Why I'm Not Gonna Jump on the SACD or DVD-A bandwagon
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 3 Registered: Aug-04 | Digital Rights Managment (DRM) I'm sure its been discussed here before, but here's pretty interesting critique of DRM: Ok, my rant is over, flame away. If this post is completely un-appropriate for this forum, I applogize. |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 47 Registered: Jun-04 | Welcome, shank. Personally I would say your post is interesting. The craphound article points out some shortcomings of SACD and DVD-A, and also highlights issues that hinders it from being accepted by some. But... Once upon a time there was vinyl. Some people thought they were expensive. So they copied them on tape instead. Didn't sound as fine as original, but that was bearable for them. Then one day somebody discovered that tapes also could be used for storing motion pictures. But the guy was making a living out of distributing movies, so he included in VHS a circuit that would distort eventual copies. History repeats itself. CD came out unprotected, but the inventors of DVD were better prepared. This will go on and on, as long as there are some people wanting to earn as much as possible from working, and others wanting to pay as little as possible for the goods. For me the copy protection discussion just confirms of my vision of the human business nature in general. It is also good to learn about alternative lossless formats. But do you really get hi-rez at it's best? I mean, a PC and it's hookup is made to handle many different things. HiFi is different: Single-purpose chips designed to enhance musical quality. Low-capacitance cables. Standardized codecs implemented in hardware. Jitter correction. You name it. And what about the source? At the best, you can rip 96/24 LPCM from some disc. But I havent heard of any free 192/24 material, nor DSD. Sorry if sounding retorical, it's mostly for the sake of discussion. I will be waiting for your reply. Cheers AL |
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Gold Member Username: KeggerMICHIGAN Post Number: 1078 Registered: Dec-03 | shank i can respect ones oppinion and understand your frustration having the media format that you do. that would be a bummer. so you may rant and rave all you want sir! all i can say is unfortunitaly with your setup and the fact you can't use the new disks the way you would like. you are truly missing out on an outstanding 2 forms of music reproduction. i have been yearning for the type of quality signal you get from these 2 formats. truly sensational. but i also can understand the media companies wanting to do this. "it sucks" but i work in the computer industry and there is so much piracy i don't see how anyone "except microsoft" can make any money. i know it sucks to be able to feal for all sides but that's me. |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 4 Registered: Aug-04 | Kegger, "all i can say is unfortunitaly with your setup and the fact you can't use the new disks the way you would like. you are truly missing out on an outstanding 2 forms of music reproduction. i have been yearning for the type of quality signal you get from these 2 formats. truly sensational. " And I'm sorry you are constrained to using discs, you truly are missing out on the freedom of being able to listen to any song, at any time, w/o gaps, crossfading, and all other kinds of neat tricks one can do w/ software :-) "but i also can understand the media companies wanting to do this. "it sucks" but i work in the computer industry and there is so much piracy i don't see how anyone "except microsoft" can make any money." I'd like to point at that DRM will not solve piracy either. You can read the article i posted above and read AL's astute observations. Being that you work in the computer industry, you should know DVD's have already been cracked and the same will happen with SACD and DVD-A. That's why the industry must create laws such as the DMCA and are trying to pass the Inducment Act. DRM is flawed from the beginning. If it wasn't flawed then these laws would be totally unneccessary. DRM only survives as an annoyance to consumers who wish to use their property in a legal manor and only survives to hurt Business (especially due to stiffling innovation). DRM is doomed :-) And BTW, I'm quite initimate with the computer "industry" as well, at least from the open source end (and thus why i feel so passionate about the DRM subject). Here's my little project that I've started and why I my interest has grown in home audio to begin with: http://www.musicpd.org |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 48 Registered: Jun-04 | Me too IT guy, worked for a small software provider before. Then big client bought me. Refused to crack old buddies' source code, though. These guys make a living out of the maintenance contracts, don't want'em to starve for the sake of liberating software from ball and chain. Really shank, if I want to listen to music whenever and wherever and however, is just to USB CDs to MP3 stick. An my DVD player and discman read it too. But here we are discussing hi-rez. How do you enjoy it on a computer? Noboby here in my neighbourhood has a HiFi PC. WHat do they look like? |
