Post by DSD June 9, 2012 (11 of 29)
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I never heard of breaking-in SHM-SACDs before, however here are four things that should make SHM-SACDs sound better.
1) The Super-High Material should make SHM-SACDs more accurate, has anyone measured this?
2) The green-label should help audio quality by lightening the burden on the servo mechanism for the player’s tracking head and introduce fewer errors for the player’s error correction to handle, has anyone measured this?
3) Mark Levinson claims single-layer SACDs are sonically superior to hybrid-SACDs based on in-house tests he performed. Other listeners have also noticed a fuller, richer sound with single-layer SACDs.
4) They are uncompressed, by making them Stereo-only there is enough space on the disc to avoid DST lossless compression. Many claim uncompressed music sounds better, for example in computer audio uncompressed WAV and AIFF are believed to be superior to lossless FLAC and ALAC.
Four major changes with SHM, it's hard to evaluate which ones contribute the most to the improved sound quality. I for one would love to hear a pure DSD recorded SHM-SACD from Channel, PentaTone or Telarc.
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Post by SnaggS June 9, 2012 (12 of 29)
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jackan said:
So I have a semi-scientific proposal. I am going to be at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. I suggest we set up an experiment. I will bring a brand new, sealed SHM-SACD. Someone else can bring a well listened too, (broken in), of the same.
We will have someone play them randomly, and listen.
I will have a room there, but it does not have to be in mine. Any room will do, to my mind, if the only difference is the brand new vs. well broken in discs.
Comments?
Shall I bring a pentagram?
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SnaggS said:
Shall I bring a pentagram?
Sure, Daniel, and make sure it's enconced with Brilliant Pebbles!
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Post by pacwin June 9, 2012 (14 of 29)
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DSD said:
Four major changes with SHM, it's hard to evaluate which ones contribute the most to the improved sound quality. I for one would love to hear a pure DSD recorded SHM-SACD from Channel, PentaTone or Telarc.
I would like to see some sources for that statement as well about breaking in these discs. Sounds more like an internet urban myth.
The other potential or alleged benefit of SHM-SACD is the rubidium clock which controls the glass master cutting head cutting the pits and lands, supposedly making them more accurately spaced, therefore more accurately read. However these benefits are only for those who want to persist with laser turntables and spinning discs in an optomechanical kind of way. When you compare the actual DSD file of a an SHM-SACD vs SHM version (in this case a Diana Krall album, 96/24 recording) they are bit identical. The file hashes are the same. Ipso facto there is no difference at the data level.
I think they benefit, perhaps, lower end machines than the higher end more so. SHM-SACD is mostly a last gasp of the "turntable" diehards and is a bit like 200g virgin vinyl and so on. Otherwise I am at a loss to explain why they might sound better. If they do its certainly of less magnitude than the differences between one recording and another. An informal A/B testing with a room full of naive non audiophiles however did immediately spot the difference between SHm-SACD versus non on the 10cc track from the Sampler. Again can't explain it. In that case it was however a US$150 Sony universal player. The deltas on an audiophile player 10-20 times that cost wasn't reliably discernible and doesnt appear to justify the 1500 yen premium on these discs.
If you want to do the comparison there is the original, low cost (from Japan anyways) SHm-SACD comparison disc set which has one hybrid and one SHm sampler disc. Worth it for the curious. SA-CD SHM Sampler perhaps.
The other possiblity for testing might be this new exclusive edition disc from Hannsler Profile which is supposedly single layer. Whether that is a DSD recording or not I dont know. The odds are though that if you could examine the DSD file it will be same as the one they sent to the factory.
AS for the effect of DST compression. In recent weeks some of the DSD software players can now playback compressed or non-compressed DSD files so you could if you had time on your hands make those comparisons. I dont think there is any mathematical reason to think there would be any sonic differences.
DSD is still in my view relatively in its infancy: DSD64fs is at the same level as 14 or 16 bit PCM was in the late 1970's. Once it moves up into 128-512fs range I believe all the arguments about noise shaping and contentions about how it samples high frequencies will disappear and it will have a renaissance. Over the next few weeks upsampled DSD (64fs->128fs and native playback of 128fs DSD will become routine for software players.
If you are in that space, then there is a number of useful 2,4, and 8 channel DSD 128fs samples, mostly classical available from the one bit audio consortium in Japan. There is even a 256fs 11 Mhz sample there as well. This evolution is going to be much more significant that SHM-SACD will ever be.
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Post by jackan June 9, 2012 (15 of 29)
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pacwin said:
I would like to see some sources for that statement as well about breaking in these discs. Sounds more like an internet urban myth.
My experience with this come strictly from this site. Specifically on the reviews for Steely Dan, Aja. I have seen others too, but don't remember which ones.
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Post by AmonRa June 9, 2012 (16 of 29)
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DSD said:
1) The Super-High Material should make SHM-SACDs more accurate, has anyone measured this?
Super cheap DVDs are used with super cheap DVD readers to install software to computers, at 16x overspeeds, with ZERO errors. What makes a datafile containing audio wave measurement information so complicated that $$$ disks and $$$$$ players are needed to transfer them?
Because some people are gullible enough to pay.
