(O/T) - Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

On Mon, 14 Jul 2003 23:16:42 +0100, "Keith G"
wrote:

Tech Spec:
PCM -1600 Digital Recording system
Sampling Rate: 44,056

Why the very strange sample rate?

Encoding: 16 Bit linear

More importantly, how many bits were used during digital domain
processing?

Frequency Response: +0, -0.5dB; 4 Hz to 20 Hz
Microphones (2) B & K 4133/2619, Levinson ML-8 Pre-amps
All distortions less than .05%

Including the microphones?

Mixing Electronics: Levinson LNP-2
Monitor System: Levinson HQD
Producer and Balance Engineer: Brian Culverhouse
Production Advisor: George H de Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Any relation to the composer of the well known violin concerto in E
minor?

Digital Recording: Digital Recording Systems Co., Inc.
Digital Editing: Sony DEC-1000 (prototype)


BTW: I recently obtained a DVD-Audio player. My one DVD-Audio disc
sounds very nice, but no better than a good CD. (It's the Bach St.
Matthew Passion conducted by Harnoncourt and was recorded specifically
for DVD-Audio rather than being a remix of a 70s pop record.)

As an experiment I tried adding two rear speakers but found that this
made only a marginal difference for classical music.


--
Chris Isbell
Southampton
UK

(O/T) - Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

Production Advisor: George H de Mendelssohn-Bartholdy

Any relation to the composer of the well known violin concerto in E
minor?

Yes. But a distant one.

George H. de Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the man who founded Vox, pointed
out that the hyphen in his name indicated he was a collateral, rather
than direct, descendant of the famous composer Felix Mendelssohn
Bartholdy. In the recording circles he was known simply as George
Mendelssohn, and, as many of his competitors readily acknowledged,
"the most remarkable talent-finder in the industry." Because he ran
Vox Productions as virtually a one-man operation for more than three
decades, and yet made it into something he knew would survive him, the
story of the company's first half-century is largely his story.

Read more at:
http://www.voxcd.com/vox_founder.html

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article , RobH wrote:

"Andrew Walkingshaw" wrote in message
...
In article , RobH wrote:

I'm not sure that last sentence makes sense. Are you saying that the
theoretical limit of vinyl recording is at an atomic level?

It probably is if you use an AFM[1] as your stylus. (Pressing the
discs would be a right pain, though. :-) )

Well, if IBM can construct their logo using individual atoms I don't see
why they can't adopt this technology for making records. ;-)

True, it's entirely *possible*. Cost a bob or three, though - I wonder
if the vinylphiles here would want to pay a seven-figure sum per
record...

But then you get into the realms of Quantum Mechanical effects, the
Uncertainty Principle et al

[This is a really bad explanation. I'm sorry. I'm trying to think of
a good way of describing this without resorting to digging out a copy
of Kittel and writing a bunch of equations... there's so much potential
for making a fool of myself here, given I'm allegedly some sort of
condensed-matter physicist :) ]

Nah, what you see is a statistical average; the motion of the needle is
orders of magnitude slower with respect to that of the electrons, so you
can assume that the system reacts instantaneously to any change in
stylus position.

Any bizarre effects are on a much shorter timescale than an AFM
measurement, and so all you'll "see" is a statistical distribution - the
ground state electron density.

- Andrew (day job: grad student, "First-principles electronic structure
calculations for disordered systems")

--
Andrew Walkingshaw |

(O/T) - Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article , Chris Isbell
wrote:


BTW: I recently obtained a DVD-Audio player. My one DVD-Audio disc
sounds very nice, but no better than a good CD. (It's the Bach St.
Matthew Passion conducted by Harnoncourt and was recorded specifically
for DVD-Audio rather than being a remix of a 70s pop record.)

As an experiment I tried adding two rear speakers but found that this
made only a marginal difference for classical music.

I was very pleasantly suprised by just how good some DVD videos of
classical items are. I was tempted at one point to wonder if this is due to
the 48kHz sampling rate as opposed to 44kHz for CD. (I am only using the
stereo PCM sound for the DVDs.) However there are so many differences
between my CD and DVD systems [1] that it is essentially impossible for me
to form any conclusion about this at present.