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Gold Member Username: KeggerMICHIGAN Post Number: 1081 Registered: Dec-03 | shank i agree "And I'm sorry you are constrained to using discs, you truly are missing out on the freedom of being able to listen to any song, at any time, w/o gaps, crossfading, and all other kinds of neat tricks one can do w/ software :-) " i've seen these setups and they are very cool. i also agree that we will crack sacd and dvd-a just like we have cracked dvd's. no dought i've told many people that. but i also understand why they want copy protection. that's all. i'm not aying i like it but i understand why they want it. so many people copy dvd's instead of buying them the same will happen to sacd and dvd-a. i'm not arguing the fact of copy protection i hate it and feel that i should be able to do whatever i want with the media i've purchased. but i also can understand why they want to do it. but i'm also saying that i'm not going to deprive myself of the better resolution formats because i can't copy it. |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 5 Registered: Aug-04 | "Really shank, if I want to listen to music whenever and wherever and however, is just to USB CDs to MP3 stick. An my DVD player and discman read it too. But here we are discussing hi-rez. How do you enjoy it on a computer? Noboby here in my neighbourhood has a HiFi PC. WHat do they look like?" It's not a HiFi PC per se (at least not in the vein of windows xp media center edition or whateve r its called). Its an epia (mini-itx), take a look at the picutres in my original post. The epia+case cost me about $200. And I used a 256 MB Ram stick and 120 GB hard drive i already had. Then I installed linux and along with the software I wrote and others contributed to. The epia has a digital coax connection on it, so i have a digital connection between the PC and the receiver. All the music is kept on the 120 GB hard drive (my entire CD collection). I can change the playlist and browse my songs threw a web interface, with a remote control + TV, or using a client program that runs in linux or windows. I'm using FLAC's so its the same quality as using a CD player (there are some good programs for ripping CD's that have jitter correction and other nifty features). It's obviously not the same quality as SACD (i think the primary advantage of SACD is multi-channel and the 24-bit audio. I'm not sure what the point of having a sampling rate over 48 KHz is, for producing frequencies we can't here?). However, the reason i'm not using SACD or DVD-A is because of DRM. I'd love to have higher quality source material, but not at the cost of freedom with what I'm allowed todo with the source material. Also, one other thing that I like about this setup in comparison to using a DVD player or whatever, is all the source code is open source, and since I know how to program, I can essentially make the audio player programs works as I want them too within the limits of the hardware. I'm not restrained by using a specific music format or only being able to listen to a fraction of music, I can perform any digital manipulations I want on the actual pcm stream i'd like (such as crossfading, or implementing an equalizer, creating some digital effects, rating music and producing a weighted random playlist, stream the music from home to work for me to listen to, etc). |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 6 Registered: Aug-04 | "but i also understand why they want copy protection. that's all. i'm not aying i like it but i understand why they want it." "Yeah, I'm not "blaming" them for wanting to prevent piracy." However, i think its a little deeper than that, they want to use the DRM stuff to gain an even tighter grip over not only artists but consumers as well. "but i'm also saying that i'm not going to deprive myself of the better resolution formats because i can't copy it." And I'm not saying you should. Just for me, the legal freedom todo what I like with the music is important. I'm not here to state that everyone should abandon SACD's or DVD-A's, I'm just pointing out a drawback of the formats that some ppl may not think of. Live everything, there's pro's and con's. |
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Gold Member Username: KeggerMICHIGAN Post Number: 1082 Registered: Dec-03 | shank i was in a local high end shop over the weekend and one of the managers was programming a unit "simular to what you describe" for a customer. putting all of his music into this unit then were going to install a new entertainment system with all this hooked up through the network and controlled by 1 remote. very cool setup i do agree. |
