new formats...

Reto,

I completely agree that it would be great to have _all_ our music properly recorded.

However, we, as listeners and music buyers, don't have any control over the recording process. Would we not buy a particular artist/album because it is badly recorded? Sometimes, yes but often, no. Due to the creativity and individualism inherent in music we would really miss out on something unique.

Unfortunately I have no idea on how to get all the music recorded well all of the time. Or even most music most of the time. Any suggestions?

Fortunately _some_ music is very well recorded. If we assume that that music is also well recorded on the new formats and these new formats could squeeze a few more percent out of our systems then surely we would enjoying our listening more.

Don't get me wrong I can think of other places than new gear to get spend my limited budget. But if every so-many years a new format comes along that is a significant improvement then I don't mind buying my new media on that format. (Whilst maintaining and listening the old media collection)

Gus (happy owner of hundreds of LPs, CDs and DVDs)

Well, this is for several reasons:

1. The overall music market has plateau'd and is expected to start to shrink again (this is one of those product lifecycle points).

2. The music industry gets to sell its old albums all over again to unsuspecting souls who trade-in their old stuff.

3. Historical - The DVD-V phenomenon almost caused 5.1, lossy-compressed music to become the standard, so Bob Stuart and a few other leading lights got together to form a consortium (name escapes me) whose goal was for lossless multi-channel sound of much higher resolution than had hitherto been possible with CD and DVD-V. This brought the definition of the DVD-A standard.

4. SACD was developed in parallel to the DVD-A standard by Sony/Philips because their CD patents (and lots of revenue) were about to run out.

So in other words - it's mainly about money, but there's also an element of quality hidden in there somewhere. In truth, digital recording has come a long way in the last 20 years, and CD mastering has improved significantly too, so CD replay can turn quite a trick.

However, the fundamental precepts of CD recording with the 22khz limit and lack of resolution at treble frequencies (literally too few bits) are significant contributors to the problems with CD recordings. The higher resolution formats hit both of these problems head-on. The inner ear is supposed to be able to resolve frequencies up to 80khz, but the main benefit as I see it is that we will have much more resolution in the usual audible range and the kit will be able to describe the musical signal much more accurately than in the past with CD.

That said, I've only listened to SACD properly so far, and every implementation I have heard has been really very bad. In some ways it's magnificent. There's clearly more resolution than the ordinary CD's, giving much more detail, awareness of the recorded space, better definition of instruments and instrumental timbre etc. However, each implementation has suffered immensely with timing and cohesion problems. I don't know if this is because of problems in the recording chain or if it's due to the basic technology in the players.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

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However, the fundamental precepts of CD recording with the 22khz limit and lack of resolution at treble frequencies (literally too few bits) are significant contributors to the problems with CD recordings.

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This is debateable at the very least. I would disagree.

In the case of SACD, there is actually less resolution in the last octave of the (conventional) model of hearing.

FWIW Evey SACD player I have heard has been deeply boring, although in some 'technical' senses quite good. I could say the same about a lot of CD players though.

I find it an interesting co-incidence that as the patents of CD coe to an end new mediums suddenly appear, each one with such fabulous capabilities as ultrasonic output, a useless signal to noise ration and copy protection. So who's it for, them or us?

The desireability of ultrasonic frequencies are certainly open to question since most components (i.e. amplifier and speakers) can't resolve them as yet, even if the inner ear is capable of going up to 80khz.

I can't understand how SACD can have less resolution in the treble region. The minimum requirement to describe a sine wave is two points which is what CD gives you. If SACD had lower resolution (i.e. has less bits) that would go down to one which is not enough to describe the sine wave.

I agree with your summation of SACD players being boring (whether in CD or SACD mode). That's what I meant by timing issues.

Regards,
Frank.
All opinions are my own and do not reflect the opinion of any organisations I work for, except where this is stated explicitly.

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I can't understand how SACD can have less resolution in the treble region. The minimum requirement to describe a sine wave is two points which is what CD gives you. If SACD had lower resolution (i.e. has less bits) that would go down to one which is not enough to describe the sine wave.

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You have resolution in both amplitude and frequency.

WRT to amplitude, SACD because of the 1 bit Pulse Width Modulation and liberal application of noise-shaping actaully has about 12 bits of resolution above 12 kHz. In other words, about 72 dB of dynamic range and 73.2 dB of signal to noise ratio, best case (at least with current implementation). The situation get worse in the next octave, and then low-pass filtering cuts in.

WRT to time, yes SACD has more 'data points' in this octave, however if CD was inadequate you would expect to see some pretty major non-linarity in this octave. This non-linearity would produce both conventional and intermod distortion. This simply does not exist QED Nyquist rules OK.

Another interesting fact about SACD is that you can use those old, cheap, easy to manufacture bitstream D/A in this application. Bitstream CD players always sounded smooth but sometimes lacking in 'snap' and 'rhythm'. Does the description seem fimiliar?

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If SACD had lower resolution (i.e. has less bits) that would go down to one which is not enough to describe the sine wave.

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Interestingly, you could do sine-wave, but you couldn't do a 10 kHz + square wave (the 3rd harmonic just wouldn't be there). This should be the case with a CD player I think.

Hope this helps.

..in other words, the noise floor rises progressively; less dynamic range=less resolution = effectively less bits. QED.

Actaully, in the few plots I've seen of SACD players, the amount of noise in this wider bandwidth gets quite alarming. The wider open the window, the more crud comes in...