DVD-Audiobahn New DVD-Audio music releases and talk about the latest players.

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Re: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan

Posted by Christine Tham (R) on November 12, 2005 at 14:27:12

In Reply to: New Exton classical DVD-A's from Japan posted by Chris from Lafayette on November 11, 2005 at 18:55:44:

*** At the same time, I just don’t understand the logic of taking a PCM master and going through another conversion step to produce the DSD master necessary for SACD ***

The "logic" as such has nothing to do with audio quality or purity - the decision to release on CD vs SA-CD vs DVD-Audio is a commercial decision, and you've made that decision you have to convert to the delivery format mandated by the media (regardless of how you recorded it in the first place - since that is a separate decision made by the engineer).

For example, all the recent Eno remasters were done on DSD, but EMI for various reasons decide to release them only on CD.

some of us would prefer that these conversions are avoided whenever possible, but at least for classical music you would hope that the material will not undergo multiple analog to digital to analog conversions which is typical for pop music (due to the use of outboard effects units).

*** I suppose the idea is to compare DVD-A vs. SACD, but given the DSD origins of the recording, I can’t imagine that the DVD-A will sound as good. ***

I wouldn't necessarily assume that. There are too many variables at play. For example, I've discovered some amplifiers can't handle the ultrasonic noise generated by DSD, and if the DVD-A filters out the ultrasonics it may sound better. Similarly, if the player has a clock optimised for 48 vs 44.1 it may sound better at 96/24 vs DSD. Lastly, some DACs may have better sounding digital filters for PCM over DSD.

One thing I've learnt over the years is that too often we blame the format or the recording when what we are hearing is the aggregation of various factors across the whole playback chain. For example (and you can do a search if you want to) I used to hypothesise that I can hear a PCM "sonic signature" vs DSD. But as I've upgraded my system over the years, I'm finding less and less differences between PCM and DSD and now I can't reliably distinguish the same recording across both formats.

But anyway, enough pontificating. Let us know how the discs sound!

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