Am I the only one who thinks Red Book is better than HiRez?

cjf · Dec 31, 2015

amirm said:
Wait a sec... Was the CD recorded with Qsound?

Yes, the copy I have says it was recorded with QSound

NorthStar · Dec 31, 2015

amirm said:
Wait a sec... Was the CD recorded with Qsound?

It certainly was.

...Even the newer one (CD) that comes with the Blu-ray Audio disc is encoded with QSound

cjf · Dec 31, 2015

Hrrmm..It seems they may have forgotten the "Q" in the the new download versions. It would probably explain the less impressive Bill Hubbard track but I find most of them worst IMO.

NorthStar · Dec 31, 2015

All my old Classic Rock CDs from the 80s are crap when it comes to sound quality. ...Only from the late 90s that things started to improve in that department.

More fun and pleasure is to be acquired from my older LPs of the eras before. ...The 70s were real bad (disco music). ...The 80s were pure crap (CDs).
The real soul when it comes to music is from today, right now (Adele and Patricia and Cassandra and Holly ;-) ). ...And the older stuff from the 50s and 60s remastered by the real master artist music re-mixers. ...Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Chet Baker.

Classical music wasn't well recorded on LPs in the seventies (the ones I had). ...And it was even worst on CDs in the eighties.

jfrech · Dec 31, 2015

cjf said:
Hello,

I purchase a fair bit of music on a monthly basis, mostly from one of the few remaining brick and mortar music stores left standing in my area. I should mention that I only purchase " Used" CD's. I specificly target CD's created prior to Y2K or thereabouts because IME they seem to be the only ones left that haven't been "Remastered" (more like molested).

On occassion I also purchase downloaded "HiRes" versions of the same Redbook stuff I already own. I haven't quite figured out why I continue to do this because in 9 out of 10 times the older Redbook version always sounds better, by a fairly big margin.

I get that an artist would be interested in making additional profits on an otherwise dried up album but in almost every case, IME, in doing so they sell out to the grubby mits involved in funding the "Remaster" who insist on crushing the original dynamics to oblivion just to please the new generation listening to the music via Beats headphones and .MP3 files.

Yes, I'm one of those "Audacity cowboy's" and Foobar Dynamic Range meter fans because,once again, IME the measurements don't lie. I've yet to hear a recording that measures worse than the orignal and actually sound better.

WTF is wrong with these people! Once all the good versions of these albums dry up all hope will be lost. My hope is that there will be no shortage of old stuff anytime before I cease to exist which was sold off by the younger generation that already owns a downloaded copy from I-Tunes.

What are your thoughts on this?

When you say "redbook" are you talking a physical cd vs a hi res file? Honestly, seem to prefer a physical cd over a higher res file. I agree lots of variables here...but more often than not...a physical cd/sacd wins out. I have a pretty nice transport..so maybe that's part of it...but maybe you're hearing the same....

cjf · Dec 31, 2015

jfrech said:
When you say "redbook" are you talking a physical cd vs a hi res file? Honestly, seem to prefer a physical cd over a higher res file. I agree lots of variables here...but more often than not...a physical cd/sacd wins out. I have a pretty nice transport..so maybe that's part of it...but maybe you're hearing the same....

Hello,

All of my Redbook references are based on ripped CD's to .WAV which are stored on my NAS device. I play everything via a flea watt Voyage Linux server over USB to a Meitner MA-1 DAC.

cjf · Dec 31, 2015

NorthStar said:
All my old Classic Rock CDs from the 80s are crap when it comes to sound quality. ...Only from the late 90s that things started to improve in that department.

More fun and pleasure is to be acquired from my older LPs of the eras before. ...The 70s were real bad (disco music). ...The 80s were pure crap (CDs).
The real soul when it comes to music is from today, right now (Adele and Patricia and Cassandra and Holly ;-) ). ...And the older stuff from the 50s and 60s remastered by the real master artist music re-mixers. ...Billie Holiday, John Coltrane and Chet Baker.

Classical music wasn't well recorded on LPs in the seventies (the ones I had). ...And it was even worst on CDs in the eighties.

Interesting, it seems our musical tastes are complete opposites. Your listed "Crap" is the stuff I treasure most

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

cjf said:
Interesting, it seems our musical tastes are complete opposites. Your listed "Crap" is the stuff I treasure most

If you want to be in for a stunning treat, make a DSD rip of this album and upsample to DSD 256. The sound is astonishing good. Definitely doesn't fit into the classic rock "crap" sounding category. I agree with Bob about the 80's (other than Dire Straits of course) but some of the stuff from the 70's is killer. Especially the new high res releases.

http://www.mofi.com/product_p/udsacd2041.htm

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

spazmatron said:
I have a good number of these and thought they all were so much better than redbook until I got the stevi wonder albums. They sound dull and dirty ... Very strange as most of the single layer SHM-SACD are great. That's runs counter to my expirance with standard SACD, to me they are often a waste of time, great for multi channel maybe but that's it imo.

