[Audio Empire]

=DEann 20/06/2011 03:19, skrifa=F0i Gary Eickmeier:
Hey group -

I am a little baffled by how we can tell anything about what we are buy
ing -how it was really reocorded and mastered, whether it has a real solid
center channel or phantom, real .1 subwoofer feed or not, discrete surround
recording or upmix, on and on.

That is what music magazines are for, distributing information like that=20
although classical labels and audiophile labels usually have some sort=20
of info on their homepages and sometimes on the cover as well.

And of course a new improved format will require a hardware or a=20
software upgrade, in the case of an SACD both the conversion process and=20
the basic media are very different from a standard CD, however almost=20
all SACD disks have a compatibility layer that allows you to play the=20
disk back on a standard CD player. And SACD does nor require a dedicated=20
player but a compatible player, quite a number of DVD players can play=20
back SACD's although they tend to be more expensive.

The Dolby True HD and DTS-HD are more common on Blu-rays than on DVD's,=20
most music DVD's use a slightly improved version of the MP3 format=20
(usually an AAC variant branded either Dolby or DTS) that is compressed=20
in a loss inducing way (i.e. data is thrown away) and are not considered=20
hi-fi for that reason.

DTS-HD, Dolby T-HD, the now defunct DVD-A format and SACD's all use=20
lossless data compression, i.e. no data is thrown away. The difference=20
is that DTS-HD, Dolby T-HD and DVD-A are PCM formats while SACD/DSD is=20
delta-sigma, and Telarc and the other classical labels actually record=20
in DXD, which is D-S with twice the sampling rate of DSD, this is then=20
transcoded to DSD for SACD, 16 bit linear PCM for CD or 16/20/24 bit=20
lossy PCM for DVD. (not mixed BTW as you stated, in most cases mixing=20
happens either in the DXD format itself for quality reasons or after=20
transcoding to PCM if the decision to record in DXD was due to archival=20
issues rather than current quality issues)


You did not play LP's on a wind up 78 RPM gramophone even though the=20
formats were similar ....

You Said:

"...Telarc and the other classical labels actually record in DXD, which is
D-S with twice the sampling rate of DSD..."

That's not exactly correct. DXD is a Sony editing format that is used within
their DSD editing suites. It is never used for DSD mastering because it is a
PCM-like format (rather than a DSD format) with 24-bit resolution sampled at
352.8 KHz. I've heard some recording engineers say that DSD recordings edited
using DXD don't sound as good as the raw masters. *

According to Robert Woods (who was Telarc's founder and record
producer until 2009), they master using DSDIFF (File extension .dff) at
2.8224 MHz. *There are two other DSD formats, but they aren't used very much
(if at all) for commercial recording. One is a Sony proprietary format that
was used in some Sony 'VAIO" personal computers and is called DSF, and
another is WSD which stands for Wideband Single-bit Data and is defined by
the "1-bit Audio Consortium" . Most DSD recorders will do any of these three
file formats.


Also, there are two DSD data rates. One is the standard SACD release rate of
2.8224 MHz (64Fs) sampling frequency and the other is double that at 5.6448
MHz (sometimes called DSD128) because it's 128Fs. Either rate can be used for
capture, but the DSD128 signal must be converted to DSD64 before an SACD disc
is mastered. DSD128 is rarely used commercially. I have made a couple of
recordings at DSD128 and aside from it taking up twice the storage space as
does DSD64, I see (and hear) no actual advantage to it.

Audio_Empire