Thread: newbie dsd question

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Post by rammiepie March 3, 2010 (21 of 51)
bissie said:

With all due respect and reverence to you, zeus, that was unfair.

A question is put on the table, a question that also I have been unable to get answered:

If a DSD recording is edited in the PCM domain, how can it be claimed that the SACD is pure DSD??

Answer me, and I'll shut up. This question is fair.

Robert

Robert, I believe you answered your own question. The same way if PCM masters are derived from analogue, are ALL the elements of the multi track recordings preserved or is just the mixdown to two channel transferred via PCM retained? London did a number of their recordings in 24 track....are all 24 tracks preserved in their transition to PCM or just the stereo mixdown.....because that would be a shame if that PCM mixdown was used as an SACD master because as advancements are made in mixing/mastering [DXD, for instance] those "lost" stems would NOT be available for further "refinements." I think you know what I'm alluding to?

Post by bissie March 3, 2010 (22 of 51)
zeus said:

I remember one of my university lecturers posing the following: if you have a tanker full of milk and add a drop of raw sewage to it, what do you have? The answer: milk. Two drops? Milk. Three drops? Sewage.

How long do your edits typically last?

Well, put it this way:

we have considerably more than 3 edits per SACD, and the edits themselves can, in cases, be measured in seconds rather than milliseconds, depending upon the music, hall, reverb, score, organpoints etc. Sometime an 'edit' can take minutes, for instance, if we have to remove a rumble.

And, apart from that, who's saying that 'only' the edits are being transferred to PCM and back to DSD?

Would you call a bracelet made of gold and brass links to be "pure gold"?

Robert

Post by Zammo March 3, 2010 (23 of 51)
Kuiteh said:

Selling a storefull of gilded bronze as pure gold because there are 3 gold pieces amongs them would land the shopkeeper in jail. Selling all SACDs based on DSD's superior impulse response contained in only a handfull of disks is just marketing talk?

Who sells ALL SACD's based on DSD's superior impulse response??? Marketing??? SACD has been the most pitifully marketed audio format in history. Most people working for the company that invented the format don't even know what the hell SACD or DSD is. Your argument may have held some water when Sony initally released SACD, but that is a long time past.

Those recording companies that have stuck with the format haven't done so purely based on marketing spin. To suggest a company like channel classics is riding the wave of DSD glory and basking in the profits is utter nonsense. I don't think anyone would suggest that because a disc is an SACD it is automatically sonically superior to RBCD, but the format is valid and you only need to listen to a recording like Mahler's 4th (Fischer/BFO - channel classics) to appreciate what can be achieved.

Post by zeus March 3, 2010 (24 of 51)
bissie said:

And, apart from that, who's saying that 'only' the edits are being transferred to PCM and back to DSD?

This isn't the place for technical discussions and I'm not competent to answer your question ... but it's probably worthwhile for you to update yourself in what operations are and aren't now possible in the DSD domain. Implying that everybody else is resorting to PCM is disingenuous.

Post by bissie March 3, 2010 (25 of 51)
zeus said:

This isn't the place for technical discussions and I'm not competent to answer your question ... but it's probably worthwhile for you to update yourself in what operations are and aren't now possible in the DSD domain. Implying that everybody else is resorting to PCM is disingenuous.

Also I am not personally competent to answer, but I do have persons employed with me that can, and, unless something has happened very lately, it is as Kuiteh said - you can do some basic editing in the DSD realm with the Sonoma system. All more advanced edits or filtering are being done in PCM or DXD, which is PCM, albeit very high quality PCM.
Thus I find the question that Kuiteh raised perfectly valid and I am not being disingenuous if I underline that also I would like to have an answer to it. If my information is true and up-to-date, all other companies are either
- resorting to PCM or
- abstaining from using the advanced editing tool to perfect the musical contents of their recordings.

The fact that noone on Earth can tell the difference between DSD and PCM in the guise of DXD with ears alone is irrelevant. To revert to my gold chain - it is NOT OK to pass off a chain as "pure gold", even if the links that are not gold would be platinum (more expensive than gold). It is a matter of honesty.

Robert

Post by audioholik March 3, 2010 (26 of 51)
Zammo said:

Those recording companies that have stuck with the format haven't done so purely based on marketing spin. To suggest a company like channel classics is riding the wave of DSD glory and basking in the profits is utter nonsense. I don't think anyone would suggest that because a disc is an SACD it is automatically sonically superior to RBCD, but the format is valid and you only need to listen to a recording like Mahler's 4th (Fischer/BFO - channel classics) to appreciate what can be achieved.

Agreed.

Post by madde March 3, 2010 (27 of 51)
Wow! so many answers and I fell off to the wayside long time ago! Had no idea so much contraversy would be created! Thanx anyhow!

Post by krisjan March 3, 2010 (28 of 51)
That's what this place needs - some lighthearted levity. Thanks for the morning smiles!

Post by audioholik March 3, 2010 (29 of 51)
The Seventh Taylor said:

OP, if you asked me I'd say the accuracy in the time domain is the more important feature for fidelity.

+1

Post by canonical March 3, 2010 (30 of 51)
madde said:

would the high quality of SACD be attributed mostly to high frequency reach to 100 khz or the better time (impulse?) response or is it the combination of both. At least my speakers can not play very high sounds, only to 25ooo hz or so (say the manual). Thanx!

OP? It seems they are all one and the same. lol.

In any event, I think the question is simply mis-focused: it asks about "high frequency reach" whereas I think the focus should be on high sampling rates. By Nyquist, in order to recover all components of a periodic waveform, it is necessary to use a sampling rate AT LEAST twice the highest waveform frequency. So, if you look at this quick little video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy9dJgGCWZI

... you will see that the nice man with the oscilloscope gets an excellent re-construction by using a sampling rate 10 times higher than the waveform frequency. Once he has the nice accurate reconstructed signal, he could throw out / truncate any high frequencies and still keep his near perfect reconstructed signal.

Indeed, if I understand correctly, this is exactly what happens in lots of recording studios:
* they sample at a high rate (say 96 kHz) to capture the waveforms accurately, and then
* impose a low-pass filter (i.e. throw out the high-frequencies we can't hear (directly anyway)).

The resulting disc might not have any content above say 22 or 25 kHz, but it would still sound great.
So, whether or not your speakers can reproduce 25 kHz seems to miss the point.


P.S. I have no idea whether ultrasonics play a role too, but if they do, it seems more likely that their relevance is for certain percussive instruments which put out substantial energy in the ultrasonic realm.

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