[Scotty]

Much of our failures to hear differences in our music playback when we make a change or apply a tweak  to our systems may come down to not having sufficient resolution to hear what we are doing. I have run across at least one way to test a systems resolution and I have outlined it below. I am sure we can come up with others ways to do this as well. Please!  Contribute your ideas or methods for determining through listening tests what the resolution of an audio system might be.
  A simple listening test can be done that will give you some idea of your lower limit of resolution. SACD's have falling resolution above 10kHz and finally hit 6 bits of resolution at 20kHz before aggressive averaging and cloning is applied. CD's made from DSD masters also have this same problem,
falling resolution above 10kHz. In contrast CD's made from PCM masters can have 16 bits of resolution across the entire frequency range up to 22.05 kHz.
This difference in high frequency resolution is clearly audible if your system has enough resolution. If you seek out CD's where the type mastering is clearly stated DSD or PCM you should be able to do a comparision. There have been numerous complaints about the quality of the CD layer on Dual disc SACD's.
If the CD layer was taken from the DSD master it gets a double whammy, only
16bit's of resolution below 10kHz and as bad as 6 bit's at 20kHz before averaging. Cymbals in particular should sound audibly more realistic on a modern high quality recording taken from a 24bit PCM master than a CD made from a DSD master.
I first ran into this difference in recording quality over 2 years ago with SACD's from Telarc. When I played back the CD layer it sounded like crap and the highs on the SACD were nothing to bragg about either. Two examples from Telarc
are: EPICS SACD-60600 and Scary Music SACD 60580.

Scotty
See links to articles on SACD/DSD resolution below
http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm
http://iar-80.com/page51.html
   

[Rob Babcock]

Nice.  I'm familiar with the first article but hadn't seen the second before.  A very good read.

[BrunoB]

Scotty
See links to articles on SACD/DSD resolution below
http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm
http://iar-80.com/page51.html
   

Comparative reproduction of a square wave:

http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/surround2002/technology/page_07.shtml

[TONEPUB]

Interesting.

Am I understanding you correctly that an SACD actually has
less resolution than an equivalent CD?  I thought SACD
was supposed to be a "high resolution" digital format.

Then what's the point of SACD in the first place?

[Rob Babcock]

The real point of SACD is that Sony realized the patent was expiring on their CD format, and soon a very large royalty stream would dry up.  So they set out in typical Sony fashion to create a new, proprietary format to fill the corporate coffers again.  SACD does indeed have lower resolution, in the treble region, than the CD it was designed to replace.  IMOHO DVD-A is the superior format, and I'm very sorry that SACD got off to such a lead (not that either one are doing very well).

My own experiences have been that my average DVD-A sounds better than my average SACD.  I can't really make a valid comparison as few things are duplicated on both formats and even if they are, there's no way to know how each was mixed, etc.

[pjchappy]

Rob, I never knew that!  I only have 1 SACD (DSOTM).  ALL that data on those discs and it has lower resolution in the high end!  That's funky.   

[Rob Babcock]

DSotM still sounds great on SACD, probably because SACD has good resolution at lower frequencies, plus the MC aspect really opens up the sound.