Rspaight wrote:Not sure on that myself. In the Steve/Thom discussion quoted above, Steve uses the sound of a snare echo on one of his CCR SACDs as evidence of SACD's superiority -- the SACD captures more detail. That seems to me to be a clear case of more accurate "volume" (though of course DSD does "bits" very differently than PCM), since it isn't the tonal accuracy that's in question, but he ability to resolve subtle amplitude attributes. Detail, not tonal accuracy, is where SACD shines for me.
(I'm tempted to chalk up the "smoother highs" so many rave about on SACD to less processing during mastering and better electronics in the converters -- the stuff Sony totes around to the different labels is primo gear -- not necessarily something in DSD itself.)
I do know that some on SH.tv say that they hear more of a benefit from more bits than higher sampling frequencies, which does make some sense...
Ryan
You know, Ryan, there is no guessing at all here. Audio is just physics and when we come down this level, certain rules apply. I know that the audiophools on the SH forum would want everyone to believe that SACD and analog is above science, but, alas, it just ain't so. They cling to analog (and now SACD) like it was some kind of religion and will resort to any kind of techno-babble inorder to prove its superiority.
A waveform has 2 dimensions, amplitude and time. If you sample a 20 kHz signal at 44.1 kHz, 96 kHz or higher, it is within Nyquist of all and is captured *100%*. No amount of handwaving from the audiophools will change that. This is a *fundamental* principle of the sampling theorem. What this means is that you get a wave of the *exact* amplitude you put in and positioned in time *exactly* as it went in. In other words, the phase information is preserved. To claim that DSD does this more accurately is to claim that it somehow is able to do better than 100%.
The system's ability to resolve a signal is totally dependent on its broadband noise floor. The noise floor will always be there whether there's no signal or not and the presence of *any* noise *anywhere* in the system limits the resolution and hence the ability to represent signals unambiguously. Any time you lower this noise floor you increase the potential for more real information to be communicated through the system.
Now, as I said in the previous post, through noise shaping technology, Sony claims that DSD delivers about 120 dB over the entire audible bandwidth. That is equal to around 20 bits in the PCM world. No big deal, really. Redbook, properly dithered, has about 93 dB. So again, DSD does have better *potential* at "resolving the "subtle amplitude attributes" than does Redbook. But that presumes that the *source* exhibits greater than a 90 dB dynamic range. If it does *not* then both systems should have the *same* potential.
So higher bit depth is good, but higher sampling rate is not so good and going higher than what is necessary to get the job done is a waste. Dan Lavry makes excellent technical sense when he says that higher sampling rates yields less accuracy. Think about it, if you have more time to charge capacitors, to settle opamps, f.ex., you *are* more accurate. Science and engineering back this up.
As I have said before, if a PCM conversion is *not* able to extract all information from an analog tape with nothing above 15 kHz and DR probably limited to 60 - 70 dB then I would defintely start shopping around for a new converter.
If SH, LeeS or Joe Blow is so sure of SACDs superiority, then present their case to the AES for peer review. Sony has had ample chance to do this. But as of today, they have not. I wonder why?