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Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard...

174.6.41.186
Posted on May 12, 2012 at 13:08:36
Archimago
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 Hi everyone,
Wondering if you can recommend a single TRACK from any PCM hi-res source whether it be digital download or DVD-A (not SACD please due to DSD/PCM conversion) that you would consider as clearly showing off the benefits of high resolution audio.

I'm looking to do some audibility tests and would appreciate the experience of the group here to find some audio samples as starting points...

Thanks!

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RE: Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard..., posted on May 12, 2012 at 14:00:28
Tony Lauck
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 Try any of the Reference Recordings HRx recordings. Some free samples are available for download at the link below. The Exotic Dances file03_Tchaikovsky_Hopak-a.wav would be a good one.

Tony Lauck

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

 

odd, posted on May 12, 2012 at 14:27:03
bwb
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Why do you assume converting an SACD to PCM would be inferior to other PCM recordings? If somebody has one that meets your criteria of "clearly showing off the benefits of high resolution audio" why would you not want to listen to it?

.

 

RE: odd, posted on May 12, 2012 at 15:52:46
Archimago
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 "Why do you assume converting an SACD to PCM would be inferior to other PCM recordings? If somebody has one that meets your criteria of "clearly showing off the benefits of high resolution audio" why would you not want to listen to it?"

No problem them, happy to hear your suggestion.

In any case, how is this odd? I'm looking for the best hi-res PCM track you've heard for the purpose of running some tests. Since I only have PCM DAC's to work with, I'm looking for something without compromise and I think most would consider even digital rips of 1-bit DSD converted to 24-bit PCM a significant compromise which would degrade the original sound.

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RE: Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard..., posted on May 12, 2012 at 15:56:53
Archimago
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 Thanks for the suggestion TOny.

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RE: odd, posted on May 12, 2012 at 17:28:21
bwb
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Like many on these forums are prone to do you have made an assumption with seemingly nothing but a guess to back it up.

HDTracks gets a lot of their hirez stuff from SACDs and people rave about them.

The Stravinsky below which was transferred from tape is very good.

.

 

I think the freebies are gone, the links to them don't work. /nt, posted on May 12, 2012 at 17:29:12
bwb
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RE: I think the freebies are gone, the links to them don't work. /nt, posted on May 12, 2012 at 17:58:41
Tony Lauck
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 They seem to be gone. Too bad. Reference Recordings should have put them up on their own site as they might sell recordings.

I still have copies of the two freebies on my hard drive, FWIW. :-)

Tony Lauck

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

 

RE: odd, posted on May 12, 2012 at 18:59:23
Archimago
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 Actually bwb, if you've read many of my previous postings, you will likely see that i do not hold on to many of the usual audiophile beliefs...

Like i said, for the purpose i have in mind, I am looking for somerhing which sounds awesome but without compromise (whether real or apparent).

I am curious, what is your choice for best sounding SACD track then???
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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.

 

RE: Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard..., posted on May 12, 2012 at 21:45:30
Recorder
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 Some have already mentioned tracks from Reference Recordings. I have a number of those and find them to be among my best sounding, most spacious hi-rez recordings. However, I feel that their recording of Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 21 stands out as one of the best of the best. I would recommend the 3rd movement for demonstration purposes. The pianist is Eugene Istomin and Gerard Schwartz conducts the Seattle Symphony Orchestra. I have the 24/88.2 version, but I expect that Ref. Recordings may have it available at 24/176.4. It is recorded at a somewhat lower level than most music, so you may have to turn it up a bit to fully appreciate the spaciousness of the sound.

Another top track, in my opinion, is the 2L recording of Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in A minor, with Marianne Thorsen on violin and Oyvind Gimse conducting the Trondheim Soloists. The first movement is a good demo track. I have it in 24/96.

Finally, I would recommend the Dorian album, Fire Beneath My Fingers, especially the 3rd movement from Vivaldi's Concerto in B Flat major for bassoon, strings and continuo, available in 24/96.

Happy listening!

