The HD music fft atlas reference thread

[ted_b]

when you find downloads like the Saracon-based Stones transfers. It has been "discovered" that Saracon has such deep aggressive DSD filtering that all is lost after 24/88k...thereby making it seem like the offer for a premium priced 24/176k version is bogus. However, when asked of Daniel Weiss (designer and/or owner of said Saracon software) his response was "well, your DAC may perform better at 24/176k". This seems like a stretch and not really a reason for premium pricing...maybe it's just me.

 

Anyway, this industry is full of questions and fakeries and questionable decisions by labels, manufacturers and distributors. it's also full of wonderful music. It seems too much of the time the consumer is the police here.

 

[aj]

on this forum, long time lurker, great site, enjoyable civilized atmosphere.

 

I too find it disturbing not to be able to trust the merchandise. Kudo's to wgscott for starting this thread.

 

Been buying some tracks from both Linn and HD Tracks, some ok, some less ok.

 

 

 

[aj]

 

 

 

[aj]

 

 

 

[aj]

 

 

[aj]

 

 

 

[barrows]

"of said Saracon software) his response was "well, your DAC may perform better at 24/176k"."

 

Daniel Weiss has a very good point here. Many DACs should perform better with higher sample rates. They can apply gentler digital filtering with higher rates, resulting in less filter induced ringing artifacts, while still suppressing alias products and keeping phase realtionships intact-the lower the input sample rate, the more compromises have to be made in digital filter design. I often wonder if this is one of the primary advantages to higher sample rates in general.

 

[sandyk]

This track will almost certainly be identical to that from HD Tracks.

 

 

 

Perhaps somebody can supply the correct info to display this picture ?

 

 

 

 

 

[sandyk]

Sorry about the reperated attempts to post the picture.

 

[wgscott]

You need to use HTML tags:

 

 

And you need the actual image, not the embedded frame.

 

[sandyk]

Thanks for that. However, in this case the later .jpeg that I posted as an attachment is far clearer and more detailed.

Alex

 

[PeterSt]

Thanks, Peter. I've PM-ed you a link to the file, if you have a chance to look, I'd love to hear more.

 

Here is how the wave looks inside :

 

 

 

Allright, since you posted this in that other thread as well, and people went into it more than happened in this thread here, I worked it out somewhat further in the other thread : http://www.computeraudiophile.com/content/Scandal-Brewing-High-Resolution-Downloads#comment-88340

 

Regards,

Peter

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wgscott]

This looks good. They were kind enough to offer this as compensation, so I think we can rule out nefarious evildoing...

 

 

Sounds excellent, too. Much better than what I remember from vinyl and CD.

 

[PeterSt]

This seems to be an interesting one.

 

This seems to be a first example of HDTracks offering something different from the version I have here. My track 01 is just cut at 22.05. Furthermore, only track 02 and 06 are OK. The rest is sh*t.

This is taken from the 2ch stereo which is on the disk (5.1 is on there too).

 

[slowdown5646]

This is a 24/192 track I ripped from the Blu-ray disc of the Pixies Minotaur box set

 

First of all this is the first time I used Audacity for this and I'm not completely sure I did it right, because it looks completely messed up... But if I'm not mistaken, it kind of looks like it was upsampled from 48KHz.

 

Here's the 24/48 version from the DVD:

 

 

The DVD version was supposed to be 24/96 but it wasn't, so I'm sadly suspecting that the Blu-ray version was indeed upsampled unless I made a mistake when ripping the audio from it. More input would be appreciated here.

 

Also, I have the Talking Heads DualDisc and checked that out: tracks 2, 3, 6, and 8 all looked good while the other half were bad...

 

[wgscott]

Looks like rebook with clipping (maybe compression)?

 

[slowdown5646]

You know I didn't even notice that but now that you point it out, yea they both look like redbook. That also explains why I couldn't really tell the difference between the redbook and DVD versions... What a massive disappointment - I'm going to return the box set. R.E.M. doesn't disappoint though...

 

R.E.M. Out of Time DVD-A 24/96:

 

 

 

And 24/192

 

 

 

 

[slowdown5646]

I decided to check the other 4 albums that came with the boxset, and much to my surprise, Doolittle came out seemingly good on Blu-ray (but not on DVD).

 

Here's the waveform/spectrum for Monkey's Gone to Heaven:

 

 

 

I picked out the most unusual one just in case - it's the only one that had those red horizontal lines. The entire album looked pretty clean and good like this. Is it possible I ripped the Blu-ray incorrectly for everything but Doolittle? I find that extremely unlikely but I am confused that one album actually turned out well.

 

[Russell_L]

How did you rip the audio off of a Blu-ray disc? I was under the impression that it was near-impossible (and a whole lot of trouble) to do so. Did you use your MacBook Pro? I'd love to find an easy way to do this with my music BDs.

 

Thanks,

Russell

 

[slowdown5646]

Chris made a thread about ripping Blu-Ray audio. I followed that using an external Blu-ray drive but I used eac3to (in conjunction with Arcsoft's HD Decoder) instead of tsmuxer. It was indeed a whole lot of trouble and in the end I really got practically nothing out of it - but I would do it again (looking at Neil Young, Tom Petty) now that I know exactly what I have to do.

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

Carlos Kleiber | Vienna Philharmonic - Beethoven: Symphonies Nos.5 and 7

 

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=catalogdetail&valbum_code=HD00028944740028

 

This is track number 1, Symphony No.5 in C minor, Op.67: 1. Allegro con brio:

 

Click to enlarge

 

Obviously this is a SACD rip and they left all the DSD noise but fortunately it sounds fairly good as a whole, nothing spectacular though.

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=catalogdetail&valbum_code=HD00008811141721

 

This is track number 13, Pinball Wizard:

 

Click to enlarge

 

This sounds much better than the old CD I had. Considering the age of that album the noise during playback is not too bad. But what the spectrogram shows in terms of noise is baffling...it looks as if it's a DSD transfer with some permanent interference going on and hell if I know. Maybe someone else can clarify the noisy happenings here?

 

 

 

[Miska]

Both look like normal DSD transfers, based on color the noise peaks are roughly at -60 dBFS. (way less than many PCM DACs produce as digital images)

 

But that 28.5 kHz constant tone is likely coming from analog equipment, probably from an analog tape gear. Fairly high level of background noise would also indicate to same direction...

 

 

[Russell_L]

I did a rip of the DVD-A of this recording. I'll post an Audacity image of the same track after I get home tonight. Might be interesting to compare!

 

Russell

 

[Sik_Lescinovid]

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file=catalogdetail&valbum_code=HD602527585901

 

This is track number 1, "Köln, January 24, 1975, Part I":

 

Click to enlarge

 

Again there is a constant tone coming from analog equipment. This sounds great but I have nothing to compare it to. Also it's hard to tell if we're looking at an upsample because of the relatively low frequency range of a piano. The highest frequencies do seem to fade out naturally towards the top so it seems likely to me that it is indeed a good transfer.