Coping in an Age of Uncertainty

Hello: Although I have purchased a number of SACD's and a few DVD- A's, I am disapointed in the audio quality of most of them. I am also noticing a number of disturbing trends. 1. Everything is now being released in "surround format", and this reduces the sonic quality of two-channel SACD playback. Has anyone with VU meters noticed the sub-sonic garbage level visible before the music starts. This must be harmful to the overall sound, if amps are attempting to reproduce it!! 2. Look carefully at the origins of the SACDs you buy. Very few are true DSD all the way through. Many of the master tapes are DAT 48Khz, or analog, or are edited on non-DSD equipment! 3. The vast majority of pre-amps, amps etc that can handle surround formats are oriented towards video and home-theatre, with many features un-needed and undesirable for pure audio setups!! The current issue of TAS features Harry Pierson raving about an audio surround system made up largely of hardware not yet available to ordinary mortals (i.e., non professionals). Have you tried to buy a Meitner processor??!!! Have you got the over 30 grand to buy the DCS Verdi...etc. etc. It would seem that truly proper reproduction of the best SACD and DVD Audio releases is only availaable to insiders in the industry and well-heeled audio critics. And this is a revolution??? I think they'll be growing coconuts at the north pole before most audiophiles are enjoying this "great revolution"!

I owned the sony SCD-1 when it first came out...I own a Levinson 360s DAC and 37 transport now....I've since listened to possible replacements at my local audio salon and at home...short of possibly $20K plus gear...buy the Levinson and forget about the future...enjoy the present!!

I agree entirely with Irishdog. The multi-channel discs out there, with the possible exception of Telarc's, are miserable. They are mixed poorly, and often sound no better than synthesized Pro-Logic. Along these lines, many surround recordings have that 360-degree quality that is completely unnatural and harkens back to the days of primitive quad or some of the early DTS releases. Music, by and large, comes from the front, and most, if not all, multi-channels force the rears to do the same work as the fronts. They do not carry mere "ambient" sound, which is what would make it more interesting, to actually "hear" the hall. Many of them, it is true, are not original DSD recordings, but rather re-mastered PCM sources, which, in some cases, have been upsampled, but nowhere near the level that would make a difference to anyone. And then there is the debate of whether DSD is actually better at all than high-resolution PCM (176.4 Khz/ 24-bit). Some of the very best engineers I have spoken with still swear by PCM for recording and mastering and only transcode to DSD for the sole purpose of creating a marketing buzz (viz. SACD). And then there is the other problem of whether you are actually hearing a DSD signal at all. Many receiver/amp/processors convert to PCM before sending it out, and some "universal" players do the same, so we are all back where we started from. Finally, there is other problem that the music industry is using the 5.1 standard, which was designed for movies, and there is a lot of debate of whether this is the appropriate set up for surround music. Some, like Chesky, are advocating for a 6.0 set-up without a center, but with "side-rears". Either way, I have been really disappointed with the bulk of the surround discs and have only been impressed with a handful of SACD stereo releases.

Libor35 states the current condition of audio format lunacy extremely well!! I have around 500 redbook CD's; of that amount, about 80% are vastly superior to any DSD, HDCD or High Res PCM discs I have! The technology used to make a recording dwarfs in comparison to the ability of the recording engineers and how they apply their craft. Most new format discs remind me of what I refer to as the "New HI-FI"...they just don't sound natural, like reall instruments playing in a real acoustic space.

I just purchased a CAL CL-2500 DVD player with the goal of improving the quality of my CD playback. I had heard the CL-20, and was very impressed with its capabilities as a CD player.

I was at first excited about its ability to play DVD Audio discs and HDCD. It turned out I was mistaken on the HDCD -- the CL-20 and CL-10 both support it, but on the newer CL-2500, CAL seems to have rejected HDCD support. And DVD Audio appears to have changed to an incompatible 24/192ksps format in the few years since the CL-2500 was built. No matter, there were really only about 1-2 discs I was really interested in, compared to the 400-500 CDs in my collection. SACD seems more prolific, but there are still only about 3-4 that I would buy if I had a player. Even HDCD, which is more common than DVD-A or SACD, has only a handful of titles that interest me, which I of course own since HDCD is merely a special encoding on a standard CD. None of the special formats offers enough titles or enough benefit to cause me to even consider compatibility as a factor in choosing a CD player.

You should all be concerned that the "audiophile" formats may never get off the ground, because music distribution is headed towards internet distribution -- which means lossy digital compression and lower sample rates and resolution. Not only that, but the promoters of the formats are sabotaging their own efforts -- SACD because it is proprietary, DVD-A because they changed the format mid-stream to something that existing players, and DVD-Video players, cannot play.

No, unless you are comfortable letting the published catalogue of the "advanced" formats dictate what you listen to, neither format is viable yet. I don't predict them becoming viable anytime soon.

Just look at HDCD -- it's a completely compatible format, but like SACD is proprietary and requires a license to record or to decode. It's been around for years and is still in very limited use. Personally, I hope it dies a quiet death. It does not seem to offer higher potential for quality than standard CD, but sacrifices the sound quality on incompatible players.

I am very pleased with my purchase...despite the fact that the new player recognizes neither SACD nor new-format DAD, it makes CDs sound really good. For someone like me who listens to a wide variety of (sometimes really obscure or unpopular) music, improving the sound quality of all my albums is much better than making slight additional improvements on a couple of titles.