Digital Emperor has no clothes


Anybody read this? Pretty interesting stuff...

http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
wolf_garcia

Showing 2 responses by kijanki

I'm pretty sure you can find other double blind studies that prove otherwise. Stereophile reviewers found huge difference between SACD and CD playback. Notion that double blind study is flawless since it does not contain placebo effect is false IMHO. Just tell people participating in the test that they should not hear any difference and they won't - negative placebo effect.

It is hard to believe that the same engineers who created original CD decided to created another system that sounds the same. Main problem with 44kHz sampling rate is the fact that antialias filters used in A/D processing screw up transient response. Also Nyquist theorem applies to continuous waves only. Because of that short samples of high frequency, like cymbals, get really screwed up and that is exactly what people who decided to go with Vinyl complained about in digital playback.

SACD is completely different from traditional converters and in reality is unfiltered byproduct of delta-sigma modulation (or class D amps). While many people can tell difference in sound between traditional ladder type 16 bit D/A converters and delta-sigma variety it is hard to imagine that they would not hear the same difference between CD and SACD.
"I like the point about SACD or more carefully recorded things sounding better because they were more carefully recorded...hmmm"

They could easily find CD and SACD processed from the same 24/192 master tape and play both layers on the same SACD player.

Statement that 192kHz recording is harmful because it contain high frequency is BS. It is much easier to filter out 192kHz than 44kHz. It is even easier to filter out 2.8MHz carrier in SACD. Not only that author claims that 192kHz is harmful because it is higher than 44kHz but moment later talks about benefits of oversampling - increasing sample rate to ... yes harmful 192kHz.