For Those Naysayers...

Andre Marc said:

But my concern is I detected a bit of suspicion on your part about their new endeavor, and you made
an unsubstantiated claim about their SACD being of PCM origin. Except for the examples noted, it is simply
not true..

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I was suspicious when you look on Kevin Gray's website and there is no DSD equipment. Steve Hoffman doesn't have a mastering studio and March Mastering doesn't have any DSD equipment either. I know he has used Sterling and Gus S. in the past though.

I stated, "I wonder if these DSD files are just PCM upsamples??" Sounds like a question to me, not an unsubstantiated claim.

Bruce B said:

I was suspicious when you look on Kevin Gray's website and there is no DSD equipment. Steve Hoffman doesn't have a mastering studio and March Mastering doesn't have any DSD equipment either. I know he has used Sterling and Gus S. in the past though.

I stated, "I wonder if these DSD files are just PCM upsamples??" Sounds like a question to me, not an unsubstantiated claim.

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Cmon, Bruce, you pushed it further than that in follow up posts.

And as I said, Doug Sax has done the SACD mastering on the most recent stuff going back to Shelby Lynne etc

I can understand your animosity if Chad treated you impolitely, no excuse for that. But Kassem and Steve Hoffman, whether one likes their remasters
or not, have one thing that is a huge selling point..they only work with real deal masters...not copies, with almost no exceptions.

And that brings up another question..maybe Audio Fidelity will follow suit with downloads.

P.S. You are correct, Hoffman/Marsh use Gus S a lot. The CD layers of their SACDs do not use
downsampled DSD, they do a separate PCM capture.

I wish Chad the best...

man... it sounds like digital is more complicated than analog....after all.

Bruce B said:

BTW.... David coined the term "Audacity Cowboy"....

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Very clever of him - by writing off us "audacity cowboys" as, well.. audacity cowboys, he conveniently also threw doubt over the genuine discoveries of brute upsamplings from 44.1 kHz and zero-paddings from 16 bit to 24 bit. Seems to be a very common pattern - when you run out of factual arguments, try to write off your opponent with a pejorative. It works in politics, so why shouldn't it work in audio too?

Julf said:

Very clever of him - by writing off us "audacity cowboys" as, well.. audacity cowboys, ?

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it was because of those Audacity Cowboys that HDtracks and I spent countless hours responding to folks telling them that the files were fine and the software they were using either had a bug or they didn't know how to use their tools.
I'm sure you remember that part. You can also read the very large thread on SA-CD.net in response to BIS.

Let's say they are DSD masters. Is anyone here in a position to compare them to tape or high res PCMs of the same?

BTW, let's not interrogate Bruce anymore . He is our top expert in this field and we need his help in figuring out what is going on.....

Bruce B said:

it was because of those Audacity Cowboys that HDtracks and I spent countless hours responding to folks telling them that the files were fine and the software they were using either had a bug or they didn't know how to use their tools.
I'm sure you remember that part. You can also read the very large thread on SA-CD.net in response to BIS.

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I have never felt that HDTracks was selling bogus high rez. Period. My only beef was lack of any accompanying information
regarding the source.

Bruce B said:

it was because of those Audacity Cowboys that HDtracks and I spent countless hours responding to folks telling them that the files were fine and the software they were using either had a bug or they didn't know how to use their tools.
I'm sure you remember that part. You can also read the very large thread on SA-CD.net in response to BIS.

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I'm still waiting to see an example of where it was a software bug or user error that lead to a false conclusion. As I recall, the Talking Heads "True Stories" example was exactly the opposite situation.

As a scientist with 25 years experience with Fourier analysis, I found the characterization a bit off-putting to say the least, and the subsequent allegations libelous.

Interesting news, interesting thread, interesting comments.

Andre Marc said:

I have never felt that HDTracks was selling bogus high rez. Period.

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That is why you need to take a look at the objective data, rather than trust your feelings.



There are many such examples that can only be dismissed with considerable effort.

Andre Marc said:

I have never felt that HDTracks was selling bogus high rez. Period.

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I think "Hi-Fi News & Record Review", the only magazine I know of that actually does a technical review of Hi-res downloads, would disagree with you.

At some point, you have to ask yourself whether the facts actually matter.

wgscott said:

There are many such examples that can only be dismissed with considerable effort.