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Gold Member Username: KeggerMICHIGAN Post Number: 1083 Registered: Dec-03 | i respect your stance on the whole. "And I'm not saying you should. Just for me, the legal freedom todo what I like with the music is important. " it's just a bummer they do that. so people like yourself will not have the benefits of the higher resolution. like you said though it will be a mute point anyway once it's cracked. |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 7 Registered: Aug-04 | "very cool setup i do agree." If your ever interested in a DIY system like I have, let me know. We have a small online community that can help you out. Its pretty inexpensive, wouldn't cost alot more than an audiotron, and its a lot more flexible and better. |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 50 Registered: Jun-04 | Good, now we're getting somewhere. FLAC works on 96 or 192 too, right? Do you happen to know compression ratio? MLP used in DVD-A is 1:2, so I suppose lossless should be somewhere close to that. In return I will try to eplain how Hi-Rez works. As you will see, multichannel is just one part of the story. 1. PCM: Imagine a digital model of any curve. There will be tiny steps or sawtooths due to the discrete representation. These sawtooths may be audible as a special kind of distortion. Sounds somewhat cold and metallic. To reduce it: simply increase sample resolution. CD is 44.1/16 PCM whilst DVD-A allows for up to 192KHz/24 bit PCM sample. I can perceive digital distortion on CD, but on DVD-A almost not at all. Some (like Mike Oldfield) say that above 48/24 there is no audible difference, but I claim there is. 2. SACD is DSD, which is not at all like PCM. In this case, the digital representation is dynamic. 2.8 million times per second, there is a bit that indicates whether sound pressure level goes up or down. Mathematically this 2.8MHz/1 bitrate is claimed to be equivalent to 176.4/24 PCM, but I'd say it's not really comparable. It will be interesting to learn if your PC can handle these formats. That is, to reproduce them. I doubt you could equalize etc for the time being. At these high bitrates even a dedicated equipment has difficulties with that. Cheers AL |
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Gold Member Username: John_aPost Number: 1928 Registered: Dec-03 | Really interesting thread, guys. I agree with views expressed. shank, my preference for DVD-A over SACD is entirely for the reasons you state, though I have not heard SACD, not yet. I suggest DSD is primarily a method of audio data encryption. You can copy/burn DVD-A, and it only becomes expensive if you want MLP (which just saves disc space; it can still be done). Warner have a watermarking system, but it is an add-on, not inherent in the coding. The last thing Sony-Philips will ever licence is a consumer SACD writer or DSD formatting softare: their monopoly on the format, discs, and large recorded catalogues is precisely the point of the medium. They are doing a Microsoft. I started a thread in April which got very much into recording/copying hi-res formats from May 24 onwards: NAD T533 DVD/CD player user's review, and DVD-Audio. I have not followed your links, here, yet, but I am very interested, and will be back. One final shot: I have yet to hear of, or read of, a musician who thinks people listening to his performance is "theft". On the contrary, he/she welcomes promotion. If people like what they hear, they go to concerts. It is the middle men, who want to own both the producer and the consumer, who worry. I really do not see why anyone should lose sleep over that, or feel the slightest guilt in recommending music, and sharing it, with their friends; that's what music is for. The industry should reserve the words "theft" and "piracy" for the real thing, and hope the law is still listening if the real thing ever happens to them. Kegger, friend, you have heard all this before! All the best. |
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Gold Member Username: KeggerMICHIGAN Post Number: 1086 Registered: Dec-03 | .............Y E P.............. |
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Gold Member Username: John_aPost Number: 1930 Registered: Dec-03 | ...but these guys haven't! Cheers. |
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New member Username: MyrantzPost Number: 6 Registered: Aug-04 | "shank, my preference for DVD-A over SACD is entirely for the reasons you state, though I have not heard SACD, not yet." John A - sorry I have to butt in here. That comment is not like you. How can you possibly have a preference on one of two formats when you have only heard one? Because of ownership and/or the specs? Is it not about the music my friend? Having heard both - now often as possible - I do not have a preference as both (when the recording is right) are simply stunning. Audio as it should be. And it is you, in part, I have to thank for turning me on to it! |
