Where is the magic in a SHM disk?

Strange. A store that not recommend the products it sells and make money on.

Acoustic Sounds must be seen the japan SACDs as a threat to the products from their own label, Analogue Productions. This because people only have a limited amount of money buying music for.

But I don't have to be telled what products that is worth my money. I can experience this myself.

 

Hi Geoff,

In my experience, playback from the computer always sounds more like the master used to create the disc than playback from the disc.

To be clear, when I speak of playback from the computer, I am referring to raw PCM (either .aif or .wav) and not to so-called "lossless" formats.

Just my perspective of course.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

SHM-CD isn't a gimmick, BUT it's not some magic material & the advertising is extremely misleading. It will NOT make any album sound better! What it does do is enable lesser CD transports to read the digital data off the disc with greater accuracy, and less 'error correction'. Error correction means just that - there's nothing wrong with it in theory... However when these circuits are in action they draw marginally more power. This can add 'grain' to the sound, according to some. Some work better than others too, and - again - those in some budget (and high end for that matter!) players do not do a very good job of it.

If you rip to your PC or Mac first before playing, the SAME (key point here) master on an SHM-CD and on a normal CD will sound EXACTLY the same. This is a fact. SHM is purely about reading the disc more accurately in real-time. When ripping to a PC this is no longer a problem as a decent ripping program will correct errors and make sure the data is accurate by comparing it to data of the same album submitted by others (i.e. AccurateRip).

So - in short - buy SHM-CDs only if you have a middling CD player, and if it's been proven that the mastering is unique/better on that particular release...

Hope this saves a few from wasting their hard earned

 

I know that a dcs retailer isn't complementary on computer sourced playback.

I suspected this may be due to the issue of the interface between computer and DAC, any thoughts on this?

 

I agree with you in some of your statements.
But I hear the effect of the SHM discs regardless of the quality or cost of the transport used.

But why don't CD/SACD players has a buildt in a "data buffer circuit" that does the same job as if the signal was stored on a computer and played from it, for best sound quality? This could not be hard to do.

At another audio forum, a group of people tested the same three music cuts from three different sources; 24/96 HD Tracks, a standard SACD and SHM-SACD. A Diana Krall album recorded in 24/96 was one of the tracks.
In every case, the SHM-SACD has the edge in sonic quality, even better than the 24/96 download. This was heard by everyone participating in the test.

 

So, what you are saying is that most CD players are completely broken and introduce errors into the playback even at realtime speed, while any $10 PC drive has no problems reading the same CD at much higher speeds?

The reason why I'm bringing this up is the second highlighted sentence, which is completely untrue. I have ripped 90% of my CDs in 'Burst' mode at very high speeds, and Burst mode does not do any error correction. Yet the rips are flawless and AccurateRip verified. Also, the dbPowerAmp ripping software does this by default, first ripping in Burst, and only if there is an AR mismatch it re-rips in Secure mode. So the argument "ripping to PC is done with error correction' is simply not true.

 

It's absolutely wonderful to have his fascinating input.

 

Of course, always make sure you are comparing the same mastering. With SACDs, it's not straightforward. You can't compare them in EAC, and mastering credits aren't always specific. In short, differences could be attribute to different masters.

 

lol people digital is digital all binary numbers and if two discs have identical hashes they
will of course sound the EXACT same on the same system. If you hear a difference it is
because they are not identical and have different levels and or mastering.

This thread proves the power of the placebo effect

 

Re: "Where is the magic in a SHM disk?"

Ay Carumba!

The OP must be a very brave person with a hide of titanium. That is, if he or she hasn't been chased outta town yet.

Viva SHM-prefixed discs everywhere!

Merry Christmas!

 

Greetings

Sure you'll be omnipresent in some of the more controversial threads, look forward to future disagreement

 

I guess I have to ditch the ESOTERIC and by a lesser player to experience the SHM magic that has been so far lost on me.

 

I hadn't bothered to even try to find what SHM stands for and now I see it is "Super High Material". Are you kidding me? That wreaks of meaningless marketing puffing and can't possibly actually be describing a real product attribute. There are a lot of silly claims made by manufacturers for this hobby but this one ranks really high on the list, if there was something about the material being used actually having any impact on sound, there would be a real product description and explanation. Super high can only be accurate when describing the price charged for SHM CDs and the difference in plastic used can have no real impact or it would be explained and promoted with facts. The only possible difference would be durability or longevity and based on early reports I have read, SHM is worse, not better since I see more reports of SHM discs breaking or cracking percentage wise.

This is all my opinion of course and I will gladly read about any science available to dispute the common sense conclusion I have reached but of course I won't hold my breath.

 

I have yet to buy a SHM because I thought it sounded better
I bought one SHM SACD for the reason it wasn't out yet on SACD

 

That's it! Super High Money

Tim

 

But then you would be buying into the esoteric again.

 

Hi sub24ox7,

LOL!?! Howdy Pardner but I think you might want to read up a bit about how CDs are made and exactly what is read off them by your CD player.

If you think your CD player can read binary code directly, you've either got a very special player or your CDs are different from those everyone else in the world has.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Hi stephen,

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding.
Do you mean someone you know who sells dCS gear talks down on computer playback?

If I understood correctly, all I can surmise is they've either never heard computer playback done right (perhaps they're stuck with USB) or they're just talking sales trash.

Or did I not understand?

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

If you don't hear a difference when playing bit-identical discs with the Esoteric then that's a good thing - unless bit-identical discs all sound equally as bad as each other...

