Hi-Res - Does it matter? Blind Test by Mark Waldrep

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

2L is a Swedish audiophile label, and I have a couple of their Blu-Ray releases. If you want to capture the 60 KHz on them, you do definitely need at least a 120 KHz sampling rate (likely either 176.4 or 192 KHz), but I seriously question why. BTW, I doubt seriously (in fact , I know) that you won’t find the mikes you just mentioned being used on a regular basis at MCA, Warner, EMI, TelDec, or DGG!

 

I know both especially the DPA but also the Sennheisers being used for lot of classical recordings by different labels. Especially if you look at 5.1 channel Decca-trees or similar suspended from concert hall ceilings. Like here in Helsinki. DPA used to have 130V phantom versions of 4006 etc, and especially those are used in high quality recordings. Many still have the original versions under B&K brand, before DPA split.

 

When I'm looking at for example HiFi-News reviews of recent hires recordings, many of the 96k tracks, or even most, have content reaching the 48k Nyquist.

 

If someone is making hires releases, it only makes sense to invest into hires capable microphones as well.

 

P.S. 2L is Norwegian, not Swedish...

 

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

Right now, I am using an AudioQuest Cobalt in my office system, AFAICS, it does not support DSD, but the Chord Quetest that I have on loan does, and I have used it to listen to my DSD master files. Without that, I have to rely on my Kong MR-2000s or MR-1 to play them back!

 

OK, the Chord converts DSD to PCM first and then back to SDM. But the Korg does have actually DSD capable DAC too. And a real 1-bit DSD ADC (any PCM recording with it is just DSD-to-PCM conversion).

 

[Miska]

7 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

The exact thought process that stunted adoption of SACD.

 

I think that has much more to do with technical annoyances. It is still alive and kicking. But DSD only took off properly after it appeared in computer audio and downloads. DVD-Audio based on LPCM and Meridian's proprietary compression (from the same guys that brought you MQA) died really quick. Although that compression is still in a way alive on Bluray.

 

Physical media, be it RedBook, SACD or Bluray is pretty much dead.

 

[Miska]

4 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

And many of the hi-res releases are of older material, either originally analog, originally 16/44 digital, or early attempts at 24/96 or DSD. 

 

Yes, some of the analog material is actually pretty good. I run analysis of all the hires content I get to have idea what it contains.

 

96/24 has been around for quite a while. I got my first 8 channel in, 8 channel out 96/24 AD/DA converter exactly 20 years ago... That was actually pretty nice device.

 

[Miska]

1 minute ago, gmgraves said:

Ok, I suspect our friend Mario Martinez also uses the latest wide-band microphones. When Telarc was still recording, they decided to release everything after around 2000 in DSD, but Bob Woods, their engineer used the same B&K omnis that he always used. While these were “calibration mics”, and had very flat response, I recall that they didn’t go very far above 20K.

 

You can still get the same stuff under DPA brand, like 4006 and 4007...

[Miska]

6 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Go back a little over 15 years ago for SACD. If you think DSD took off please explain it looks like a dead format to me.

 

I cannot tell why it looks dead to you. DSD looks very much alive to me, more than before because it is not tied to SACD anymore.

 

7 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

The math of high resolution is troubling especially if you take out crash cymbals. 

 

No, it is exactly the opposite. Math of RedBook is really troubling in that case. In RedBook you break the harmonic structure one way or the other. And every way sounds different. With RedBook, you need massive amount of complex DSP to make anything nearly good out of it. That is also why DAC chips struggle with it so much.

 

6 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

I told them the only thing preventing from being vaporware is that it is in DAC chips but chip manufactures never could give a good reason why they included DSD.

 

Good that they do, because in most cases it is way to get best technical performance out of the chip.

 

[Miska]

13 hours ago, mansr said:

These days, they probably simply paste in their existing DSD handling block with minimal tweaking for each new chip.

 

Looking how couple of recent AKM chip generations behave, that is not the case...

 

For me, the more interesting part are all the different discrete designs though.

 

[Miska]

There are pdp-11 systems running RSX still operational today, doing critical tasks. Very few other systems have stood time as well as those ones...

 

Anybody still remembers RL02 disks? Probably one of the very first HDD's with swappable disks.

 

Gotta also love pdp-11's printer terminal...

 

[Miska]

7 minutes ago, John Dyson said:

It is amazing what people sometimes had to do in fortran...  I had to do similar kinds of things also -- it was always Fortran.  I did try to use Pascal for one such project  -- it was garbage, because the compiller was a true Pascal compiler...  Evil thing.   Pascal is one of those languages that it is nice to have additional features...

 

On one track, once Pascal developed into Turbo Pascal which developed into Delphi, it is pretty great.

 

On another track, once Pascal developed into Modula/2, and then Oberon and finally into Ada, it is also great.

 

But I do my things in C++11, C and assembly... For practical reasons, not beauty. (for the math stuff I could as well use Fortran, but I don't)

 

[Miska]

31 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

In one of the tests used in that same meta-analysis there was also a small but statistically significant ability of test subjects to prefer mp3.

 

There are actually at least two reasons for preferring MP3:

1) Younger generation has grown with and has learned that as a reference how things "should sound"

2) MP3 removes some of the distortion harmonics generated by loudness wars

 

P.S. If you've been at all into TikTok, you know how badly the music there goes even beyond loudness wars. It is like guitar distortion steroids, all bass lines are pushed into rattling distortion that really sounds like badly distorted - on purpose. IOW, most of the sound tracks there sound like utter garbage. But many people think that's "cool".

 

[Miska]

39 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

That is a very logical assumption I would agree with in the context as stated.  Though, audible differences between lossless and a lossy format converted with care from a good source are not particularly obvious, regardless of the generation doing the listening. 

 

They are, when you know what to listen for. Then it becomes pretty obvious.

 

Of course if the material is something like solo piano, it is much harder because it doesn't put any notable pressure on the encoder.

 

Quote

One of the issues I've personally noticed with higher bit rate lossy formats from popular streaming options is occasional clipping from inter-sample peaks.  I can take the same lossless version of that song and create my own lossy conversion, ensuring that the clipping is not present

 

Since my upsampling algorithms detect such cases, I run with settings that clipping due to inter-sample overs never happens. Pretty much all even remotely recent RedBook is infested with a lot of such and hard digital clipping.

 

Quote

Apple's 256 kbps AAC is really good for the file size.

 

I have not paid any attention on file size in past 10 years or so. At the moment I have 4 TB of free space and when it seems like it is getting close to 1 TB, I just add more 10+ TB HDD's and have the problem dealt with.

 

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, Sonicularity said:

Yet nobody provides any definitive proof that silences the naysayers.

 

If there would be, they wouldn't believe it. Next level is to ask proof for a proof. Proof for a proof that proof is proven. Still not convinced.

 

Just accept that not everything in the world is proven to be black and white. Makes life a little bit easier.