RE: [SurroundSound] Re: Bit Rate Resolution, Sampling Rate, Upsample, and Lossless vs. Lossy ....

I have the Dire Straits Making Movies SACD.

Playing Romeo and Juliet at moderate volume, I can hear textures and pick
out instruments that I have never heard before.

In the past I have had this album on LP, half-speed mastered LP, CD, SBM
remastered CD and now SACD.

I don't need someone to keep telling me that there is no difference in the
higher resolution formats, it is obvious to me.

Additionally I have a DTS CD of Eagles Hotel California derived from the
multichannel SACD.

As a CD the resolution is 16/44,1

I have also recently created a DTS HD MA version from the same source at
24/96.

One advantage of the new version is that I can encapsulate the recording
into Matroska audio container format (MKA) which can then be played via VLC
or via my media player via SPDIF to a home cinema amplifier. Not so easy
with the DTS CD as the 44.1 khz format typically needs to be resampled to
48khz on a PC..

Another advantage of the new version is that the sound is significantly
richer particularly in the rear channels.

I have been a home cinema and hi-fi enthusiast for 30 years. I am also a
guitarist and keyboard player and I know what I am listening to.

For those people who still maintain that CD sounds as good as SACD may I
suggest the purchase of some cotton buds may be the cheapest and most
effective audio upgrade for you?

-----Original Message-----
From: surroundsound@googlegroups.com [mailto:surroundsound@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Steven Sullivan
Sent: 20 June 2012 18:00
To: surroundsound@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [SurroundSound] Re: Bit Rate Resolution, Sampling Rate,
Upsample, and Lossless vs. Lossy ....

> The problem I have - is that to my ears AC3 and DTS sounds like MP3
> (AC3 being the worst version). To my ears it doesn't sound "right" and
> this makes it a poor experience. And my analogy is thus - I cannot
> understand that if we make a photocopy of an old master (painting) it
> becomes a rendition of it. It looks like it, in other words.

But it really depends on how good the photocopy is, doesn't it?


> The issue to me is that what is obvious to some of us, that the poor
> quality copy is just that, is denied in some audio circles and that
> plain common sense cannot prevail. Hey if you like AC3, please enjoy
> it but I cannot and telling me I can is downright patronising.

The issue is what 'poor quality copy' means, and whether that can be defined
in an objective sense. There are bitrates and codecs at which people will
tend to tell copy from original, and bitrates and codecs at which people
will tend to find that difficult if not impossible. That much we can say. A
LAME mp3 at 320 CBR will be very tough to tell from source on average, for
example.


> Onto the music - I agree with the Genesis SACD could've been a lot
> better and I'm beginning to think that with SACD in general there is
> not much of a difference from straight RBCD.

This is quite a heretical claim, to some audiophiles.

> With SACD it always appears to sound better with muli-channel versions
> though. I think this is due to the efffect that more channels with
> correctly mixed surround, thins the mix somewhat (i.e. less multi
> track density per channel) and gives an improved soundstage. Meaning
> that invariably good surround (to my ears note) should sound better
> than plain stereo.
>

I think you're right. Renderining a real acoustic even tin 'stereo'(meaning
2-channel) constitutes a huge spatial information loss.

Yet it can also sound fabulous. The take home here may be that our hearing
is incredibly forgiving.

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