Primer on sample rates and high rez

[Turboglo]

I'm wondering if anyone can direct me to a good beginner's lesson on the various digital formats, sample rates, etc.

 

Now that I have my system up and running, I want to know more about high resolution options. For example, if I play a DVD-A through my standard DVD player, what kind of resolution am I getting? If I take the same disc and rip it as an AAIF file, what's the resolution. If I then play it back through iTunes, am I getting the same resolution? Would my MacBook be able to rip SACD's and play them back at full resolution? What about HDCD's?

 

I'm pretty ignorant about all of this, so the simpler and easier for a non-techie to understand, the better.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hey Turboglo - Here is a link to some sampling rate info on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sampling_rate It may not be a beginners guide though :-( I am working on some beginner stuff though.

 

 

 

"if I play a DVD-A through my standard DVD player, what kind of resolution am I getting?"

 

It i likely your standard DVD player would only work with 16/48 or 24/48 or something similar. Most likely not 24/96 or 24/192 stereo or multichannel. It will really depend on the player and the disc.

 

"If I take the same disc and rip it as an AAIF file, what's the resolution."

 

if you use the DVDAExplorer application you can rip at the resolution of the music which may be 24/96 or even 24/192. It will rip as a wav files then you use Max to convert to an AIFF.

 

 

"If I then play it back through iTunes, am I getting the same resolution?"

 

iTunes will play the resolution of the music you give it. I rip DVD-Audio discs and play back 24/96 and 24/192 through iTunes.

 

"Would my MacBook be able to rip SACD's and play them back at full resolution? "

 

Nope. SACD is another animal all together. Not many people can do this. MusicGiants has a player worth over $100k that allows them to do this.

 

"What about HDCD's?"

 

Certainly. iTunes will rip and playback HDCD content bit perfect every time. I've tested it over and over. in fact the Reference Recordings downloads from HDtracks.com are all HDCD albums and iTunes plays them perfectly.

 

 

[markr]

Possibly another way to get you to the information that you seek, right now, offered up in the way you would prefer it, would be to show you a webpage that resulted from a google search on the phrase:' digital audio formats '

 

Here is the page I got:

 

http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en-us&q=digital+audio+formats&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8

 

After clicking on and checking out all the links available on the just first page here (there are at least 9 more pages after this one), The link that I liked the best - it might not be the one that you prefer though - was this one:

 

http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=372009

 

There was even this link at the bottom to a 'google book' - VERY cool. ... hopefully, this link will get you to the right page in the right chapter of that book:

 

http://books.google.com/books?id=w0vsd5z2Rg4C&pg=PT168&lpg=PT168&dq=digital+audio+formats&source=web&ots=4_g51v8uz9&sig=KfMd5NwIPM0qDOSXWWkVqcAYud4&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=12&ct=result#PPT168,M1

 

I love the internet

 

markr

 

[illuminetics]

Some great links here. Thanks! There's so much to know about audio now days. Personally, I rip my CD's onto my home-assembled music server as FLAC files. It's an open source "lossless" format with lots of benifits.

 

http://flac.sourceforge.net/

 

The protocol isn't a s simple as CD-A "Red Book" format, but it keeps the quality intact.

 

Randy

 

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Randy - Welcome to Computer Audiophile and thanks for the post.