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RE: The potential of different recording formats

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on September 22, 2009 at 11:23:35

In Reply to: RE: The potential of different recording formats posted by Hiro on September 21, 2009 at 11:50:19:

"there are poorly mastered CDs, 24/96 DVD-As and SACDs, it's not an excuse, it's a fact."

Yes there are certainly poor recordings in many formats. Some are the fault of the mastering engineers, some the mixing engineers, and some the the tracking engineers. Many are poor because of the lack of talent of the musicians and the greed of the producers. So what else is new?


"and how many true PCM recordings are there? Aren't the recording studios converting sigma-delta -> PCM??

Sigma delta is a converter technology, not a format. You are confusing architecture and implementation. Most high end ADCs use sigma-delta modulators and produce a multi-bit PCM signal. This is then downsampled to the desired output format, including those used for the production of SACDs.

DSD is nothing more than 1 bit PCM. It isn't even a format. It is a trademark. Specifically, as a format it is nothing more than PCM in the format 2822.4 kHz / 1 bit. As such it is inferior to higher resolution mutli-bit formats, e.g. 2822.4 kHz / 6 bits such as may be used internally in converter chips. Since DSD is actually a trademark, any reference to how good DSD is or claims of "pure DSD" amount to nothing more than marketing hype.

Some people prefer the crisp transient response of 2822.4/1 recordings. Others prefer the clean noise free performance of 176.4/24 bit recordings. There is no resolving this dispute, as two different characteristics are being compared. However, it is likely that increasing the sampling rate to 352.4 and retaining the 24 bit format will beat both formats subjectively.

As far as I know, the fastest multi-bit format that anyone is actually using commercially for audio is 768 kHz/ 32 bits. Here the high sampling rate is used to digitally record the bias oscillator output of analog tape playback, and use this signal to remove wow and flutter from the original master tape via complex, proprietary DSP algorithms.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar

• http://www.plangentprocesses.com/FAQ.htm   (Open in New Window)

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