sound. Like MP3, they ultimately rely on psychoacoustic models to fiddle with the signal, chucking out material their algorithm says wouldn't be audible, anyhow. Not sure I completely buy that argument, and certainly don't buy you can fiddle with the signal that much without leaving behind any audible fingerprints.
How many rock/pop DTS compact discs were even released? I only have one title-Police-Every Breath You Take, one of the variants. It was the only one I remember seeing at retail
There were a bunch. Probably 100 or so. Some sound really spectacular, like "Joshua Judges Ruth" by Lyle Lovett. Some of the re-productions of old Quad mixes like the Paul McCartney disc and Steve Miller's "Fly Like An Eagle" are really fun.
I bought two; Abraxas, which SQ wise is just non specifically awful, and On Air by Alan Parsons Project which is actually pretty respectable. There was, maybe still is, a thriving, um, torrent supported, cottage industry in circulating home made DTS mixes of old quad recordings a few years back in a frankly illegal fashion. I have since bought most of the dubious recordings I acquired via that route. Without experimenting with such silliness, i'd have never heard the quad mix of the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, which is quite remarkable. If they'd release that on SACD or BD I would buy it immediately.
I have the Titanic soundtrack in both DTS CD and SACD, both are sourced from a 44.1 Khz master (don't know the bit depth) and the SACD multichannel track sounds better than its DTS CD counterpart, DTS shows compression artifacts like lack of bottom end and muted highs.
How can SACD be recorded from a 44.1khz master? This means the SACD is not high resolution, but simply CD quality.
DSD audio is similar to the output of one of those 1-bit digital-to-analog converters, so I assume you can just convert 44.1kHz PCM directly into a DSD stream. They could have also played an analog master - or played back a digital master analog - and re-digitized to DSD.
Hello, re-digitizing a 16/44.1 CD quality digital recording via DA-AD conversion into DSD, does not improve the resolution, nor does a purely digital sample and format rate conversion. On the other hand, digitzing an analog tape into DSD, only delivers the poor resolution of the analog tape, mostly equivalent to 14Bits at best, and around 35kHz sample rate.
I don't think anybody was claiming it "improved the resolution" were they? However, it would almost certainly sound better than a lossy-compressed DTS CD, which is what EddieVanHalen was comparing it to, since the SACD would at least be lossless.
Indeed! The entire purpose of Sony converting its vaults to DSD in the 90s was the ability for them to spin off any format they wanted to from it.
You nailed it,that was exactely my point. And for the record, there are many SACDs sourced from 44.1 or 48 Khz masters with bith depths ranging from 16 to 24 bits.
Brothers in Arms 20th Anniversary Edition High-Resolution Mixing in 5.1 — the Chuck Ainlay Way | Features | HighFidelityReview - Hi-Fi systems, DVD-Audio and SACD reviews Brothers in Arms is a good example of a recording that began life at 44.1K/16 bit but ended up being re released on SACD. At least part of the attraction of SACD for record companies was the encryption rather than the promise of improved SQ. Even today, it isn't anywhere near as hassle free to rip an SACD to a computer as it is a CD, DVD (video or audio) or BD. As the linked article shows, the BIA SACD and original CD went through several stages including some in the analogue domain.
That was my point! Recordings recorded or mastered for 16Bit/44.1kHz could not have a higher resolution, when remastered for SACD or DVD-Audio. On the other hand, DTS is theoretically a lossy compression, but I do listen with ears when I listen to music, and DTS is transparent for human hearing, so no losses can be heard (maybe measured, but we all listen with ears not with oszillographs or spectrum analysers). Plus, DTS has surround sound, as opposed to stereo on lossless CDs (or the "advanced resolution stereo remasters" on SACD). Brothers in Arms went through some AD-DA conversion during mixing, but was never on analog tape in this process.
Mileage. I'm willing to bet in an A/B comparison on good equipment most people could pick out the difference between a lossy-compressed multichannel DTS recording and a lossless multichannel original. That's 5.1 channels if I'm not mistaken crammed into the space of two, and that kind of reduction is going to leave behind a few fingerprints.