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And it's not just upsampling - here is Joni Mitchell's "Ladies Of The Canyon" from HDTracks:

16/24 bits 01-Morning Morgantown.flac
16/24 bits 02-For Free.flac
16/24 bits 03-Conversation.flac
16/24 bits 04-Ladies Of The Canyon.flac
16/24 bits 05-Willy.flac
16/24 bits 06-The Arrangement.flac
16/24 bits 07-Rainy Night House.flac
16/24 bits 08-The Priest.flac
16/24 bits 09-Blue Boy.flac
16/24 bits 10-Big Yellow Taxi.flac
16/24 bits 11-Woodstock.flac
16/24 bits 12-The Circle Game.flac

This is using a flac-based tool that analyzes "unused" bits, and it shows the material as 16 bits, but zero-padded into a 24-bit file.

It seems HDTracks has since updated the material they have available to something that looks like full 24 bits.

Unfortunately this tool is fairly simplistic - it definitely spots "obvious" zero-padding, but any resampling, filtering or gain change to the material causes interpolation that "uses" the empty bits, making the files look like "genuine" 24-bit files.

I'm not a professional on this industry but looking at mine I think that every distributors would gain quite a lot of customers if:

1- Simply supply information on the provenance of the source material!

Do you have any doubts that customers would by more 24/48 music if selled as it is and informed on about it? All these misleading, cross-firing information, ad the fact that we (the customers) have already bought digital content claimed to be something that it isn't is simply a turn-off. Same goes for LP's derived from 16/44.1 digital tracks... common! There are to many bad examples in the industry and my frustration is that there are simply to many bad examples... I'm not saying that everything is misleading but common.... Do the stakeholders really believe on selling to the uninformed public? All of you have a responsibility... To educate he market. People like quality... even young kids that never had contact with high-end and only play with ipods and mp3s.

Between knowing what I'm buying and buying quality at a reasonable price (way lower than what is being asked these days) I have no doubts that the market would grow fast.
think about illegal downloading... why download illegally when you can buy the real thing (in digital the real thing concept is somehow a different interpretation but ok..) cheap and still support the industry!


2- Reduce sale price!

You'd say "They pay big money for master tapes and the market potential is small" - I'd say that you will never reach mass market by selling digital content (storage today is cheap and althought I'm not in the industry I cannot believe that distribution costs nowadays are higher than in the past with k7, LPs, CDs, SACDs...) at these prices. You'd say "oh but these are higher quality and therefore have some sort of leverage over mp3 distribution".... Hi-Rez should cost at least the same, if not less, that distributed Compact discs.... As for MP3s, well I should be paid to buy it but that is only me.... But ok, it's business so MP3 should be on the cents figures per rack.

I understand that thing today are so scr3w3d that sometimes its difficult to determine the actual source and process behind certain albums.... but that is not an excuse

Whoever sold music with information on the source, lower prices (really lower... I would say even lower than buying CDs today! People are asking more for DSD downloads than the same album in SACD that I can store and keep it as a collectible with artwork and not bad simple scans...) would have a gold mine.

For iTunes/ Amazon and so forth to crush their prices buy competing side by side with them and I have little doubts that we would all have a breaze of fresh air in the music industry..

Apple was able to convince people bying MP3 guys!!! Bloody helll MP3 with a price tag?!?!?! Any audiophile should be paid to have mp3 but that's us....

It's all about confidence and buying quality at reasonable price!

High-end is already such a niche market... why do the same with content distribution?

MylesBAstor said:

Moderators could you please move the aforementioned posts that are stupidly hijacking this thread and obviously trying to continue an argument begun on another site to its own thread!!!!

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?

Was that comment related to my post? If so I don't see why?

Weren't we discussing high resolution music distribution?

Don't get me wrong... I applaud Acoustic Sounds initiative! I'm certain that the majority of the releases will be of great quality....

But weren't we discussing, once again, on the need for higher clarification on the way content is being sold?

If not... my apologies!

I simply find that these discussions around what, when, how, from where or even why, would simply evaporate if we the customer had clear information on the provenance of the source material.

I'm certain Acoustic sound will remain and if not further improve the provided information of what is being sold.

tiff_needle said:

Weren't we discussing high resolution music distribution?

But weren't we discussing, once again, on the need for higher clarification on the way content is being sold?

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I agree, in my view the issues with the provenance and credibility of hi-res downloads is very much on-topic. I am not quite sure which messages Myles is referring to either, but I suspect he might be concerned about the ones from me and Dr. Scott showing evidence of why we are concerned about the provenance of hi-res downloads.