SH Spotlight What sounds just like the analog master tape: CD, Vinyl, SACD or a 1:1 analog Reel tape copy?

Very interested in your latest SACD project Steve. Give us a hint.

 

we have no dissention here, it just seems resolution doesn't help alone to be better in every aspect, as well as the even higher resolution of an LP seems to be not the only reason why the LP sounds better than digital if done right...

no, I think no one's embrasing 16/44.1, at least I'm not...

until I read of Steve's experience I thought all High res formats are better than CD ( althought I already heard about some technical issues that seem to make it more complicated to prepare the high res formats until leaving the analog outputs of the players, than with CD players.)

What I say is just, that for me, having CD and LP playback, there's not enough reason to move towards high res formats due to the limited amount of music available in hires format without being available as LP.

I then there are even experiences that judge CD better than SACD in certain aspects (what I didn't expect), that would be just one reason more, nothing else..

I personally just have comparison experience between CD and the "more high res" format HDCD with a HDCD player. There I experienced that HDCD seemed to have more resolution and extension, but a more unnatural sound to me. But I don't want to say that this must be valid for SACD also...as I said, so far I guessed SACD is all the way little better than CD.

 

You may not be but there seems to be a strong love and support for CD on this forum.

I am somewhat surprised, so far, at the results of a poll I started a while back where 24/96 audio is offered on the DVD and 24/192 on the Blu-ray sets.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=173259

 

Technically, "lossy" wouldn't be the correct term to use for what you are talking about.

For PCM, the wordlength and sampling frequency of the digital system chosen for analogue to digital conversion sets the quality of that digital storage of the analogue signal in terms of the accuracy of what can be retrieved upon digital to analogue conversion when compared to the analogue waveform originally encoded.

The word "lossy" implies that the digitally stored analogue waveform is processed in such a way that reduces the ammount of information that was originally present on the original digital conversion. That is not the case with any unprocessed PCM recording whatever the wordlength or sampling frequency.

It may be that someone considers something to be "lost" when comparing an original analogue source to a 16/44.1 PCM encoded version of that signal when it is converted back to analogue. That is not the same as saying that 16/44.1 is a "lossy" format.

In technical terms, un-altered 16/44.1 is a lossless format since at no stage has the digitally encoded data been processed to reduce the data size by "throwing away" data that would mean it would be impossible to get the original 16/44.1 file back.

It's all semantics I know, but an important distinction nonetheless I think.

 

I must say that one of the biggest delights of Blu-ray is the lossless PCM audio. For example The Band - The Last Waltz on Blu-ray os a sonic feast compared to the previous DVD editions.

However, I'm not entirely clear as to what wordlengths and sampling frequencies are being used for the "HD" audio tracks on Blu-ray discs. It could be that it is merely 16/44.1 (or more likely 16/48 since we are talking about the video world ) in some (or many) cases.....

Whatever the case may be, with Blu-ray giving us the option to not be forced to listen to the usual [I say usual since, to be fair, some DVDs use uncompressed PCM audio - even 24/96 in some cases!] awful lossy, low fidelity compressed Dolby Digital and dts audio of humble old DVD is a huge benefit to anyone remotely bothered about sound quality. Picture quality aside this should be enough to convince anyone to get on the Blu-ray bandwagon. It's a wonderful ride sonically as well as visually

 

How about if I tell you that by recording at a higher resolution you can get more info (or at least clearer and more precise sounding one, which to me sums more resolution) into a 16/44.1 file than recording directly at 16/44.1? Wouldn't that make straight 16/44.1 recording a lossy proposition?

 

It still doesn't mean you can call direct PCM recording at any wordlength/sampling rate "lossy".

That means even 8bit 10kHz PCM (or whatever).

It's just semantics.

"Lossy" in audio terminology means you have taken whatever digital audio file you start with and thrown away data to create a compressed file in order to reduce the file size in such a way that it is impossible to re-instate the original digital audio file from the compressed file.

Simple as.

 

Good point and not enough clarification in my post with terminology and semantics.

I'll rephrase what I meant to state, for digital masters created from scratch in 24/192 or 24/96, conversion to 16/44.1 would be creating a sonically inferior or "dumbed down", version of the original master sound files.

For any past masters that were created and exist only in 16/44.1, then any copies of those masters that retained the initial 16/44.1 integrity would not be considered "lossy" versions.

 

i had a few store bought open reel tapes. lucked into a webcor recorder. disappointing cos they ran at 3 3/4 ips on very bad red oxide tape. thin tape. capitol (dean martin!) and the cheap thrills piece of garbage that would be worth a fortune now just for the robert crumb box. stolen from me. recorded over.