Cheers,
Bill

 

RE: Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard..., posted on May 12, 2012 at 23:37:31
smart845
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 Stravinsky rite from channel classics also available in DSD as download and Ella, On green dolphin street from HDTracks are two of my Fauves, oh and Come away death from 2L is also something special.

 

RE: odd, posted on May 13, 2012 at 09:03:30
Tony Lauck
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 "Why do you assume converting an SACD to PCM would be inferior to other PCM recordings? If somebody has one that meets your criteria of "clearly showing off the benefits of high resolution audio" why would you not want to listen to it?"

These conversions are fine to listen to. They are unsuitable for experiments designed to compare PCM formats, IMO.

Everything being equal, a PCM recording made from a PCM source is going to be better than a PCM recording made from a DSD source. More specifically, both PCM and DSD have unique limitations as commonly used, e.g. 176.4/24 vs 2822.4/1. Because of the lower sample rate of 176.4 kHz, PCM will either alias or will require filtering that will smear transients and/or roll off high frequencies. (These are the same issues as with Red Book audio, albeit very much milder due to the four times higher sampling rate.) Conversely, 2822.4 has a sampling rate that is 16 times higher and these issues are insignificant. Unfortunately, the high sampling rate of DSD comes with the one bit resolution, and this requires very aggressive noise shaping. DSD has much more energy in noise than in music, but most of this is at very high frequencies. To prevent all of this energy from creating serious problems, DSD playback requires a low pass filter, and if all of this noise is eliminated by the filter, one will be back to having rolled off high frequencies. Consequently, DSD playback generally comes with a moderate amount of high frequency noise that starts as low as 25 kHz.

When DSD is converted to PCM or PCM is converted to DSD one gets the worst of both world, the loss of transient response due to the lower PCM sampling rate and the loss of low noise floor due to the high frequency DSD noise. This situation obtains if there is only a single conversion from PCM to DSD or DSD to PCM. The situation is worse for multiple conversions. The good news for music lovers are that these issues are very slight when comparing 176/24 to 2822/1. A 176/24 version of a DSD recording is going to sound much better than a 44/16 version of this recording, which is why audiophiles pay extra money over Red book. However, if one is conducting an experiment one wants the fewest number of extraneous variables. This means comparing original sample rates and bit depths.

The bad news for experimenters is that the mere possibility of DSD noise affecting comparisons of PCM conversions casts doubt on the comparison. DSD noise might mask real differences between the PCM formats or it might create artificial differences. Worse, this noise depends on the particular conversion from DSD, further confusing factors. If one is trying to hear actual differences between two PCM formats, it's best to steer clear of DSD based recordings for this reason. DSD recordings converted to PCM on one web site might use very aggressive filtering and remove all the ultrasonic high frequencies and transients as well as the DSD noise. In this case there may be little benefit from 176/24 PCM vs. 88/24 PCM. If the same recording is supplied by a different web site using gentle filtering there may be a completely different situation, i.e. lots of high frequencies and DSD noise that appear only in the 176/24 version, for better or for worse.

Another source of hi-res test material can be found on 2L's test page. All of these recordings were made in DXD, which is 352.8/32fp PCM. This sampling rate is high enough that there is essentially the same transient resolution as DSD while still having low noise (limited only by the actual analog to digital converter). The DSD and all the PCM versions are made from this DXD, and you can download the original DXD if you wish.

Tony Lauck

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

 

RE: Please recommend: Best PCM Hi-Res track you've ever heard..., posted on May 13, 2012 at 18:06:10
Archimago
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 Thanks Recorder and smart. Sounds like great music to check out!

I'll look into the suggestions...

I managed to get a copy of the Hopak RR sampler file Tony mentioned above as well. I've got an idea for a public test starting with an excellent sounding hi-res track which I think would be interesting!

