SACD Technology

From Edison cylinders to pre-amps to ProTools: talk about it here.
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krabapple
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Postby krabapple » Mon Jun 07, 2004 3:50 pm

thomh wrote:Since that thread on the George Massenburg forum is rather long and it contains a lot of noise, read this post from Mr. Lavry carefully as it pretty much says it all.



I can't find this particular post -- is it edited together from several others?
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Postby thomh » Tue Jun 08, 2004 5:19 am

krabapple wrote:I can't find this particular post -- is it edited together from several others?


This was taken from the Mastering Web Board. There is a section there called 'The Big Controversy' and in there is an article called '192k vs 96k Discussion/Analysis'. I felt it summed up his overall thoughts pretty good.

Also check out the long '44.1k vs 48k' thread where Dan Lavry debates his paper. Note the sometimes heated exchanges between Dan and Michel Jurewicz of Mytek. Again we are see a bunch of subjective conjecture from the opposite camp and nothing of real substance.

Here is a sample from that thread where Dan pretty much sums up my thoughts as well:


I am just as opened to hearing comments from the mastering and recording community as I would like them to be opened to mine. I am quickly getting to realize that a large number of non technical (and less technical) people will never realize some fundamental arguments such as:

All you hear is under 40KHz so you do not need to even bother going faster. All you ever needed, need or will need can be contained within 88-96KHz sample rate. It is like trying to describe color to a color blind person.

I am all for listening tests. But I do not think anyone should show up to a listening test comparing 1MHz to 2MHz tone. I do not think that we should do a listening test comparing 40KHz of audio bandwidth to 80KHz. Any difference we hear will be within 20KHz or so. ALL THE DIFFERENCES will not be carried by energy above 40KHz, unless it finds its way to the lower range, where we hear things. So if one likes that 80KHz thing, find out what it is about it you like. You will find it at under 40KHz. If it was a certain non linearity, build it into the 40KH system. First step must be to be open minded and understand it. We may not know what it is, but we DO KNOW some things AHEAD of time. We know that if we heard it is in the hearing range (lower band). We also know that in theory, anything within a band of interest can be FULLY CONTAINED, WITHOUT ANY ALTERATIONS by sampling at slightly over twice the highest frequency of interest. And we also know we can get closer to the theory (less distortions) by setting the rate just fast enough to do the job, and going faster makes for less accuracy.

“Ear types” gravitate towards “we need to do more listening tests to 192KHz gear”. I am asking folks to realize that what you record and/or hear with 192KHz sampling or 100MHz sampling is still just the lower band – what you can hear. Only a fool will go to a listening test comparing 1MHz audio and 2MHz audio, concluding that they can hear above 1MHz. lets agree that we do not hear above 40KHz, and we do not get faster signals to listen to with 192KHz. If the mic is 20KHz, or the ear, or the musical instrument, or anything in the chain, this is all you are going to hear.

Again, in theory, 88-96KHz is way fast enough to duplicate it with no distortions. In practice, 88-96KHz is a better equipped to do so with less distortions.

To which someone will reply: “but we hear it”, without thinking or dealing with what “it” is.



BTW, this is an excellent board where a lot of big name mastering engineers meet.


Here is another thread on the R.A.P. newsgroup:

Sampling Theory

This should keep you busy for a while. :wink:
Thom

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Patrick M
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Postby Patrick M » Tue Jun 08, 2004 1:55 pm

Is Marino on that board? Or is Marino discussed there with prolix kudos?

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Postby thomh » Thu Feb 10, 2005 3:49 am

For those members in need of a "Pit"-stop, head over to the ProSoundWeb forum and check out this excellent and informative thread concerning DSD/PCM: Digidesign and DSD.

Also this one over on Lynn Fuston's excellent board concerning 24/16bits: 16 bit blues......

I would also recommend anyone who is interested in the facts about digital technology to check out Nika's book: Digital Audio Explained

We now return you to our regularly scheduled program.......
Thom

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krabapple
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Postby krabapple » Thu Feb 10, 2005 11:08 am

Thanks Thom. I've now got Nika's book on order.


Perhaps someone could strap LeeS to chair with eyelid-restraints, a la Clockwork Orange, and force him to read it , so he'll stop spreading his dumbass beliefs about SACD and CD to the gullible over on SHtv.

