[azryan]

Anybody compare the CD layer to the 2 chan. SACD layer of the Dark Side SACD?

I have NO doubt that the SACD layer is awesome and the 5.1 version has it's advantages regardless of resolution but....

This is such an old recording I'm thinking that the CD PCM layer should sound the same as the SACD layer.

If it doesn't it's because...

1) They goosed the SACD ver. or compressed or in some other way degraded the CD layer.

or

2) You can hear beyond ~20K.

I just listened to my Mobile Fidelity version of Dark Side recently and while slightly better than the standard version I've got (more tape noise, but more detail and louder bass, but overall 6db quieter than the reg. version), it sounds slightly veiled and distant overall, and dull on the high end.

It's much worse compared to say Roger Water's 'Amused to Death' which was done about 15 years after Dark Side and recorded in Q-sound which sounds exactly like many effects and voices are coming directly from my surrounds.

A quote from Audio Rev.'s review -"-More evident than on the CD mix of Dark Side is the spoken word vocal saying, “There is no dark side of the moon.” I had never really paid attention to this line during the previous thousands of times I have heard the record."

Even on what I just called my fairly dull and distant CD versions this line is very easy to hear IMO, but this guy never noticed it in the past Thousands of times he's heard the disc??

The whole line is "There is no dark side of the moon. Matter of fact the whole thing's dark."

I'm just trying to figure out if old recordings that to me seem like they should be able to be FULLY resolved within CD's 16/44.1 limitations really sound better channel for channel on SACD (or DVD-A).

Like the Stones recent release. There's so much noise on those things
(understandably so) that you shouldn't need to go beyond CD's 96db dynamics and while I 'might' find some audible benefit of recording past a brick wall of ~20kHz.... really I doubt it.

BTW... yes I don't have SACD or DVD-A player, but I've heard both many times on very high end amps and speakers (recently DVD-A on $14K KEF's, and SACD on $3K Revel F30's), and have never heard anything that bettered the best recorded CD's I have -'cept in that some tracks were multi channel.

Any thoughts on my comments? Am I wrong? What am I missing if I am?

I'm not saying SACD and DVD-A aren't better (though I've read details about why SACD is fairly flawed in several key ways).

I'm just talking the recording of music whose noise level/dynamics fit within CD's limits and freq. range fits within human hearing limits.

[Jay S]

I just did a quick back to back comparison of the SACD and CD layers of a Rolling Stones disc (Hot Rocks 1964-1971) on a borrowed Pioneer DV-47Ai in my main system.  The SACD layer sounds a bit smoother, more relaxed and has a better integrated treble than the CD layer which is rougher and more edgy sounding.  

Guan and I did a few more comparisons between the SACD and CD layers of other discs at his place yesterday and came to similar conclusions.

[Den]

Anybody compare the CD layer to the 2 chan. SACD layer of the Dark Side SACD?

I have NO doubt that the SACD layer is awesome and the 5.1 version has it's advantages regardless of resolution but....

This is such an old recording I'm thinking that the CD PCM layer should sound the same as the SACD layer.

If it doesn't it's because...

1) They goosed the SACD ver. or compressed or in some other way degraded the CD layer.

or

2) You can hear beyond ~20K.

I just listened to my Mobile Fidelity version of Dark Side recently and while slightly better than the standard version I've got (more tape noise, but more detail and louder bass, but overall 6db quieter than the reg. version), it sounds slightly veiled and distant overall, and dull on the high end.  .  .

The 5.1 version sounds better than the stereo version because the 5.1 was mixed directly form the original multitrack tapes.  Guthrie didn't want to do a new stereo mix, so both the both the SACD and redbook 2-channel versions are from the old 2-channel tape, which was ~3rd generation.  


http://www.audiorevolution.com/news/0303/28.darkside.shtml
David Gilmour had told me that earlier generation multitrack tapes existed for each song. That was all I needed to hear. Whatever it took, I wanted to use those tapes.

When recording the album, the band had used a similar technique to that used by The Beatles during the Sgt. Pepper sessions. Apparently The Beatles would fill a 4-track tape and then combine, or pre-mix those elements to one or two tracks of a second 4-track machine, giving themselves more free tracks to work on.

The technique was applied to Dark Side but with two 16-track tapes. The original, non-Dolby, recordings were made and then the drums were pre-mixed to a stereo pair, keyboards were combined, and vocals were bounced together to a new Dolby “A” tape.

The original stereo mix of the album came from this “dub” reel, which contained a combination of first, second and third-generation elements.


http://www.highfidelityreview.com/news/news.asp?newsnumber=15589155
An unabashed analogue fan, Guthrie decided to get as many of the original tapes as possible and mix the entire project on sixteen-track Studer multi-tracks of the same vintage used on the original Abbey Road sessions. Fortunately, almost all of the source material was catalogued at Abbey Road and remained in good shape. The studio made copies for safekeeping and sent Guthrie the originals to work with.

[azryan]

Den,

Thanks for all that great info on the 5.1 mix, but my question was SACD/DVD-A within CD's limits. 5.1 isn't within CD's 2 chan. limts.
Interesting info on the 2 chan. version of DSotM.

The CD layer of the SACD seems to sound slightly better to me than the Mob. Fi version and the onld CD I've got.

Jay S.,
Thanks for posting your comparison of the 2 chan. SACD and CD layers.