I have the Japanese Stevie Wonders as well. But prefer the 24/192 FLAC's. I think the SACD's were actually upsampled from inferior redbook a while ago, while the 24/192 FLAC's are new masters from the original tapes. you need to watch those Japanese SACD's. Many of them were mastered from PCM back in the early 200's when Sony was trying to hammer out SACD releases buy the tons. Many were done poorly.

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

spazmatron said:
Well the shm SACD says they master them specially from the original tapes. But they sound bad don't they...redbook stevi is much better.

You read here it says "based on US master" but they don't say if the US master was PCM before it was DSD.

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/product/UIGY-9615

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

spazmatron said:
Blizzard I have a question for you, I used to have a esoteric k03 that could upsample redbook to dsd but it always sounded bad, why was this? As your always going on about upsampleing ?

Probably used poor upsampling algorithims/modulators. It takes serious horsepower to preform the best algorithms. This is why HQplayer is CPU demanding, and stand alone boxes like the DCS Vivaldi upsampler are large. I bet HQplayer is the superior of the 2 though. As the Vivaldi uses much weaker DSP processors than an intel I7 quad core.

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

spazmatron said:
O

I have 'songs in the key of life' in front of me, this is the album I was referring too but Also disappointed with talking book.
"Dsd transferred from analogue master tapes by Ellen fitton at universal mastering studios"

I have them all as well. Who knows what they used for gear to do it. And if it was direct or what. You never know.

asiufy · Dec 31, 2015

Stevie Wonder "Songs in the key of Life" are a case in itself. The remastered CD is horrendous, very bright. The SHM-SACD is the complete opposite, it lacks HF extension, but at least it's warm and pleasant (to a point). One can safely say the SHM-SACD is not just a simple "upsample from PCM", it's more like a new transfer with lots of tinkering to reduce the HF glare.
For records like this, it's vinyl all the way. For $20 you can get a minty double vinyl that will beat any digital version out there.

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

asiufy said:
Stevie Wonder "Songs in the key of Life" are a case in itself. The remastered CD is horrendous, very bright. The SHM-SACD is the complete opposite, it lacks HF extension, but at least it's warm and pleasant (to a point). One can safely say the SHM-SACD is not just a simple "upsample from PCM", it's more like a new transfer with lots of tinkering to reduce the HF glare.
For records like this, it's vinyl all the way. For $20 you can get a minty double vinyl that will beat any digital version out there.

If there was lots of tinkering, it wasn't direct to DSD. It means it was PCM first. Unless it wasn't really sourced from the masters. I have 24/192 Vinyl rips as well and they are my favorite.

asiufy · Dec 31, 2015

Blizzard said:
If there was lots of tinkering, it wasn't direct to DSD. It means it was PCM first. Unless it wasn't really sourced from the masters.

In case you don't know, you can tinker in the analog domain...

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

asiufy said:
In case you don't know, you can tinker in the analog domain...

Well it's not from the master tape anymore then, it's from an edited, copy of the master tape. Or a new remix. If this was the case they would be lying to us by saying its sourced from the master tape. Leaving out if it was PCM in between, wouldn't be lying, because it's still sourced from the master. You need to watch it with these guys. When something doesn't sound right, there's always a reason.

asiufy · Dec 31, 2015

Blizzard said:
Well it's not from the master tape anymore then, it's from an edited copy of the master tape.

You can run the master through subtle (and not-so-subtle) EQ. And it'll still be "from the master tape".

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

spazmatron said:
No not possible the diagram on those shm jobs shows the path of transfer. Unless they lie .

I think that's just an example of how the typical process works:

Blizzard · Dec 31, 2015

asiufy said:
You can run the master through subtle (and not-so-subtle) EQ. And it'll still be "from the master tape".

Who has the multibit DSD editing DAW for this? The studio's don't have it today, so I doubt they did back in 2011. If you run it through EQ in the analog domain, it's no longer from the master anymore, it's processed through analog gear and re-recorded. That's all there is to it. If it's not direct from the master, what's the point of saying it's from the master then?

I suppose everything is from the master if you want to look at it that way. Even if it's sourced from an 8 track from the 70's.

Bruce B · Dec 31, 2015

asiufy said:
You can run the master through subtle (and not-so-subtle) EQ. And it'll still be "from the master tape".

Yup... do this all the time. In fact... most every tape that comes in here I run through an analog console and "tweak" the sound to my liking (especially all the prog-rock albums). Anyone that has heard Greg's tapes at any of the shows has heard them.

Am I the only one who thinks Red Book is better than HiRez?

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