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RE: odd, posted on May 14, 2012 at 17:23:55
ted_b
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 BWB, why would you call his caveat about DSD-to-PCM odd?? You need to understand that it would be a further generational loss, with unnecessary conversion...assuming you can find the recording in a generation closer to the original state (DSD or PCM). I am a HUGE DSD fan, and am loving what I find or rip in native DSD, but I'd never choose a DSD recording if its provenance was PCM (AND assuming I could get the PCM version). One less conversion, no aggressive filtering, no square peg/round hole issues.

As Tony very nicely summarizes, a DSD-to-PCM conversion is somewhat the worst of both worlds. IMHO, it is only a viable candidate if a good hirez version is unavailable in it more native state; which is why I rip DSD rather than listen to HDTracks PCM conversions of said material...and don't get me wrong, Bruce Brown is a friend and does a magnificent job....but I'd rather hear the earlier generation without the needless (in my case) conversion. I hear less wrong with PCM-to-DSD but again, would rather not go that route if not needed. Yes, many of my SACD's are PCM-based, but are on my rotation only because there is no good 24 bit version of their PCM originals. Heck, in some cases the lowly redbook wins out over these conversions (rare but true).

 

About Red Book sometimes sounding better... RE: odd, posted on May 15, 2012 at 07:41:11
Archimago
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 Agree with your comments Ted.

One thing I need to add though is that as a fan of the rock/pop genre, almost 30% of the SACD's I've ripped looks like converted Red Book with hard cut-off's at 22kHz! A few off the top of my head:

- all the Dead Can Dance MFSL SACD's
- Celine Dion - A New Day Has Come (yeah... I know... why bother :-)
- Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
- Eugene Ruffolo - Even Santa Gets The Blues (Stockfisch WTF!)
- Vince Guaraldi - Merry Christmas Charlie Brown
- Top Gun OST
- even the recent 2011 Analogue Productions Cat Stevens - Tea For The Tillerman looks suspicious (maybe the analog tapes had no frequencies past ~23kHz?)

With titles like these, it's not surprising that the Red Book would sound better. It's a shame that this kind of practice was allowed to carry on. The record companies could get by when SACD was copy protected and folks didn't bother looking. These days with digital rips, the ugly truth is out.

IMO - other than the jazz and classical genres, there's no point buying any rock/pop SACD's between the "just Red Book" issue and overused compression/limiting in the music itself.

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ANY hi-rez track will sound different from Redbook equivalent on resolving system, ..., posted on May 15, 2012 at 08:44:41
carcass93
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 ... to discriminating ear. With the provision that there's at least some information encoded closer to, and above, Redbook high frequency cutoff - i.e., I would exclude solo vocal, solo drums etc., for instance.

On the other hand, as notorious Meyer-Moran joke of a "test" shows, if you put together mediocre system with mass-market SACD player at its core, and bring along a herd of untrained listeners - you can easily fulfill your goal of demonstrating that there AREN'T, in fact, any differences whatsoever.

 

RE: ANY hi-rez track will sound different from Redbook equivalent on resolving system, ..., posted on May 15, 2012 at 13:10:01
Tony Lauck
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 "... to discriminating ear. With the provision that there's at least some information encoded closer to, and above, Redbook high frequency cutoff - i.e., I would exclude solo vocal, solo drums etc., for instance."

I think you are exaggerating, but only slightly. I might choose to take exception with your choice of "ANY". :-)

The artifacts that appear in a 44/16 recording will depend on the particular method (equipment, settings) used to cram a 10 pound hi-res original into the 5 pound 44/16 bag.

Cymbals may show up filtering artifacts, but perhaps you meant to exclude them from "solo" drums. For other solo instruments such as piano the differences may be slight, for others the differences may be much larger, e.g. violins and brass. IMO the best material is probably full orchestra, as at some point there will be something to put any particular 44.1 kHz filter design in a bad light. However, it may take a long time to find those particular moments or learn what to listen for. Some filter designs will leave the tonal balance pretty much unchanged and there may be little or no difference heard while listening to individual portions of the music. However, the differences will then probably show up in the imaging and sound stage, both difficult to identify in the brief A - B comparison tests typically conducted by those with an "everything sounds the same" agenda.

