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michi said:
Well, I'd argue that SHM and Blu-Spec CD are, for the most part, exclusively a materials process, and don't differ in encoding or decoding than RBCD.
Indeed they are. I was just expanding on your point.
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Post by michi February 28, 2010 (102 of 140)
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xmen269 said:
btw it is not my article , some californian sucker (sorry) posted it and find it very logical.
Right, Xmen, but you do realize that "logically sound" does not always mean "correct", right? A lot of people get snowed by this in other areas. And I'm not talking about only audio. It's a pretty common trap that people fall into when reading pseudoscientific findings. "The guy in the article seemed to make sense, therefore all of his conclusions must be watertight." Any scientist, or anyone who has looked into logic, can tell you that that's just not how it goes.
It's like the earlier statement that "More data = better sound quality." That does follow *logic*, but even if a statement is logically sound, that does not prove that it is correct.
That's what Craigman is doing though. "1 begets 2, 2 therefore 3, therefore we can conclude 1,2,3,4!" .. Not neccessarily.
All Craigman has done is observed fuzzy HF content on his oscilloscope. He has not drawn any conclusive evidence of degraded audio rendering quality via DSD. He has, however, jumped to a lot of conclusions that likely have little bearing on actual audio output.
I've often heard people deride DSD out of two sides of their mouth at once: "We don't need it because we can't hear the HF content; 44.1/16 is fine." / "But DSD is bad because of all that ultrasonic HF noise that we can hear, it's clearly inferior to 44.1/16."
That just doesn't jive.
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Post by michi February 28, 2010 (103 of 140)
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Paul Clark said:
Indeed they are. I was just expanding on your point.
No problem Paul. Just wanted to clarify for xmen and others.
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Post by xmen269 February 28, 2010 (104 of 140)
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In the end DSD CD sounds only 16bit but properly encoded decoded HDCD sounds 20bit making it better CD.
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Post by xmen269 February 28, 2010 (105 of 140)
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michi said:
Right, Xmen, but you do realize that "logically sound" does not always mean "correct", right?
yes agree.
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Post by michi February 28, 2010 (106 of 140)
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xmen269 said:
In the end DSD CD sounds only 16bit but properly encoded decoded HDCD sounds 20bit making it better CD.
Not really. That's sort of smoke and mirrors too.
Yes, HDCD does use gain cues to enable certain passages to be boosted and others to be attenuated. And the delta between the potential loudest passage on HDCD and digital zero is indeed more than 16 bits of dynamic range. Because of that, a >16 bit DAC needs to be run at the decoding end for that potential to be properly rendered.
However, it is not true 20 bit encoding. And its real world applied dynamic range is more like 18 bits, not 20. (Many early HDCD players had 18 bit DACs.)
(The unfortunate and disappointing truth is that few HDCDs actually use more than a fraction of HDCD's capabilities. Filter switching is almost NEVER implemented, and gain control is rare. Many HDCDs are little more than 'good resamples'. And in this, most HDCDs are actually closer to DSD-CD or XRCD in metod and practice than you may think. This can be borne out by using some of the recently released command-line HDCD decoders for the computer and decoding a HDCD via your system's drive. You can watch the decode, and on all but the earliest HDCDs, like Neil Young's "Mirrorball", gain control and filters are simply never activated. That's an aside, but also disappointing as the format could have done a lot better. Many HDCDs are 'hdcds in name only.')
I do agree that HDCD *can* however have some advantages over 16 bit RBCD. But comparing DSD-CD to HDCD are, once again, comparing two different domains: a delivery format and an originating format. The two are not exclusive, and could be combined, so therefore juxtaposing them as "versus" eachother isn't really apt. They are not competing technologies in any form besides marketing, and honestly could complement eachother.
In any case, xmen269: I've got to get on with my day but, I want to ask this in a non-antagonistic way. Have you heard many SACDs first hand? If not, what sort of music do you like? I could probably send you something. While I'm not saying it'd result in you becoming a "convert", it certainly wouldn't hurt, would it?
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Post by zeus February 28, 2010 (107 of 140)
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michi said:
All Craigman has done is observed fuzzy HF content on his oscilloscope.
I don't know who/what Craigman is (or why I should care) but this is an eight year old paper from Ohman, widely quoted by PCM zealots and discussed to death way back then. It would be interesting to know if the original author has changed his views in the meantime.
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Post by michi February 28, 2010 (108 of 140)
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zeus said:
I don't know who/what Craigman is (or why I should care) but this is an eight year old paper from Ohman, widely quoted by PCM hotheads and discussed to death way back then. It would be interesting to know if the original author has changed his views in the meantime.
Zeus, I'm talking about this one that was linked earlier:
http://www.craigmandigital.com/education/PCM_vs_DSD.aspx
The author invokes Ohman, yes, and I believe it was a distillation of the same argument. (Essentially a 'reader's digest version'.) It seems he tried to recreate Ohman's observations, and hailed them as irrefutable because he did indeed see the HF noise on his own scope.
I do realize it's a dead horse. But every few years it does seem to be dragged out and beaten again.
My point was that just because the author above saw the noise that Ohman referenced does not conclude that it is irrefutable scientific evidence that "DSD sucks", as the poster "DSD sucks" insinuated earlier. In fact, the author launches into a series of contradictory and baseless presumptions somewhere after the final o-scope screenshot.
He uses the practice of "just asking questions" (without answering them) to cast doubt without backing up any inferred conclusion. (i.e.: " How can warmth and harmonics be reproduced in such a maelstrom?")
A rhetorical question, yes, but also argumentatively meaningless.
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dcramer said:
On the other hand, I find other Living Stereo SACD reissues more satisfying than the LP originals and the new Gergiev SACD of the Shostokovich 1st and 15th Symphonies is one of the finest sounding recordings I have ever heard in any format (even listening in 2-channel).
a fantastic (DSD) recording indeed.
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Post by zeus February 28, 2010 (110 of 140)
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michi said:
The author invokes Ohman, yes, and I believe it was a distillation of the same argument. (Essentially a 'reader's digest version'.)
You're right. I missed the fact that it was just a quote, not attribution for the whole article. But it's the same old shock! horror! DSD uses noise shaping, noise shaping causes cancer thing.
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