Whatever the reasons, I am enjoying DVDs of concerts and operas far more
than I had expected before buying a DVD player. :-)

I have been tempted to buy one of the 50 UKP cheap DVD players with a
digital output and try it with the 'real hi fi', feeding the DAC I use, but
haven't got around to it as yet...

Slainte,

Jim


[1] In different rooms for a start! ;-

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

A certain Jim H, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :

Is it possible that, back then, the DACs were only effective up to a
certain rate, at a lower rate than for the ear? If, say the DACS showed
no improvement in sound past 44kHz, your experiment would always show
cd to bo optimal. Just a thought.

AFAIK (Dave P would know more about this than me) the early ADCs weren't
capable of 16 bits of resolution; they clocked in around 14 bits. I
always thought this was another good reason why remastered recordings
often sound so much better.

--

"Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny." - cnn.com

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

A certain RobH, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :

Wasn't there another reason for choosing this particular sampling
rate - it
allowed storage of approx 1 hour of music on the CD technology
available at
the time?

IIRC it was to get the whole of Beethoven's 9th symphony on a single
disc or is this an urban myth?

CD was a 74 minute format (not 60 minutes) right from the very start.

--

"Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny." - cnn.com

(O/T) - Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

A certain Keith G, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :

I'm not in a position to judge - my most 'recent' vinyl is 'O Borther Where
Art Thou' and that has been made to sound 'Old Timey'. Recent(ish) Yello,
Floyd, Vangelis, etc. all sound fine to me.....

On some of Vangelis' great earlier albums (China, Heaven & Hell, Mask,
especially Albedo 0.39) the distortions caused by the LP cutting master
process are very clearly audible on the CD, although China isn't so bad.
These classic albums are *crying out* to be remastered...

--

"Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny." - cnn.com

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

A certain John Phillips, of uk.rec.audio "fame", writes :
In article , Chesney Christ wrote:
Leaving aside the X vs Y business, I'd say stereo digital reproduction
is pretty much as good as it needs to be right now; the signal recorded
is essentially identical to the input signal. There's not much room for
improvement at the moment.

If you had said that modern stereo digital reproduction is _capable of
being_ pretty much as good as it needs to be then I could possibly agree.

Yes, my paragraph above assumed "in the hands of an engineer who knows
what he is doing" and "properly set up kit".

I still buy modern CDs (1990s or later) where I think the sound could
have been much better.

Oh, I definitely agree there, and it's a travesty as good digital
recording is not hard to do with modern equipment. I have modern albums
where they've driven over the 0db level quite badly. There's no excuse
for that.

Maybe with SACDs (to return to a topic in the
thread title) in their marketing-led infancy still, more attention is
being paid to getting it right in practice.

I would not feel safe making that assumption. We hoped that might be the
case with DVD video, but frequently it has not been - shamefully
terrible jobs done on some films.

--

"Jokes mentioning ducks were considered particularly funny." - cnn.com

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

Hi,

In message , Jim H
writes
In article ,
Clive Backham wrote:
What's left for debate is whether the sampling frequency used for CD
is already at or beyond the limits of human hearing

It is - when digital was in its infancy I and many of my colleagues
had an
opportunity to play with different sampling rates on a wide variety of
material. And the point where any difference is detectable is below that
of CD - *that's* why it was chosen - although the exact rate was down to
TV video parameters so video recorders could be used.


Is it possible that, back then, the DACs were only effective up to a
certain rate, at a lower rate than for the ear? If, say the DACS showed
no improvement in sound past 44kHz, your experiment would always show
cd to bo optimal. Just a thought.

I don't think that DAC speed would have been a problem, even in the
early days of digital. Even in the early to mid 80's there were video
DACs that could run in the tens of megahertz range, though they were
admittedly only 8 bit units, rather than 16 bit.

--
Regards,
Glenn Booth

Why do SACDs sound better? (Soft troll)
 

In article ,
Mike Fordyce wrote:
Wasn't there another reason for choosing this particular sampling rate -
it allowed storage of approx 1 hour of music on the CD technology
available at the time?


Well, 74 minutes is a bit more than approx an hour. But it was said to be
based on the longest common piece of music. Oh - and the maximum then
length of a NTSC U-Matic tape.

--
*If I worked as much as others, I would do as little as they *

Dave Plowman London SW 12
RIP Acorn