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Gold Member Username: John_aPost Number: 1932 Registered: Dec-03 | My Rantz, You are absolutely correct. I do not have so much disposable income, for audio or anything else. I reasoned I would get better sound for little money with NAD's take on DVD-A, so I got the T533. Brilliant. No regrets. A third of the price, here, of a Denon 5900. If it really begins to look as if I am missing something good on SACD, then I will get a player, and probably a goodish one will be within reach some time next year, without exceeding the total of a "universal" player such as yours. Also, with my family, the last thing we want is convergence - that is, everything concentrated in one room. At the moment I have a great two-channel system with just the old NAD T532 as source, for CD and DVD-V. It sounds pretty darned good. I would probably want to add any SACD player to that. All my reservations about SACD are about the marketing, the development, and the state of the world. SACD started in 1999 as two-channel only, and they said they would never make hybrids with CD. It was clearly an attempt to get people to go out and buy their CD collections all over again, as many people had replaced Lps with Cds (madness, in retrospect). I make no claims about SACD sound quality. I am always careful to make that point. I can, however, say things about how DVD-A sounds: it is amazing. DVD-A's problem is presentation - even NAD seems to think it is a bonus to DVD-V, and aims it at the home cinema market. They do not seem to know what they've got. Or else they do not want to cut the legs from under their excellent stereo gear. If the word got out, no-one would buy another CD-only player. As with Kegger, I state this for the Arnold, shank, and other new guys well met; and encourage them to look at the link in my last post here. You and I have been here before! All the best. And welcome back, again! |
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Silver Member Username: Rick_bNew york Usa Post Number: 383 Registered: Dec-03 | Rantz, It looks strange seeing you listed as a new member..........You Old Dog! Welcome back! |
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Gold Member Username: John_aPost Number: 1934 Registered: Dec-03 | Agreed, Rick. MR, Admin keeps back-ups, and I believe can restore numbers of posts, profiles etc.. You are not vain, but e-mail him anyway, just for the record. There was a system crash in about March, and he did that for a number of people. Rick and I will vouch for you! Plus about a hundred others, I should think. |
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Bronze Member Username: MyrantzPost Number: 12 Registered: Aug-04 | Thanks guys, Hey, I don't mind being a new member and I won't be posting as much anyway, besides I'll never pass you John. When Larry asked the time here on another thread, I thought he was running a security check on me (grin). I wouldn't be here now if it wasn't for our feral neighbours. I started having a good nights sleep until they started with the thumping music (wrong word) and yelling around midnight. Shame about the gun laws here! Oh, for just one cig . . . . . - just kidding! |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 8 Registered: Aug-04 | Arnold, "1. PCM: Imagine a digital model of any curve. There will be tiny steps or sawtooths due to the discrete representation. These sawtooths may be audible as a special kind of distortion. Sounds somewhat cold and metallic. To reduce it: simply increase sample resolution. CD is 44.1/16 PCM whilst DVD-A allows for up to 192KHz/24 bit PCM sample. I can perceive digital distortion on CD, but on DVD-A almost not at all. Some (like Mike Oldfield) say that above 48/24 there is no audible difference, but I claim there is." I'm not buying it. You should check out the Nyquist Theorem: http://zone.ni.com/devzone/conceptd.nsf/webmain/0B04C09D4A44C78186256C3F007F8B02 "Function V(t) will be represented digitally without any loss of information as long as sampling occurs in accordance with the Nyquist criteria" So, if you have a good DAC and/or good software, your not gonna get these sawtooths. Nyquist thereom says you do not loose any information from frequencies below half the sampling rate (the low frequency reproduction will be limitted by the amount of time you sample, but i don't think this should be important here). So in my eyes, you only need the higher sampling rates to reproduce the frequencies you can't hear (but some ppl may argue these higher frequencies maybe important, and that's prolly a whole other debate). If I'm wrong about this stuff, please correct me, as I'm no expert in the area, just skeptical. John A., thanks for your info on DVD-A's. I must admit that if i did have an unlimited disposable income, I prolly would invest in some DVD-A's and SACD's but I'm still trying to build my music collection, and for now, CD's seem to be the wiser investment. |