As to 16 vs. 24 bits, at least with straight dither it shouldn't be too difficult to hear a difference if music is played at very loud volumes. If I turn my gain up 10 dB beyond what I sometimes use for "normal" listening I can hear 16 bit dither noise at my listening position. However, if I were trying to "prove" that 16 bits were enough I would just pick recordings that had lots of microphone preamplifier noise to mask these effects. If a quiet 16 bit recording is made without any dither then the brief distortion followed by sharp cut-off of sound in the reverb tails will be obvious. And if noise-shaped dither was used to hide this effect while making the noise harder to hear then there is likely to be an edginess to the sound from the noise-shaping.



Tony Lauck

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

 

Upsampled 44 kHz classical SACDs, posted on May 15, 2012 at 13:29:56
Tony Lauck
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 Some classical SACDs are also made from upsampled 44.1 kHz material. Some of the earlier BIS recordings were made at 44/16 and are best heard in this format unless one wants multi-channel. Later ones were made at 44/24 and these might sound better in either 44/16 or DSD, but they will sound best in a 44/24 download (e.g. when available from eclassical.com). The most recent BIS recordings are being captured at higher sampling rates, so I would expect these recordings to sound better on DSD than 44/16, but they will also be better at their original format as a download when available.



Tony Lauck

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

 

Of course I didn't mean cymbals - in fact, that would probably ...., posted on May 15, 2012 at 14:14:04
carcass93
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 ... be the worst stress test for Redbook, considering how much energy above 20 Khz is produced by that instrument.

Scroll to the "Table I. Ultrasonic Extension and Energy of Some Musical Instruments" in the link below.

 

why?, posted on May 15, 2012 at 19:22:10
bwb
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 ,


If your buddy does "a magnificent job" it seems to me you are talking out of both sides of your mouth because if they aren't that great then your buddy is not as magnificent as you say.

This has nothing to do with your point that you would rather hear DSD natively as DSD. He asked for great sounding PCM files. If they sound great why should he care where they came from?

The idea "worst of both worlds" implies they would sound like crap but properly done they do sound great. Better if they were heard as DSD? Perhaps, but that is irrelevant. He's looking for demo quality PCM. If they happen to come from DSD then what's the problem?



.

 

RE: why?, posted on May 15, 2012 at 19:36:22
ted_b
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 The "problem" as you call it is that "demo quality" PCM does not come from DSD conversions, period. Can't. It goes through too many deliterious changes, compared to the choices in native PCM. But there is a large gene pool of native PCM so not big deal.

When I said Bruce does a great job, he does! Anyone else would butcher this difficult (but necessary for PCM-only customers) conversion. I still would not choose it over native DSD, however. Understand?

 

wrong, posted on May 16, 2012 at 09:15:13
bwb
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I've listened to some of the SACD to PCM transfers and some of them do sound quite wonderful. If it sounds wonderful it is demo quality.

I still would not choose it over native DSD, however. Understand?

We already agreed to that, no need to be condescending.

.

 

Gonna try an audibility test this summer :-), posted on May 16, 2012 at 16:57:37
Archimago
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 Well boys & girls, over the summer I'm going to put up an A / B test of a clip from Hopak which I'll downconvert to 24/44 with some funky processing done to it. Will be very curious what everyone hears / does not hear!



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Archimago's Musings: A 'more objective' audiophile blog.

 

RE: ANY hi-rez track will sound different from Redbook equivalent on resolving system, ..., posted on May 16, 2012 at 19:14:50
Archimago
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 Although the Meyer-Moran study did have its limitations, I certainly would not fault the Denon 2900 (with PartsConnexion mods) in their 4th system or the Sony XA777ES (primary system).

I still don't think hi-res audio sounds *that* different from Red Book most of the time.
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Might be time for a more resolving system -t, posted on May 17, 2012 at 10:33:12
Sordidman
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Where people had paid to see inside,
For entertainment they watch his body twist
Behind his eyes he says, 'I still exist.'"

 

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