 

Cass Elliot - Dream A Little Dream

2001 Japanese Remastered UICY-3304

Peak level 97.7 %
Peak level 97.7 %
Peak level 81.0 %
Peak level 97.6 %
Peak level 97.7 %
Peak level 97.7 %
Peak level 97.6 %
Peak level 97.7 %
Peak level 97.6 %
Peak level 97.6 %
Peak level 97.6 %
Peak level 97.7 %

2010 Japanese SHM-CD UICY-94651

Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 80.9 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 100.0 %
Peak level 94.5 %
Peak level 91.5 %

Both were released by Universal and as you can see, different masterings were used.

 

First off, every CD player ever manufactured reads binary code directly; the pits and lands on a CD directly represent a stream of binary data in which the pit/land transitions represent "ones" and the pits and lands themselves represent sequences of "zeroes". In other words, it's bits all the way down. They aren't the same bits that get fed into the DAC, but the bits fed into the DAC are derived directly from the bits read off the surface of the disc -- which are an encoded representation of the "actual" audio and subcode data, plus parity data for error correction and sync patterns used to keep the spindle operating at a consistent velocity, all laid out on the disc in a way that makes it easier to completely recover any data that can't be read correctly due to dirt or damage.

This difference between bits-on-the-disc and bits-from-the-transport is irrelevant because binary data doesn't care how it's stored; all that matters is whether or not you can pull the same data off the storage medium that you put onto it. It could be a CD, or a WAV file on a hard drive, or a or a "so-called lossless" file on a flash drive, or a 9-track tape, or a big stack of colored cards where red means "01" and green means "10" and blue means "00" and black means "11", or a tape recording of someone reading the words "one" and "zero" in sequence for months on end; as long as you can get the exact same bits out of the medium that you put into it, the underlying storage mechanisms do not matter. Bits are bits no matter how you represent them, and if you're getting different bits out of the medium than you put into it, etiher the medium or the device reading the medium are, by definition, operating incorrectly.

It is also a fundamental principle -- this time of digital audio -- that when fed identical digital inputs, a DAC will generate analog output signals that are identical within the limits of its design specification. A DAC that doesn't do so is, by definition, operating incorrectly. So if you have noticeably different output from two CDs pressed from the same glass master, then for whatever reason, the DAC is getting different data from Disc A than from Disc B due to a problem somewhere between the surface of the disc and the output from the transport.

Finally, to get back to the basic argument in this thread: SHM-CD's core claim is that due to the differences in materials used to manufacture SHM-CDs and "normal" CDs, a typical CD transport is more likely to get the correct series of bits off an SHM-CD than it is to get the correct series of bits off a conventionally-manufactured disc. For this claim to be true, it would necessarily follow that typical CD transports are not getting the correct series of bits off of conventionally-manufactured CDs -- in other words, the creators of SHM-CD are asserting that typical CD transports routinely operate incorrectly.

The biggest monkeywrench of many in this assertion is that a typical $20 no-name optical drive can pull the correct series of bits off of a "conventional" CD regardless of when or where that disc was manufactured, and that they can do so reliably and reproducibly (see: AccurateRip) and often at much greater speeds than those required for simple CD playback -- in other words, that the transports used in computer optical drives routinely operate correctly.

We are left, then, with two possible explanations. The first,

• That SHM-CD works as advertised;
• That therefore there is a fundamental flaw in the standard CD manufacturing process that noticeably hinders accurate reproduction of the data stream on the disc using "conventional" CD transports;
• That this flaw remained unresolved from the introduction of the format until the creators of SHM-CD devised and marketed their solution;
• That this flaw, for reasons unknown, does not affect the transports used in computer optical drives;
• That since audio CDs were introduced in 1982, hardware manufacturers have not noticed or not cared that their transports were not able to correctly read conventionally-manufactured CDs, even though this is a trivial flaw to detect;
• That since audio CDs were introduced in 1982, no hardware manufacturer has developed an improvement to their "conventional" CD transports so they work as well as a no-name optical drive bought off the clearance cart at Staples, and subsequently used that improvement to their commercial advantage.

And the second:

• That SHM-CD does not work as advertised, and
• That therefore people who believe they can hear a difference between a conventionally-manufactured CD and an identically-mastered SHM-CD are either hearing the effects of poorly-designed or incorrectly-operating equipment, or are simply mistaken in their perceptions.

Given what we know about digital information storage and digital audio reproduction, I find the latter explanation far more credible than the former, and will continue to do so unless well-documented, reliably-reproducible test evidence to the contrary becomes available.

 

You are right. And good post by the way.
I can understand if the CD is scratched badly, the error correction algorithm might struggle in real time, but in a perfect non-scrached conventional CD, I don't think so.
When was the last time you installed software from a data CD and it failed? This means data rarely goes astray in this scenario, and a lot less error-correction data in place on a data CD than a red-book CD.
Which begs the question when a conventional CD is compared against an SHM-CD, are they comparing the same mastering?

 

Thank you Laslo! That is why I do not hear any difference in SHM discs.

 

But you acts as you at this time in history has 100% knowledge in these questions. As many has done before you in the digital audio history.

I have been in digital audio since 1984 and have read audio magazines since then. I remember in the early 90's when the industry got aware of the jitter problems in digital audio, how things changed in the way we argued about how "perfect" digital sound was.

I read an interview with a guy with great knowledge about digital audio. He said it could be written books that counted 1000 pages only describing jitter issues in digital audio. He also said it's impossible for laser optics to read a disc without creating jitter errors. It's only a question of more or less.
For me, it's very logic that a more transparent material reads the disc more correctly and with less jitter caused by that.

 

And not only that, it also "normalizes' the sound due to enhanced optical reading which accounts for the difference I hear in playback. Works for me.