AES Paper on SACD vs CD

Posted: Sat Nov 03, 2007 11:05 pm

God, I love this. I've always felt that a good CD when done properly, with the best sample rate at the front end, & good dithering, etc. can sound fantastic. Never done a double-blind test with CDs and SACDs, but I'm glad someone has given this a little kick in the butt.

I'd like to see a similar test done with AD converters. I'm guessing there's not a whole lot of difference among the few at the top teir, either.

So very much subjective stuff out there, it's nice to see some of it reigned in once in a while.

Card-Carrying AES Member.

Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2008 6:12 pm

Here are some great audio asylum posts on the subject, including several from the BAS papers authors, courtesy of Mr. Ted Smith.

"There's a lot lacking in the paper as presented.

Posted by Ted Smith (B) on December 29, 2007 at 00:14:08

In Reply to: RE: interesting tests posted by jazz1 on December 28, 2007 at 23:29:51

Howdy

And the authors have shown some interesting biases in the past as well as when they discus the paper.

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/3/36600.html

Here are some random comments:
http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/38203.html

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/prophead/messages/38106.html

You can read more if you want over on Prop Heads. Just look for threads where the authors show up.

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?author=drmoran@aol.com&sort=date&sortOrder=DESC&forum=prophead

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?author=EBradMeyer&sort=date&sortOrder=DESC&forum=prophead

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/search.mpl?searchtext=Meyer+Moran&b=OR&sort=date&sortOrder=DESC&forum=prophead

-Ted "

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In another post Ted Writes:

( http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/dvda/messages/2/29357.html )

" Posted by Ted Smith (B) on January 02, 2008 at 16:07:12

In Reply to: RE: claiming to show a person's bias means little to data derived from DBT. posted by Duilawyer on January 02, 2008 at 15:50:42

Howdy

The only reason bias was brought up was that when people expect a certain answer they don't necessarily take care to design a fair test that might invalidate their expectations. It's precisely when tests show something unexpected that real progress is made.

In this case (among other problems) for a portion of the experiment (and not separated in the data) they used equipment that has a noise floor higher than that representable by Redbook: so one wouldn't expect to hear the additional resolution from hi-res.

Their responses to questions also indicate that the care that most audiophiles might take wasn't really considered.

When they found out that if you turned up the volume a little you could hear a difference between hi-res and hi-res trimmed back to CD resolution they changed equipment.

Their bias also shows up in the claim that this test shows something about CD players when (at best) it may show something about comparing hi-res to lower res (with a particular algo), but it doesn't address at all problems with playing CDs with real players: e.g. error handling, jitter handling, filtering with any different algo than they tested...

They even admitted that there is a difference in practice, but they attributed it to mastering differences with no supporting evidence. We know from long history here that there is little reason to believe that that is the biggest difference and we know of a lot of counterexamples: not the least of which are the many SACDs who's Redbook layer is mechanically derived from the DSD layer and hence are clearly mastered the same.

-Ted "

Thanks Ted. Well said!

George Smile

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