Upsampled SACD's

Bruce B

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So what's everyones take on this practice? I'm finding more and more labels that take the RBCD layer and just upsample it to DSD and call it an SACD. I've checked almost a hundred today for HDtracks and over half are upsampled. Go figure....



Regards,
 

Kal Rubinson

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So what's everyones take on this practice? I'm finding more and more labels that take the RBCD layer and just upsample it to DSD and call it an SACD. I've checked almost a hundred today for HDtracks and over half are upsampled. Go figure....
Impressive. Can I ask you how you selected the ones you assessed?
 

Bruce B

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Impressive. Can I ask you how you selected the ones you assessed?

As most know, we do all the hi-rez transfers for HDtracks. Sometimes we get 100 or so at a time. This shipment had quite a few upsampled discs.
Now with people listening with their eyes, we're having to check every single disc (and track) that we do. I've found a few discs where there were 3-4 tracks that were upsampled and the rest were pure DSD.


Regards,
 

Kal Rubinson

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As most know, we do all the hi-rez transfers for HDtracks. Sometimes we get 100 or so at a time. This shipment had quite a few upsampled discs.
Now with people listening with their eyes, we're having to check every single disc (and track) that we do. I've found a few discs where there were 3-4 tracks that were upsampled and the rest were pure DSD.
Regards,
Hmm. Not a scientific sampling. What I would like to know is if you can comment about newly recorded SACDs, i.e., those originally released on SACD, and those that are reissues? The majority of HDTracks repertoire consists of re-released, presumably re-mastered pop/rock stuff and I am really only interested in classical.
 

RBFC

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I'm sure that there are a lot of pop/rock albums that were not recorded in native DSD. Those that have redbook PCM digital masters would have to be upsampled, while those with master analog tape could be directly captured via DSD.

Lee
 

Nicholas Bedworth

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Maui, where else?
@Bruce...

This may be a slightly delicate question, but would you be willing to recommend say 10 of HD Tracks best sounding albums? I need a 24/96 reference library, so to speak, for all my reviewing work with high-end DACs, music servers, etc. A lot will be coming out on Blue Note but not for another couple of months. I'm definitely looking for "real" high-res material, not upsampled anything.

BTW is it true that most SACDs are edited in PCM?

Robert Harley related in the TAS article on 25 years of the CD that in his days as a CD mastering engineer, the labels would hand out a 3rd level master tape (2 levels down from the real master) to make the CD. Robert said that this was pretty much standard practice.

The notion of taking an RBCD, which can be bad enough, and then converting it to SACD, yucko! I don't know what other people are experiencing, but SACD has never been tolerable for me. There "must" (maybe?) be some goods ones out there, but... Certain Learned Digital Audio Luminaries will spit coffee at the mere mention of SACD, that's for sure.
 

MylesBAstor

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@Bruce...

This may be a slightly delicate question, but would you be willing to recommend say 10 of HD Tracks best sounding albums? I need a 24/96 reference library, so to speak, for all my reviewing work with high-end DACs, music servers, etc. A lot will be coming out on Blue Note but not for another couple of months. I'm definitely looking for "real" high-res material, not upsampled anything.

BTW is it true that most SACDs are edited in PCM?

Robert Harley related in the TAS article on 25 years of the CD that in his days as a CD mastering engineer, the labels would hand out a 3rd level master tape (2 levels down from the real master) to make the CD. Robert said that this was pretty much standard practice.

The notion of taking an RBCD, which can be bad enough, and then converting it to SACD, yucko! I don't know what other people are experiencing, but SACD has never been tolerable for me. There "must" (maybe?) be some goods ones out there, but... Certain Learned Digital Audio Luminaries will spit coffee at the mere mention of SACD, that's for sure.

Well if one wants to hear something made from THE master tape, get ahold of the new Nat King Cole 45 rpm LP reissues or the SACD/CD. Rather than using the three-->2 track mixdown tapes --and then another generation to account for the tape sent for mastering the LP, Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray did the impossible :) They set their mastering system up to go directly from the three track master to the lacquer (or digital recorder). This is as close as most audiophiles will get to the original tape!

And the results are impressive--though I still am put off by the popular use of echo chambers back then (to be fair, Steve reduced the echo too).
 

Kal Rubinson

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I may be biased (ain't we all?) but, for stringent testing with digital media, I would consider only newly recorded materials that are high-res from the mic feed. Analog-sourced material, no matter how good, still will have SNR limits inherent in the original media, including the master tapes. So, while I am a big fan of the RCA Living Stereo SACDs, they would not qualify. Also, I do not consider the presence of a hi-res PCM intermediary or original as disqualifying (for many reasons).

For downloads, I recommend those from 2L, Reference Recordings and (selected) Linn tracks.
 

