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mystic fred 
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 Topic: SACD
Posted: June 02 2006 at 16:46 |
Earlier in the thread we were discussing comparing an original vinyl copy of "Dark Side of the Moon" with the SACD Anniversary edition. The lp was played on a Linn Sondek LP12 with ittok tonearm fitted with Audio Technica ATL440 stylus and the SACD on a budget Sony XB770 (set on stereo), both connected to a Rotel RA971 amp, and Heybrook HB2 speakers.
Both sounded very clear and precise with good imaging but overall i found the biggest difference in the vinyl, apart from a little surface noise during quiet passages of course, sounded less bass-heavy, sharper, more natural and incisive - it fared very well indeed! The SACD seemed to sound much more full, stable and solid, and sometimes the vocals seemed slightly laid back, but at times the vinyl was more spacious and airy, with more forward sounding vocals, and the "clocks" from the vinyl really made me jump. Also you could say the vinyl sounded "wetter" than the SACD, but on "money" and "us and them" the imaging on the SACD seemed rather more solid and convincing, but at other times, especially on "lunatic", the vinyl really shone, and on some of the saxophone and guitar solos, they seemed to sound a bit "dirtier". Overall i'd say the SACD was smooth, sumptuous, weighty and refined and the vinyl seemed a bit more wet, alive and incisive. As far as surface noise is concerned, in the words of John Peel - "i like a bit of surface noise...life has surface noise"..! Each had their pros and cons, but i think the vinyl fared very well for a 33 year old record.
Edited by mystic fred - June 02 2006 at 16:47
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wolf0621
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Posted: June 02 2006 at 15:26 |
^Yes, it's a matter of control...In a surround mix one can control fairly precisely where the sounds are coming from, just like in real life, and those sounds can actually be panned across the available channels...
Imagine sitting in a room with 4 walls, a floor & a ceiling. Someone standing behind you claps his hands, where do you perceive the source of that sound to be? Behind you, even though the claps are also bouncing off the walls, ceiling & floor as well and reaching your ears fractions of a second later from those sources too. These delayed sounds contain spatial cues that give your brain a sense of the size of the room & ambience (or echo in really large spaces)...
With a stereo sound source, say a recording of that same hand clap played back on a good stereo system & where the speakers are in the front of the room facing you, where do you perceive the source of the sound to be? Is it still behind you? Maybe you can perform some magic on the room itself & make that happen, but what about the next recorded sound, that was recorded right next to you & 5 feet up along the side wall? And isn't it much easier to manipulate the recorded sound than to physically change the room around to make it work?
Good multichannel recordings take the intended soundstage & replicate it through the use of the separate channels, plus control over sound reflections. The listener usually is able to manipulate parameters such as speaker distance & delay times to match the actual room dimensions, with the idea that any properly recorded & mastered mutichannel recording will sound similarly "good" in that same space when played back on that same equipment. Actual results vary based on the recording itself...
Therefore, multichannel formats are attempting to bring the listener closer to real-life sonic events than stereo can get, which to me is a good thing...  (MER, good to be on the same side for once...Keep on tubing!)
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 02 2006 at 13:44 |
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^ nonsense. In any normal room the sound hits you from all directions with any system you use. The difference with 5.1 is that here the instruments can be placed at a certain position in the 3D mix ... and while some 5.1 mixes are not particularly inventive, some are mind blowingly good!
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 02 2006 at 12:29 |
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"Also, even though the sound was more realistic, the lack of ambience information, such as acoustics or other elements, left Stereophonic sound with a "wall effect" in which everything hit you from front and lacked the natural sound of back wall reflections or other acoustic elements"
This guy has not heard a well working and optimized system -so which features 3d effect-.
Edited by oliverstoned - June 02 2006 at 12:29
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wolf0621
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Posted: June 02 2006 at 11:49 |
Most of the above discussion talks about SACD/DVD-A in terms of sound quality & that listeners aren't interested in these formats because they can't hear any audible improvements to the sound quality over 16-bit stereo cd's (or analog vinyl)...I can think of one obvious reason for non-audiophiles buying a DVD-A/SACD-capable system: they like surround sound...I'm not aware of any vinyl releases in 5(+) channels (although I did own a Realistic quad amp eons ago back in the pre-cd days, with 4 full-range speakers to match, of course, and buying some quad records...It was all the rage for about 15 minutes, sounded pretty good back then from what I recall)...
The best you could do surround-wise with vinyl is to process it via the various music-oriented surround modes that are available (DPL IIx/Music works well for me most of the time), but again that's processing a stereo source to simulate a surround recording. True surround-encoded source material should yield much better/convincing results, provided that the encoding & mix of the source is up to snuff...Many producers are still experimenting with surround sound, and it doesn't help that lots of the material available consists of rereleases of original stereo recordings that most listeners are used to hearing reproduced in 2 channels. I wonder if this same type of argument was happening back when stereo LP's were first introduced & the monophonic die-hards were holding fast, or when transistors first came out...Here's an extract along those lines about inadequacies of stereo sources in creating a "surrounding" listening experience:
"Stereophonic Sound was a breakthrough for consumers of the 50's and 60's, but does have limitations. Some recordings resulted in a "ping-pong" effect in which the mixing emphasized the difference in the left and right channels too much with not enough mixing of elements in the "phantom" center channel. Also, even though the sound was more realistic, the lack of ambience information, such as acoustics or other elements, left Stereophonic sound with a "wall effect" in which everything hit you from front and lacked the natural sound of back wall reflections or other acoustic elements" - from: hometheater.about.com, by Robert Silva
Also, the way DVD-A/SACD were marketed was a killer. No real "victor" emerged from this "format war" & I suspect that considerable listener confusion exists regarding these formats. Anyone who already has a surround-sound setup (most likely for video) can add a DVD-A or SACD-capable player, the price tags of which are very reasonable for many models...There's of course the problem of taking those discs on the road, I doubt that most listeners' car audio systems & portable players are surround-capable. Many discs do come with stereo versions of the surround material, or players can "down-convert" from 6 channels to 2 (just to ensure that the discs are still "playable" on other equipment)...
