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New high resolution SACD releases, players and technology.

Basically, I don't disagree with anything you say

Yes - I agree that you can't tell the bit depth from a spectrograph. But spectrographs are still useful to see actual frequency response, as well as to check whether the uncorrelated noise dusting (typical of the DSD files used on SACD's) is present.

I think Mark Waldrep's point is that for a recording to be considered hi-rez, every stage along the production process should be hi-rez, from microphones to finished files. He just had a column a couple of days ago where he praised other companies for their commitment to this hi-rez production methodology, including 2L, Naxos, Linn, Chesky, Pentatone, Channel Classics (as well as, of course, his own AIX label). Over on one of the other discussion boards here, Archimago linked to some tests he had done with some PONO downloads comparing them to other source files in terms of dynamic range and frequency extension. His PONO downloads, although touted as hi-rez, were sometimes more compressed (in both dynamics and frequency) than files ripped from CD's. Other posters have had better luck with PONO downloads - we need to get info on a critical mass of these downloads before we can say whether the majority of their hi-rez downloads are actually hi-rez. Basically, I think Waldrep is just worried that the term hi-rez audio is going to get diluted and cheapened.

I also agree with you that "a SACD sourced from a 24/48k PCM recording can still offer a nice improvement over the CD" - no question about it. Still, I'd rather avoid that last conversion (or transcoding or whatever it is) to DSD, so I look for the availability of hi-rez PCM downloads for recordings mastered in PCM. (It would be the same with DSD: I would want my download to stay in the same format as the master.) In any case, I've got plenty of SACD's derived from PCM masters, and I still enjoy them very much (despite my general principles!).


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