RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Tony Lauck

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RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD

Posted by Tony Lauck (A) on July 13, 2015 at 06:45:06

In Reply to: RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD posted by Thorsten on July 12, 2015 at 10:11:29:

This deals with the part that you can as a DAC designer, but it requires that the two files have to match "0 dB" in both formats. That's up to the mastering engineer.

As HDtracks discovered early on, if you take a DSD file and convert it to PCM such that a 1 kHz tone lines up on both formats, you may get clipping on the PCM file on some (many?) DSD recordings. To make things work properly it is necessary to make adjustments. You may be able to go the other way automatically if the PCM recording is made correctly (which means that the RMS power in the loud portions should be around -20 dBFS). However, due to the loudness wars, this is not what most PCM recordings look like. Many have intersample peaks that will get digitized in DSD and these can be several dB higher than the samples. On normal recordings with occasional crests this is unlikely, but on loudness war material this is quite likely, because in many cases the music has been turned into square waves. Some mastering engineers even go so far as to clip their analog to digital converters to get extra loudness. IMO, these people should be taken out back and shot. (Most will claim they are just trying to make enough money to keep their studio open and feed their family.)

I get pretty good matching with most material using HQPlayer. However, I have had to use -2 dB of digital gain reduction to avoid clipping with some material. This may not be just the intersample peak issue, because I am also doing some digital room correction. HQPlayer has a counter that indicates the number of samples that were over its limit.

Tony Lauck

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

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - Loudness - SACD versus CD - murali 05:28:12 07/10/15 (14)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Thorsten 10:11:29 07/12/15 (2)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Tony Lauck 06:45:06 07/13/15 (1)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Thorsten 07:03:37 07/13/15 (0)

I agree too!!!! - Robert J 03:50:59 07/11/15 (0)

That's funny. - Dave Pogue 19:33:58 07/10/15 (0)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - yage 12:33:23 07/10/15 (5)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - genungo 14:01:22 07/10/15 (4)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Tony Lauck 10:05:15 07/11/15 (3)

Back when I was trying to get into SACD... - genungo 12:22:16 07/11/15 (2)

RE: Back when I was trying to get into SACD... - Tony Lauck 13:34:19 07/11/15 (1)

RE: Back when I was trying to get into SACD... - genungo 14:30:28 07/11/15 (0)

6dB lower - Neil G 06:34:37 07/10/15 (1)

RE: 6dB lower - AbeCollins 09:49:40 07/10/15 (0)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - layman 05:57:16 07/10/15 (0)

Follow Ups

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Tony Lauck 06:45:06 07/13/15 (1)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD - Thorsten 07:03:37 07/13/15 (0)

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD

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