You have any guess or idea 'why' the SACD sounds "a bit smoother, more relaxed and has a better integrated treble" than the CD layer? As in do you think it's the SACD format, or the diff. chips in your player, or higher freq. extentiuon (that should IMO be inaudible or at worst damage the audible range w/ ultra sonic harmonics and noise), or a combo of several reasons?

You think that smoother treble might be sort of like how some people find that on upsampling DACS and always prefer it, and other find a non-upsampling DAC to be more accurate, but maybe still not better sounding?

Did you find the SACD 2 chan layer to be more dynamic and/or have a lower noise floor (kinda sort the same thing)?

Thanks!

[Den]

Anybody compare the CD layer to the 2 chan. SACD layer of the Dark Side SACD?
This is such an old recording I'm thinking that the CD PCM layer should sound the same as the SACD layer. . .

I just listened to my Mobile Fidelity version of Dark Side recently and while slightly better than the standard version I've got (more tape noise, but more detail and louder bass, but overall 6db quieter than the reg. version), it sounds slightly veiled and distant overall, and dull on the high end.  .  .

Yes, I think the old 2-channel tape used for the 2-channel SACD and CD is not a good source to use as a test for comparing formats, not necessarily because it's an old recording, but because it's a 3rd generation tape, which explains the veiled dull quality.  

The veil is not there on the 5-channel mix which was taken from original tapes.  The increase in clarity can be heard even when listening to just 2 channels of the 5.1 mix, and this is not because bass has been rerouted to the sub.  The 5.1 mix has loads of bass in the main channels.

I'm just trying to figure out if old recordings that to me seem like they should be able to be FULLY resolved within CD's 16/44.1 limitations really sound better channel for channel on SACD (or DVD-A).

Yes, I think 16/44 is probably a sufficient vehicle for 3rd-generation sources that are not great to begin with.

[Jay S]

You have any guess or idea 'why' the SACD sounds "a bit smoother, more relaxed and has a better integrated treble" than the CD layer? As in do you think it's the SACD format, or the diff. chips in your player, or higher freq. extentiuon (that should IMO be inaudible or at worst damage the audible range w/ ultra sonic harmonics and noise), or a combo of several reasons?

You think that smoother treble might be sort of like how some people find that on upsampling DACS and always prefer it, and other find a non-upsampling DAC to be more accurate, but maybe still not better sounding?

Did you find the SACD 2 chan layer to be more dynamic and/or have a lower noise floor (kinda sort the same thing)?

I can't comment on whether different chips are used to play SACD vs CD on the Pioneer 47Ai.  I think SACD and DVD-A have the potential to be smoother and more natural sounding than CD since they contain so much more information, if for nothing else because of the higher sampling frequency and bit resolution.  Here's a (bad?) analogy: video recorded at 7 frames per second looks a bit jerky compared to video recorded at 30 frames per second.  

I believe that SACD/DVDA can also be better than upsampling since rather than having to interpolate the missing information, the information is actually there!  I think the interpolation is a mixed bag since it will not be 100% accurate and the errors compared to the original music may be what causes the unnaturalness that some people complain about.  

I do think there can be bad sounding SACDs but the limitation may be due to the source material or the lack of attention paid during remastering.

[azryan]

I thought the DSD stuff was on it's own chip and the PCM stuff was on another chip?

I dunno?

The 'more information' thing seems diff. than your video analogy, or at least slighty.

To me it's more like turing 30FPS into 300. 30 was enough to fool us into seeing motion pictures, and obviously 300 frames is enough too, but WAY more than enough. And then say the 300 FPS also contains not just the visible light spectrum of color that people can see, but it also has infra and ultra range colors.

That seems more like CD to SACD/DVD-A to me?

I know there's recording that go beyond CD's dynamic range and just flat out are recorded more accuratly on DVD-A/SACD, but old recordings and newer stuff that's often compressed below even 16 bits?
Would'nt that be a fact that CD's PCM wouldn't be losing any information?

I know a lot of people seem to just think that SACD/DVD-A have more digital points and that means it looks closer to a true analog waveform, but doesn't Nyquist's Theory state that this is not needed?

[Jay S]

I don't think you will get much benefit if a lousy old master is put on an SACD.  However, a remaster is a different case (e.g. the abkco Rolling Stones SACDs).

As for Nyquist's Law, could you tell us more about it?

[azryan]

There's some info here, and I'm sure lots of other places if you search 'Nyquist Theorem'.

http://www.jthz.com/mp3/CD-44100Hz.htm

"According to the Nyquist Theorem, in order to achieve lossless sampling, the sample rate must be at least twice as high as the highest recorded frequency."

No one really hears much if anything at all above 20K and a lot of speakers aren't flat past 20K either even if you could hear those extended highs.

Personally I'm not interested in the extended range of DVD-A/SACD, but their far lower noise floor/dynamic range seems like it should be a great plus.... if you've got a new recording that has a noise floor that low to begin with.

When you can hear the tape hiss on The Stones and Floyd doesn't that make the dynamic range greatly limited far below even what 16bit CD can do (96db above the noise floor right?)?

I trust you Jay that you heard what your heard. I'm just thinking the 'reason' isn't SACD's higher resolution in these old remaster cases. Or maybe it's another aspect of SACD 1bit DSD processing that's making things seem more analog?
I've read the SACD actually has lower resolution than CD in the upper range, but I'm not sure where that range is? Maybe past 20kHz making it irrelevent?

Like how vinyl fans feel vinyl is more realistic/analog depite it being less accurate than CD, and the fact that CD outputs an analog signal too.

I dunno.