I wonder what makes music inherently more "musical" when it's in stereo (vs surround), but that same argument isn't generally made for movie soundtracks that accompany video, where surround is accepted & preferred & there doesn't seem to be a big public outcry to release these on 2-channel dvd's or vinyl. Anyone out there collecting stereo-only releases of dvd's?
Finally, the assembly process of recording music, using initial multiple discreet tracks that are finally downmixed to stereo to create the final product, would seem to me to potentially benefit from skipping that final downmixing, or blending of different channels. If some of those channels can be kept discreet, as they were initially recorded, it would seem to get us closer to how the music was laid down. Of course the quality of the actual final product depends greatly on the producer's skill, but conceptually I don't see why this multi-channel approach shouldn't/couldn't be superior to stereo in creating a more lifelike audio image. I'm sure there are awful SACD & DVD-A rereleases (and new releases), just like there are terrible vinyl & stereo cd releases, but there are probably some really good ones as well...
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 15:39 |
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Of course the best
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mystic fred
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 15:23 |
 oliverstoned wrote:
mystic fred wrote:
i shall dig out my old vinyl copy i got in 1973 and compare it with my SACD anniversary copy, then mike and i can report back on our findings, oliver.[IMG]height=17 alt="Thumbs Up" src="http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley20.gif" width=23 align=absMiddle> |
Well if i remember well, you own two excellent turntables...I know who wins!
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just to be really objective i'll do the listening test on the Linn!
(here we go, here we go, here we go...  )
Edited by mystic fred - June 01 2006 at 15:24
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 15:23 |
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i said: "I can't think of any reason for a non-audiophile person buying SACDs."
You drew the conclusion that most people have crappy systems. That's offensive to anyone who doesn't buy SACDs but has a decent system ... and the other conclusion that explains why people don't buy SACD would be:
Because the difference is very small - on any system.
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 15:09 |
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What do you mean?
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 13:11 |
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 12:42 |
mystic fred wrote:
i shall dig out my old vinyl copy i got in 1973 and compare it with my SACD anniversary copy, then mike and i can report back on our findings, oliver.[IMG]height=17 alt="Thumbs Up" src="http://www.progarchives.com/forum/smileys/smiley20.gif" width=23 align=absMiddle> |
Well if i remember well, you own two excellent turntables...I know who wins!
Edited by oliverstoned - June 01 2006 at 12:42
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 12:38 |
MikeEnRegalia wrote:
I can't think of any reason for a non-audiophile person buying SACDs. |
I do agree cause the difference is too small.
(and we seen that it may actually be worst than classic 16 bits CD)
BTW, SACD and DVD-A doesn't work commercially, cause it interests very few people. Most people are satisfied with CD cause their system doesn't allow them to hear anything.
And so they simply don't listen to it.
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mystic fred
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 10:10 |
i shall dig out my old vinyl copy i got in 1973 and compare it with my SACD anniversary copy, then mike and i can report back on our findings, oliver.
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:56 |
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^ but one would think that SACD is catered for those 0.01%. I can't think of any reason for a non-audiophile person buying SACDs.
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:53 |
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Virtually all rock Cds are outrageously bumped.
The more i upgrade my system, the more good classical and jazz CDs work better, and the more it reveals how traffiked rock CDs are.
I think it's optimized for everybody's system, or for "SACD" system with a little (false IMO) sub and many (poor IMO) speakers.
That's quite logical anyway: audiophiles with real good systems are 0.01% of listeners.
Beside that, IMO SACD technology is potentially better than CD. They just have to release some musical ones.
Edited by oliverstoned - June 01 2006 at 08:58
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:47 |
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^ the people who created the SACD were no fools, and the reviews generally say that it's good. Do you really think that they optimized the mix for bad systems?
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:37 |
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Humm...depends on the playback equipment IMO.
If they listen to both on mine, they should prefer the former version, but no one is real good. the problem with this SACD version is that the low is ridiculous bumped and disgusting. But i may sounds "good" on a poor system.
Edited by oliverstoned - June 01 2006 at 08:46
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:34 |
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I wonder what those people would say who have never listened to vinyl. Suppose they only listen to CD/SACD ... are you sure they would prefer vinyl once they listen to it?
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oliverstoned
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:30 |
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Indeed, the SACD version has lost any life.
Not to say that the 94' remaster is great...
PF is poor on CD, like Beatles, another "huge" band.
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MikeEnRegalia
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Posted: June 01 2006 at 08:17 |
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^ I don't even know which one I have ... I'll check when I get home from work. But I don't think it's the remaster.
BTW: I did listen to it on vinyl first ...
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