Oh Ye of Little Format


Tonight our group of 13 people held a blind A/B/C  test comparing

Formats of CD, SACD and Apple Sound.

We listened to one minute three formats of five different cuts

ranging from Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, Santana

Celine Dion, & one other.

 

The cuts were removed from the same CD using different layers.

 

Bottom line- Nobody zeroed in on anything! The Apple Sound actually

was slightly the favorite. Try it yourself.

 

Sound leveling software was employed and were the services 

of sound engineer. 

 

I always thought SACDs were nothing special. 

Now if an XRCD had been included I think it would have been preferred

but you can perform the same test using XRCD due to the way

it is recorded.

 

The fun never stops here...

 

 

 

 

chorus

This is when a group of people start writing that blind testing is not valid.  Why anyone would think that a group of people trying to reach a conclusion without knowing which item is producing which sound is not a more valid test than any other testing method where visual bias enters is beyond my logic.

The cuts were removed from the same CD using different layers.

Not sure what that means. You were not playing the original source?

The results are meaningless if the system specifics aren’t listed.  A lower end system wouldn’t have the resolving capability to hear a difference.

A lower end system wouldn’t have the resolving capability to hear a difference.

What? You mean a Radio Shack bookshelf and a Realistic receiver isn't state of the art? 

red book format was found to be sufficient enough in resolution and anything introduced to market later didn't work.

the answer is in market statistics whether it has or hasn't differences or whether it's worth the format or not.