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Post by seth June 9, 2012 (17 of 29)
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DSD said:
I never heard of breaking-in SHM-SACDs before, however here are four things that should make SHM-SACDs sound better.
1) The Super-High Material should make SHM-SACDs more accurate, has anyone measured this?
2) The green-label should help audio quality by lightening the burden on the servo mechanism for the player’s tracking head and introduce fewer errors for the player’s error correction to handle, has anyone measured this?
3) Mark Levinson claims single-layer SACDs are sonically superior to hybrid-SACDs based on in-house tests he performed. Other listeners have also noticed a fuller, richer sound with single-layer SACDs.
4) They are uncompressed, by making them Stereo-only there is enough space on the disc to avoid DST lossless compression. Many claim uncompressed music sounds better, for example in computer audio uncompressed WAV and AIFF are believed to be superior to lossless FLAC and ALAC.
Four major changes with SHM, it's hard to evaluate which ones contribute the most to the improved sound quality. I for one would love to hear a pure DSD recorded SHM-SACD from Channel, PentaTone or Telarc.
Again, it's a digital medium. The data either gets from the disc to the DAC or it doesn't. This is not an analog medium where ones and zeroes are lost in the data transfer which reduces the fidelity of the sound. If for some reason no data is transfered (because the disc is damaged), then you're going to get no sound or some kind of artificating.
It's a paradox how the people obsessed with the technology behind recordings are so quick to throw science out the window.
AmonRa has a spot on analogy. If data is really being lost -- and so easily -- why is it that no one ever had problems installing computer software from a CD/DVD? One lost zero or one could fatally corrupt a program.
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Post by pacwin June 10, 2012 (18 of 29)
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seth said:
AmonRa has a spot on analogy. If data is really being lost -- and so easily -- why is it that no one ever had problems installing computer software from a CD/DVD? One lost zero or one could fatally corrupt a program.
Because Amon-Ra is confusing us with his black and white, all or nothing approach to science. Yellow Book is the CD-ROM standard and its way more rigorous than for music CD-Audio. The CD-Audio utilises 25-30 odd percent of its space to error Correction and is a bit useless at correcting bits but okay at bytes. The CD-ROM (Mode 1) standard nearer 50% consumed for Error correction codes. The SACD utilises similar error correction to DVD-Video both more efficient space wise. Common exerience, as a result of their higher data denisty, shows SACD/DVD are not as robust as CD-Audio to mechanical damage. Hard disks far and away exceed these plastic disks in bit error rate.
The main entry point for errors in SACD production is the creation of the glass master.
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Post by seth June 10, 2012 (19 of 29)
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pacwin said:
Because Amon-Ra is confusing us with his black and white, all or nothing approach to science. Yellow Book is the CD-ROM standard and its way more rigorous than for music CD-Audio. The CD-Audio utilises 25-30 odd percent of its space to error Correction and is a bit useless at correcting bits but okay at bytes. The CD-ROM (Mode 1) standard nearer 50% consumed for Error correction codes. The SACD utilises similar error correction to DVD-Video both more efficient space wise. Common exerience, as a result of their higher data denisty, shows SACD/DVD are not as robust as CD-Audio to mechanical damage. Hard disks far and away exceed these plastic disks in bit error rate.
The main entry point for errors in SACD production is the creation of the glass master.
Error correction is still black and white -- it's not analogue. It either fixes the problem or it doesn't. If it fails you don't get the sound but with reduced fidelity as if it is an overplayed LP.
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DSD said:
4) They are uncompressed, by making them Stereo-only there is enough space on the disc to avoid DST lossless compression. Many claim uncompressed music sounds better, for example in computer audio uncompressed WAV and AIFF are believed to be superior to lossless FLAC and ALAC.
I think this is really about computer audio in general. The problem is that a general purpose PC or MAC has a myriad of processes going on, unseen in the background, starting with anti virus, but there are many more. Some sophisticated computer audiophiles have methods for "quieting" or eliminating many of these. In any case, the computing resources required during playback, especially involving the unpacking of lossless codecs, can cause contention for those limited resources. The bits still come out perfect, but their timing may have been subtly altered in waiting for the necesssary resources to become available, with sonic consequences. We are probably talking 10's or 100's of picoseconds, but with music, that may be crucial. It is just another form of potential playback jitter or subtle timing issues. Uncompressed data requires less computing resources, so it may be less susceptible.
So, while I think PC playback can do an adequate job, I think it best to avoid the PC altogether on playback. that has been said in some computer audio forums. Best to author a hard drive on the PC with downloads and rips, then play it back on a purpose built audio device which is free of the background resource contention of a PC. The Oppo 93/95 do an excellent job of this right from the hard drive via eSata or USB. Several of us have found this to sound slightly but noticeably better than the silver disk from the same player on CD rips.
I think this may also be potentially better than a NAS hard drive storage device connected via Ethernet for similar reasons, but I have not tried that. In any case, I have found a far better, far less costly solution in the form of an 8 bay hard drive dock that connects to the Oppo via USB. In this way, my library can expand to many Terabytes.
So, I do not think it is lossless compression per se. That is bit perfect, and it can be proven as such. It is the PC and its timing issues that are the likely culprit.
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