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Bronze Member Username: GoldenarrowPost Number: 98 Registered: Jun-04 | shank, Just curious, do you have any experience with upsampling CD redbook discs? I was wondering if they can be made to sound better. I notice it especially on violin solos, sounds a little like scratching chalkboard. Even with upgraded equipment, it sounds this way to me. I must be sensitive to it or something. goldenarrow  |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 55 Registered: Jun-04 | Yes shank, a good DAC can smoothen these sawtooths. By interpolation. It cannot completely restore the original analogue information. And the residual difference is still to be considered as distortion, audible or not. You see, if we know that we are dealing with a sine wave, we can tell DAC to interpolate with a certain mathematical function. But music is much more complicated than a sound wave. Hence, higher sampling will always be more precise. Let's pick up a guitar and hit the A string. We hear 440 Hz, but not only that. There are also correlated higher-order frequencies, at 880 Hz, 1760, etc. Here Mr. Nykvist comes in to help us, telling us that 44K sampling rate will let us perceive these higher order frequencies up to 22 KHz (or actually in practice 20 KHz). Enough? Not if it's true what some say, that we percieve up to 60 KHz with our skull bones. I honestly don't know for sure, but why not sample at 192K, just in case?. But wait, there is more to it. These higher-order frequencies or overtones are not all equally strong. The higher order, the lesser volume, for most instruments. And sometimes even-orders (2,4 etc) are emphazised, other times the odd-orders are. (This is actually why a tube amp sounds "warmer" than solid state.) We need to represent this in our digital sample, and here enter the bits. 16 of those gives us a dynamic range of 96 dB. Enough? Naw, since we humans are quite good at detecting sound pressure levels, why not increase no. of bits, so we better can perceive the overtones flavouring each note? Said all this, we have still not mentioned the fact that MUSIC consists of many sounds from several or many people singing and playing more or less at the same time and rythm. We've already seen that 44.1 KHz/16 bit samples may be insufficient for a single tone. I conclude that it must be a f**k-up when it comes to more complex tasks. shank, my friend, I kindly advise you to give hi-rez a try. Suggestion: check DTS Entertainment catalogue for a DTS 96/24 album that you already have on CD. If it has a 96KHz LPCM track, it can probably be ripped (I did with Queen - The Game) and used for experiments on PC. Hasta pronto AL |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 57 Registered: Jun-04 | ... and then this woman makes my quasi-scientific babble redundant: http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/DynamicComparisonp1.php Check it out, it's emprirical evidence. Cheers AL |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 9 Registered: Aug-04 | I accidently pasted the wrong nyquist link, here's a better one sorry about that: http://www.digital-recordings.com/publ/pubneq.html "Yes shank, a good DAC can smoothen these sawtooths. By interpolation. It cannot completely restore the original analogue information. And the residual difference is still to be considered as distortion, audible or not. You see, if we know that we are dealing with a sine wave, we can tell DAC to interpolate with a certain mathematical function. But music is much more complicated than a sound wave. Hence, higher sampling will always be more precise." I'm basing my argument purely on nyquist thereom. I'm not saying it 44.1 kHz sampling/16 bits can reproduce the same exact analog signal. I'm just arguing about the smapling rate! not about the bit resolution. I think increasing the bit resolution is much more important than increasing the sampling rate, based on my argument for the nyquist theorem. Any function can be represented as summation of sin() functions. The argument for 44.1 kHz sampling rate is because typical humans can only hear between 20Hz-20kHz. So, we only need the sine functions that are in that range to hear the difference. And the nyquist theorem states that 44.1 kHz is suffecient to represent that range of the sine functions assuming your sample lasts forever (but the limit of a finite sample largely only produces errors at the beginning and the end of the sample). Thus, myquist theorem says all the information is already their for a 44.1 kHz sampling rate. So, instead of increasing the samplerate, why not just make the DAC's better? Now, keep in mind i'm assuming that we only hear from 20Hz-20kHz. I'm not gonna argue this is true. only assume it. Also, i'm not arguing that 16 bit resolution is sufficient, I'm not. I'm only arguing that if you think that only 20Hz-20kHz is important, then a 44.1 kHz sampling rate should be sufficient. BTW: Nyquist theorem doesn't assume you have a perfect sine wave or anything. |
