Hello to the SA-CD community! I am considering buying an SACD player, but when I started reading about SACD technology on the Internet I encountered information that was highly contradictory, some people swearing by SACD and others totally debunking the belief that SACD is any better than regular CD. I am no longer even sure I want to buy an SACD player after reading some very negative stuff about it. For instance, one comment that is really making me think twice is from the Acousence record label website:
"We have not yet produced any SACDs at ACOUSENCE to date [note: they finally released one since this was written, but then they seemed to stop and have gone vinyl] because we were far from convinced of the musical result when we performed our own experiments using the DSD (Direct Stream Digital) recording procedure for SACD, not to mention a strange tone colouration and unnaturalness in the timbre and tone structures of individual instruments. External productions that we have heard so far also gave no occasion for us to believe that anything else could be achieved with this medium at all. As can be read in various professional articles written by ACOUSENCE's label chief, Ralf Koschnicke, temporal resolution plays a very significant role in music transfer, and in this respect, the DSD recording method of SACDs is open to criticism. Although the transmission range in this method is not sharply restricted by filters, as with a CD, the high frequency noise inherent in the system starts at 20 kHz already, so that the signal parts that are so essential to the musical fine structure are easily masked by signal noise, which ultimately leads to a similar result as the one effected by filtering in a CD."
Acousence is more convinced by DVD-Audio, which is their digital medium of choice. When researching SACD, I encountered a lot of comments like the above. For instance, here is what Wikipedia says:
"In the audiophile community, the sound from the SACD format is thought to be significantly better compared to older format Red Book CD recordings. However, In September 2007, the Audio Engineering Society published the results of a year-long trial in which a range of subjects including professional recording engineers were asked to discern the difference between SACD and compact disc audio (44.1kHz/16 bit) under double blind test conditions. Out of 554 trials, there were 276 correct answers, a 49.8% success rate corresponding almost exactly to the 50% that would have been expected by chance guessing alone. The authors suggested that different mixes for the two formats might be causing perceived differences, and commented: 'Now, it is very difficult to use negative results to prove the inaudibility of any given phenomenon or process. There is always the remote possibility that a different system or more finely attuned pair of ears would reveal a difference. But we have gathered enough data, using sufficiently varied and capable systems and listeners, to state that the burden of proof has now shifted. Further claims that careful 16/44.1 encoding audibly degrades high resolution signals must be supported by properly controlled double-blind tests.' This conclusion is contentious among a large segment of audio engineers who work with high resolution material and many within the audiophile community. Some have questioned the basic methodology and the equipment used in the AES study. Double-blind listening tests in 2004 between DSD and 24-bit, 176.4 kHz PCM recordings reported that among test subjects no significant differences could be heard. However, DSD advocates and equipment manufacturers continue to assert an improvement in sound quality above PCM 24-bit 176.4 kHz. Despite both formats' extended frequency responses, it has been shown people cannot distinguish audio with information above 21 kHz from audio without such high-frequency content."
I also read an article about this reviewer who swore by SACD who took a bet wagered by a guy who didn't believe in SACD. The bet was whether the SACD guy would be able to tell the difference between SACD and CD in a carefully set up test, and it turned out that the SACD guy was able to identify SACD only less than half of the time! What does it mean when somebody who raves about SACD can't even tell the difference in most cases?
After reading all the negative stuff, it makes me wonder what all the fuss is about. I mean, if "it has been shown [that] people cannot distinguish" between DSD and PCM in most cases, where's the case for SACD? No wonder it's called a dead or dying format. I've read all the stuff about how the frequencies we can't hear affect those that we DO hear and how our bodies sense higher frequencies even if we don't actually hear them, but the results of the studies are (or at least sound) pretty devastating for SACD. I bet a lot of people who read that Wikipedia article are totally turned off from wanting to pursue SACD.
In defense of SACD, I did find a Philoctetes round table on youtube entitled "Deep Listening: Why Audio Quality Matters" which features several audio engineers (people who have worked with the likes of Elvis Costello and Peter Gabriel). About 50 minutes into the discussion, the topic of SACD comes up, and almost all the people in the round table agreed that SACD was not only a vast improvement over Redbook CDs, but went so far as to claim that SACDs are basically a faithful reproduction of the master tape (!), which is quite a claim.
So -- what's a pair of ears to do? Are SACDs really better than CDs? Is DVD-Audio better than SACD? Do I get the Oppo that can play both SACD and DVD-A, or do I get the Pioneer than can only play SACD? Or do I just keep listening to CDs? Help!
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