And that 16/24 thread proves again that being a mixer/mastering engineer is no proof against being ignorant of basic perceptual psychology...and perhaps even basic digital audio:

Bill Roberts, mastering engineeer, appears to be one such:
'Nika, you are looking at the big picture. The dynamics I am speaking of is the inner dynamics of how one sound works with another when summed. How do they interact? How does one sound affect the other, can they have their own island of quality??

Those dynamics. 16 bit seems like they feed off each other to the ears, 24 bit..they have some space. "
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Postby krabapple » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:45 pm

Heads up on the whole Fortunate Son SACD vs CD layer fiasco....thomh has made some verrryy interesting findings over on this thread...


http://stereocentral.kazorum.com/stereo ... ut877.html



Long story short, right now it's looking like maybe this track was *specially* tweaked, so the Tonmeister could point to it as an example of the superiority of SACD over CD.....amazing stuff, if true.
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Postby lukpac » Thu Feb 23, 2006 2:52 pm

Is somebody going to bring this up on SH.tv?
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby krabapple » Thu Feb 23, 2006 3:28 pm

One can only hope.
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Postby Xenu » Thu Feb 23, 2006 4:31 pm

Haha. Funny you guys bring this up...I was going to mention it in a thread over there right before Luke alerted me to this.

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krabapple
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Postby krabapple » Fri Feb 24, 2006 1:07 am

Xenu wrote:Haha. Funny you guys bring this up...I was going to mention it in a thread over there right before Luke alerted me to this.

I have. Obliquely. I'm not going to war over Credence (just like I'm no longer going to war over Pink Floyd)..


Ah the joys of level matching...
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Postby Andreas » Fri Feb 24, 2006 2:53 am

Could somebody explain to me how a "split mastering" for SACD and CD works? Maybe there is some flaw in this method that produces less than perfect redbook transfers?

About those clipped samples...they don't look "severely" clipped. More like AF Minute By Minute and DCC Eagles Greatest Hits, both of which have clipped samples.

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Postby Crummy Old Label Avatar » Fri Feb 24, 2006 7:52 am

I think the real question is: why does Mr. Perfect Purist have any clipped samples at all on his vaunted disc?

If there is a flaw in the "split mastering" method, then why doesn't he check the end results and correct it?

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Postby Andreas » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:10 am

Crummy Old Label Avatar wrote:I think the real question is: why does Mr. Perfect Purist have any clipped samples at all on his vaunted disc?

Good question. However, I always assumed you come from the objectivist side of audio discussion. Have you done any AB-test to determine if you can detect 257 clipped samples in a blind test? :)

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Postby lukpac » Fri Feb 24, 2006 8:35 am

Andreas wrote:Could somebody explain to me how a "split mastering" for SACD and CD works? Maybe there is some flaw in this method that produces less than perfect redbook transfers?


My understanding is the way SH did things was to take one output from the mastering console and feed it to the DSD machine and take another output and feed it to the PCM machine. In contrast to just going to DSD and then converting down to PCM from there.

No reason why it should sound any different/worse than a normal PCM recording.
"I know because it is impossible for a tape to hold the compression levels of these treble boosted MFSL's like Something/Anything. The metal particulate on the tape would shatter and all you'd hear is distortion if even that." - VD

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Postby krabapple » Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:40 am

Andreas wrote:Could somebody explain to me how a "split mastering" for SACD and CD works? Maybe there is some flaw in this method that produces less than perfect redbook transfers?

About those clipped samples...they don't look "severely" clipped. More like AF Minute By Minute and DCC Eagles Greatest Hits, both of which have clipped samples.


thomh reports that Fortunate Son (CD layer) has ~ 300 clipped samples, which isn't *that* many, given how many samples comprise a track that long at 44.1. Also, it's possible that some 'clipped' samples are really peaks that reach, but do not exceed, 0dBFS. It depends on how thomh's clipping detection algorithm works. However, he has illustrated some peaks that really *are* clipped -- i.e., consecutive samples at 0 dB, the flattops are evident. Psychoacoustics suggests that a few clipped samples in a row aren't going to be audible, but when you start getting ~ 10 consecutive ones, or start bunching 'short' ones together
in time, you will start to hear it. I don't know whether Hoffman's clipped tracks reach this standard of badness.
Last edited by krabapple on Fri Feb 24, 2006 10:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
"I recommend that you delete the Rancid Snakepit" - Grant