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In Reply to: What is the benefit of SACD if the original master is not DSD ? posted by Pierre on November 29, 2000 at 12:36:08:
What is the benefit of SACD if the original master is not DSD ?Like most of the SACD titles that are available right now, most of them are probably
from 48 khz PCM recordings.Most of the 50 SACDs that I own are derived from analog masters;
even some of the more recent recordings such as those from Audio-
quest and Water lily Acoustics were done with analog tape.Nevertheless, I think you question is a good one. A few months
ago with great anticipation I purchased the Delos hybrid Mahler
2nd Symphony. I enjoy this recording very much; it is of very high
quality. But it seemed to fall short of my expectations of what
I thought was a DSD recording.On closely reading the liner notes I discovered that, unlike
the Telarc SACDs discs (so far) which are originally recorded with the
DSD technology, the Delos disc is an original DDD recording,
which is then transferred (unsampled, down sampled, upsampled;
whatever) to the SACD format. That may explain a lot.
The Delos recording does not have, what I have found, to be the
very clear and audible benefits of DSD, such as unparalleled
separation and micro dynamics. These qualities are more evident on
the SACD layer but marginally so.So, I guess a question that I have is if a recording was originally
"done right" in DDD what benefits are derived from transferring it
to SACD? This question is important to me now that I see that
Telarc plans to release some of its early classical DDD recordings,
such as "Firebird" as hybrid SACDs.I'm still gaining experience and learning about all this,
but at this point it appears to me that modern analog recordings
such as those from Water Lily Acoustics and Audioquest and older
analog recordings such as many from Columbia and the awesome
disc Mobile Fidelity disc really bloom when transferred to
SACD. Likewise, original DSD recordings, such as those from
Telarc, in my opinion, benefit immensely from the
DSD technology. On the other hand DDD recordings have evolved
over the years to be very good, especially at their best.
Perhaps, there may not be much to "unlock" in a DDD to DSD
transfer.So as good as the Delos Mahler 2nd sounds, and I am very happy
to have added it to my collection, this is one SACD I wish was
not dual layered. I wish it was SACD only. I have two very
related reasons. 1) The symphony is almost 85 minutes long.
This length can easily be accommodated on a single two channel
SACD (such as the Ormandy Verdi Requiem SACD on Columbia,
but can not be accommodated on a CD. In order to accommodate the
CD time limitation the symphony had to be spread over two discs,
the 24 minute 1st movement on disc one, the rest of the symphony
on the second disc. (I realize that Mahler called for a break
between the first and second movements, but this can be done with
the pause button or a SACD only disc could actually accommodate
the 5 minute pause on a single disc for purists). 2) Spreading the
symphony over two discs bumped the price for the set from about
$21 to $39 all to have "benefit" of a dual layered disc.Robert C. Lang
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- Re: What is the benefit of SACD if the original master is not DSD ? - Robert C. Lang 18:56:07 11/29/00 (0)
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