Hi-res digital audio vs sacd

+ 1 @ bubba12.    Just like some SACDs are upsampled, some high Rez down loads have the same issue.   To quote someone in the political world, " it is the recording stupid".  No offense intended.

What’s the difference? They’re all compressed anyway, even SACDs and hi res downloads. I'm going back. Back to the future!

The overall sound quality of any recording will be far more dependent on mixing and mastering over the nuances of one technology over another. If you had a large physical SACD collection, there would be some sense to obtain a player that can also serves as an external DAC. Otherwise the future is certainly in digital file format.

The thing about SACD and most DSD recordings that has its origins in a digital domain, its almost always except in the rarest of instances, started its life as PCM recording. Its vastly easier to mix and master from a PCM based recording as most packages work mainly on this format. So the last stage of DSD conversion for is somewhat trivial and plays only to the common architecture of modern Sigma-Delta DAC chips, which had often been single bit designs with oversampling. It introduces a bit of noise, but a low pass digital filter is implemented to push it out of the audio band. 

But since many recordings were just red book conversions, it was just really people noticing some of the filtering differences and combination with certain analog circuit designs. Not too much of a game changer.

There are a ton of supposed HiRes recordings out there that are nothing but digital upsamples. Total and complete ripoffs and you can only make the determination using an application to make an analysis of the files. I've often noticed that multi track recordings might have one track that was recorded above red book resolution (often a sample) and is used to justify a recording being deemed HiRes. Only analog recordings being reconverted to HiRes format typically contain more content that many supposed modern HiRes digital recordings. HDTracks has been known to sell tracks that are nothing but upsamples (although they state its what had been given to them by the publisher). I have read they check recordings these days, but as I stated, if one track in part of a multi track recording is HiRes, it gets the HiRes label. To me, this is fraud. There should be a standard that shows Redbook, Partial, and Full HiRes music.

So before you get too far down this road of advanced formats, focus on the music and quality of recordings over technology used. Today, the technology is used to fleece the customer in convincing some in getting something they simply are not.

Ah, weekend rant completed!

Thanks guys, for all of this perspective. Yeah, I've decided to pass on the SACD player, simply because I don't listen to that much classical, and it seems not worth the investment just to have a few recordings/masters that might not be available elsewhere. I'm satisfied with the quality and collection of lossless files, but truthfully, I listen 85% through vinyl, so my money is probably best spent elsewhere. :)

@mmeysarosh thank you for the illuminating insight into DSD conversion and the introduction of noise. I always thought it was a native format from the start, either from analog masters or new recordings. I had heard about the amount of converted PCM, but never thought that the conversion would add noise. Nonetheless, I wouldn't ever want to buy SACDs that were just converted, upsampled CDs in the first place.

The actual recording can either be good or not so good no matter the format. It depends on the original. Also, in the case of remastered works, the engineer doing the remastering make a difference also. I my limited opinion. I have SACD, DSD, FLAC playback capabilities. Some are good, some bad, a few great!