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New member Username: ShankPittsburgh, PA Post Number: 10 Registered: Aug-04 | "Just curious, do you have any experience with upsampling CD redbook discs? I was wondering if they can be made to sound better. I notice it especially on violin solos, sounds a little like scratching chalkboard. Even with upgraded equipment, it sounds this way to me. I must be sensitive to it or something." No, I have no experience or real knowledge at all. I do know cd players/DAC typically do upsample the bitstream, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Also, i'm not an audiophile, and I prolly don't even have good hearing :-) |
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Gold Member Username: John_aPost Number: 1943 Registered: Dec-03 | Great stuff. BTW re scratchy violins, someone mentioned a nice recording of the "the Four Seasons". There is also a modern-instrument recording on el cheapo Naxos: DVD-A with DTS and DD for comparison. The sound on the DVD-A (96/24) is simply incredible; the soloist sounds just like he is standing right in front of you, and you can hear how big the hall is. You can hear all his bowing and phrasing, and his fingers tapping on the board in fast passages. You can almost smell the rosin. |
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Silver Member Username: GoldenarrowPost Number: 102 Registered: Jun-04 | shank, Thanks for the reply, I am probably more clueless than knowledgable. I have this quest for "low-budget audio nirvana". So, my current interest in trying to improve the sound of redbook CD's cheaply. I do not want to buy a $1000 CD/DAC combo. I bought the discontinued Pioneer DV-563A DVD/DVD-A/SACD/CD player for $117 and it really sounds great (even the CD playback is better than average). I read on another forum that a combination of the software packages Audition (Adobe) to upsample and Ozone (iZotope) to downsample will render an old CD close to DVD-A quality (don't know how true this claim is). However, those software total to more than $600 and I don't want to spend that much. I guess I'll have to keep searching.... goldenarrow  |
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Silver Member Username: GoldenarrowPost Number: 103 Registered: Jun-04 | John A., Thanks for the tip on the Vivaldi, I'll look it up. I have been very very picky in buying. I must have sensitive ears but the higher rez material does seem more listenable, at least when it comes to violins. Someone said somewhere that that frequency range is where most humans are most sensitive. goldenarrow |
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Silver Member Username: GoldenarrowPost Number: 104 Registered: Jun-04 | Arnold, Very interesting article on comparison of formats. It seemed to spend a lot of time looking at ultra-high frequency, not sure how that is heard or not and why it is important to humans. And page 2 seems to say that dynamic range is definitely compromised on CD and it can vary in DVD-A and SACD recordings but is better than CD. I guess she was testing a 16 bit CD. What was surprising to me was that the background noise is not necessarily quieter on SACD/DVD-A compared to CD. goldenarrow |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 59 Registered: Jun-04 | The lady has has written on vinyl as well. Recommend a visit on her website: http://users.bigpond.net.au/christie/ |
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Bronze Member Username: Arnold_layneMadridSpain Post Number: 60 Registered: Jun-04 | shank, I'm glad we agree on bit resolution. Also, the last article was interesting, thanks for the link. But actually, those guys are talking about error estimation. At first glance, it seems to me they claim that if the analogue function is unknown, there are errors even below fs/2. So I think I will stick with hi-rez. I have some discs suitable for comparing 48K vs 96K and 96K vs 192K, and I experienced differences in both cases. Cheers AL |
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Silver Member Username: GoldenarrowPost Number: 107 Registered: Jun-04 | Arnold, I knew it, CD stinks. The vinyl comparison is very interesting. It quantifies what we know intuitively. The surprising thing to me is how well LP does (using the relative power ranking) to high-rez digital. I still like the cleaner sound of high-rez digital but they are very very close. Thanks for passing along the reference. |
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