Bruce B

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For HDtracks recomendations, I'd say anything from the PentaTone label. "Some" of the new Verve stuff is good as well.
For anything processed in DSD, yes, you need to change the format.... either add bits or use 352.8kHz. Any DSD processing that I do goes to the analog domain and then back to DSD.
2L is good for DXD downloads.. don't know about Reference Recordings. I've heard otherwise about 1 or 2 albums.
 

jimtavegia

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Pardon my igrnorance.

Bruce,

Is the issue for you that you are not getting recorded material in good enough(recorded/engineered) form that it cannot just be trasferred to DSD on a track by track basis? Is 24/192 a good format for a pure "to- DSD" transfer? That would seem to be easy enough to do now for most pros?

Every time the files are handled there has to be something lost, right?
 

jimtavegia

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Quote: "Any DSD processing that I do goes to the analog domain and then back to DSD."

I may be mistaken by what you had said. Does this mean that you take the DSD Data, convert it to analogue, do what ever mastering you feel needs to be done, and then convert it back to DSD?

If there is some link that would help me understand this process I would be most appreicative?
 

amirm

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Why would anything be lost in the transfer of digital to digital :confused:
Let's say you have the following digital samples:

191 256 197 200

And you want to double their sample rate (i.e. have 8 samples instead of four). How would you do that? Remember that digital audio samples cannot have fractions!
 

MylesBAstor

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Let's say you have the following digital samples:

191 256 197 200

And you want to double their sample rate (i.e. have 8 samples instead of four). How would you do that? Remember that digital audio samples cannot have fractions!

So that's why we were taught "new" math in grade school :)
 

Mike Lavigne

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The notion of taking an RBCD, which can be bad enough, and then converting it to SACD, yucko! I don't know what other people are experiencing, but SACD has never been tolerable for me. There "must" (maybe?) be some goods ones out there, but... Certain Learned Digital Audio Luminaries will spit coffee at the mere mention of SACD, that's for sure.

Nicholas,

while we agree that mastering any music in redbook would be a mistake; i totally disagree with you on your SACD comment. maybe you've not heard a decent SACD player, or possibly, PCM is your reference.

i have lots of PCM high rez downloads on my server and clearly prefer SACD to them......unless you get above 192/24 and then i still prefer SACD in general.

and who cares what a bunch of 'Learned Digital Audio Luminaries' think? that sounds like some communicable disease.
 

Mike Lavigne

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Quote: "Any DSD processing that I do goes to the analog domain and then back to DSD."

I may be mistaken by what you had said. Does this mean that you take the DSD Data, convert it to analogue, do what ever mastering you feel needs to be done, and then convert it back to DSD?

If there is some link that would help me understand this process I would be most appreicative?

i don't know Bruce's gear like he does; but i have been in his studio and watched him convert DSD to analog, run it thru his analog processor (i think it's called a Neve), and convert it back to DSD. with the analog Neve processor Bruce can manipulate the signal in the analog domain, add depth, reverb, etc. etc. this is infinitly less harmful to the integrity of the precious DSD signal than a PCM processor. once that signal is converted to PCM there is a bit of life that is lost....at least to my ears.

btw; i do see the value of upconverting DSD to very high rez PCM so it can be downloaded from a server. however; this will not sound as good as the original SACD. the difference may not be great, but there will be a difference.
 
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amirm

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Quote: "Any DSD processing that I do goes to the analog domain and then back to DSD."

I may be mistaken by what you had said. Does this mean that you take the DSD Data, convert it to analogue, do what ever mastering you feel needs to be done, and then convert it back to DSD?

If there is some link that would help me understand this process I would be most appreicative?
Think of the example I showed Steve in digital domain. That problem is completely avoided if you convert the signal to analog, then use DSD *analog* to digital convert as you would any other analog signal. In doing so, you perform a resampling without any math or digital processing. The system just works.

The drawback is increased noise floor, and increased distortion due to round-trip to and from analog.

Analog devices used to have a resampling DAC years ago which worked precisely this way internally to the chip!
 

Bruce B

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Bruce,

Is the issue for you that you are not getting recorded material in good enough(recorded/engineered) form that it cannot just be trasferred to DSD on a track by track basis?

No, the problem is that labels record at 44.1 or 48k and then upsample to DSD for SACD. Then they give me the SACD to rip the DSD files off of them to give to HDtracks. If there is a brickwall filter at 22 or 24k, then HDtracks can not sell them as hi-rez files. People listen with their eyes (spectral analysis) and start bitchin'. I'd say, on the whole... we get 30-40% regection rate because labels repackaged lo-rez files and charged more money to dupe the consumer thinking you have hi-rez files.
 

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