I’ve done the same test and we were all over the place with our answers. So many albums are poorly recorded, so it doesn’t matter what the format. “you can t make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.”
All the best.
JD
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...
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- 27 posts total
@audio-union "In conclusion I would like to say this; my search is for great recordings of great music, format is optional." T H A N K Y O U ‼️ |
Blind tests are interesting. In most blind tests, people tend to look for the obvious differences first. So they tend to find the easy things. A bit more treble or bass or loudness...all the things compression can give you. Long ago, I remember listening to Brubeck’s Take Five and chose CD over LP. The CD had more treble and the bass was jacked up. It was remastered. It was after listening to the track many times that I noticed more ’air’ and decay in the snare drum with the LP. And after some time, I began to prefer the LP. This is not an vinyl vs digital argument. I enjoy both. This is about the various recording qualities out there regardless of format. The remastered CD was just jacked up to sound sweeter. This happens more often these days. I prefer digital recordings that are truer to the original production. The magic is often in the middle. And that is not easy to understand in a blind listening test as I think we’re looking for the obvious.
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Time for a gross generalisation interlude?
Music in the 50s was made for radiograms? Music in the 60s was made for Dansette type record players which had a speaker built inside it's console? Music in the 70s was made for listening to in cars. Music in the 80s was made for walkmans? Ditto the 90s. Music in the 00s was made for the iPod? Music in the 10s was made for the smartphone?
Perhaps one day we might finally see music recorded for first rate audio playback systems? |
Of course the quality of a recording trumps all formats.
Relar- Thanks for sharing your comparisons. I wonder if a high res download would sound superior to the same hi-res ripped of a CD and stored as a file?
Sandy- Magic in the middle. I like that idea. It is funny how the magazines, Youtubers and other Experts all eschew the merits of blind anything. To me you have to be blind not to recognize the value of such tests.
cd318- Very clever! Thanks for the memories!! |
- 27 posts total