Oh Ye of Little Format

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!!

Ok. About 3 years ago, I met Gus Skinas up in his Boulder Studio upstairs at the PS Audio factory. An amazing and very nice man to talk to. Did a great one hour Zoom session with our gang of six 2 years ago.

Anyways. My comment to Gus was. How in hell did I hear a clear difference between the SACD of any of the Elton John reissues that he mastered the SACD layer on and the Super Bit Mapped CD layer. My system 20 years ago was a Denon AVR-1802 Home Theater Receiver and a Pioneer DV578-A Universal Disc Player via its Analog outs to the Analog in of the AVR. The SACD easily sounded more LP like without the inner groove distortion and surface noise that I always hated on cheap LP pressings.
 

Now saying all that. In 2003, I bought both the LP & SACD of the 30th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon. The SACD’s 5.1 is amazing but to my ears, the LP outclasses the 2.0 SACD. It’s not a night and day difference nonetheless.

As Gus told me. “It’s all in the mastering” and of course there condition of the master tapes.

I stream a lot via AmazonHD (I did a direct comparison to Qobuz - no difference in audio quality). Both companies are clearly adding some “spice” to the streams. The CD version always sounds better in most cases but not all. 
 

As for high bitrate PCM ? Great for preservation but is it better than a CD. Again, depends on how it was mastered.

The Hendrix SACD’s are the best I’ve heard.

My DAC ? PS Audio DirectStream DAC Sr. 

Sounds tedious.  I hope there was a lot of alcohol involved.

Dare I suggest that the type of music used might have had something to do with the outcome?  SACD has been kept alive mainly by Classical Music lovers, none of which was used here.  I will probably be criticized as Elitist but CM makes more demands on a system than bog standard Pop Music.  As just one example, both Shostakovich and Mahler use a lot of low level percussion that infuses even the quieter portions of their music, such as subtle toppings of the gong that fills out the bottom end.  One reason that concerts have always bested recordings is that not only can you hear it but the way it seems to infuse the sonic canvas from the ground up can be breathtaking.  This stuff gets lost in the mix on most recordings.  With vinyl it’s truly lost due to the decreased dynamic range and competition with surface noise.  However on a well recorded SACD it’s there, not only as a separate element in the mix, but one that can permeate the listening room while simultaneously being low volume