 

sorry. i also misunderstood. anyone have an old 4 track dokorder out there?

 

I have some CD-R's I made of some reel to reel tapes. They don't sound 100% as good as the tapes, but they sound great and they handily beat most of the vinyl I have heard of the same titles. There was one exception though; for one of the tapes, I have a nice Classic Records 45 rpm record as well. The 45 is better than the CD-R and more or less equal in sound to the tape.

Still, the CD-R's are totally listenable and fun, more so than many commercially released CD's, to my ears anyway.

 

The thing is that you are throwing away information to create the file at a lower resolution.

No, because there ain't any 'better.'

 

very puzzling indeed and hard to explain, 16bit/44,1k (CD) is actually a video reference from the late 70s which was forced upon audio industry, it has nothing to do with audio, so why stuck with this "video reference from 79" 30 years later? I think that everybody should listen to "deep listening" discussion http://puresuperaudio.blogspot.com/2009/01/deep-listening-why-audio-quality.html it's very informative

 

That's just plain silly. Nothing was "forced". Time to check the "History of the CD" again.

 

Please listen to what Kevin Killen is saying during the deep listening discussion (around minute 54:20), I don't think it's silly - 16bit/44k evidently isn't something sound engineers chose as the best option for audio, many of them prefer higher resolution (DSD and 24bit/96kHz).

BTW today's video standards realized in both DVD and Blu-Ray are already improved to higher resolution PCM, the reference for hi-rez audio - SACD is also available for use, but audio industry is still stuck with 16/44kHz (sorry, but imho this is just plain silly). I just don't understand the "CD love" lovingthesound was pointing at presenting Neil Young's archives re-issue poll as an example, where majority of people chose 16/44,1 and not hi-rez PCM (I know that unfortunately SACD option is not available in that case due to politics of Warner but come on hi-rez PCM is the second best option).

 

with "32 bits" you are referring to wordlength setting in your chosen capture software, yes?

 

I don't think it's possible to capture in 32-bits, definitely not with home audio cards - I discussed ADCs in the interview I had for my current "research year" job and was told that even for scientific applications, 24-bit was the highest you would see. Noise and other factors prevent much being gained from making the move to 32-bit and sample rate is also a problem in audio because you need the ADC to respond quickly enough to "capture" the signal that quickly.

However, most audio applications are able to operate in 32-bit (meaning you convert something you've imported as 24-bit to 32-bit, do all of your editing in that, and then downsample to 24-bit or 16-bit for the final file). Adobe Audition lets you caputre in "32-bit float" but really it's just taking the 24-bit signal from your sound card and adding 8 zeroes to the end. Remember, every extra bit doubles your "vertical" (in terms of the waveform image) resolution, so you should always do all editing in the highest bit-depth available to you.

 

Glad to see the endorsement of the Shure V15; I have one myself. Question: does this mean that the best MM cartridges beat MC cartridges in general? I've always heard that MM carts sound more like the master tape.

P.S. What I do is, I listen to my needledrops at 24/96 resolution. My MacBook Pro feeds a true 24/96 digital signal directly to my Lavry DAC.

 

The only recording being done in 32 bits I am aware of is Epiphany recordings engineered by Jeremy Kipnis.

 

Ah, yes, that makes sense... It's great for editing for track separation for sure, and even the occasional manual tick removal (I leave in all but the loudest ones) but the file sizes are astronomical: Over 1GB for 15 minutes of stereo audio!

Although I have used the high resolution digital needledrops of a couple of recent albums to make standard CD's from (i.e. edited then down-converted to 44.1/16 then burn to CD-R) that sound far better than their standard CD counterparts simply because the LP has the full dynamics whereas the CD has been a victim of "modern mastering"

 

Steve sorry to bump an old thread, but is it your Pacific Microsonics Model Two that is used for A/D conversion for the Audio Fidelity HDCDs?

I noticed the Analog Productions jazz hybrid SACDs aren't HDCD, was a different converter used for these?

Thanks for any insights

 

Mahler's Symphony No. 4 on Channel Classics is the latest SACD recorded with Grimm so if you want to find out what all the fuss is about I would suggest checking the recording... IMHO it has greater resolution and dynamic range than a master tape yet it doesn't sound digital (doesn't have distortions in time domain).

 

Can you suggest a couple released titles you have used this new hardware on?

 

Acetate lacquer carefully cut @ 45rpm should be very good

However @ 33,1/3 rpm and after the archaic and laborius mechanical pressing process, with all its problems,I doubt if the vinyl is an equal to the lacquer.

In my umble opinion