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In Reply to: Come-on DSD -- why still no technical rebuff for Lipshitz/Vanderkooi? . . . posted by Martin says on March 10, 2002 at 08:25:47:
This board is 95% pro DSD, and anyone who says anything remotely negative about it is basically ridiculed and dismissed, so it's best to just accept this as given when posting.I've owned a Sony SCD-C222ES for over 6 months now and while it can be fairly amazing on certain songs with certain SACD's, overall there is something that bothers me about the overall DSD/SACD presentation. There is a great sense of ease (maybe too much), but it seems somehow surreal and artifically "perfect". A great example of this is the DMP Records Pilhofer Jazz Quartet "Full Circle" pure DSD SACD. There are certain parts of this disc that sound incredible, like the very last seconds of the first song Full Circle when all the instruments hit a very quick ending to the song. The effect is amazingly startling and lifelike. While the SACD sounds great by audiophile standards and you can use any number of positive adjectives to describe it's characteristics, overall it's too clean, sanitized and perfect to sound truly "live" and real to me. I would like to hear what others think about this particular DMP SACD.
While the IAR DSD bashing article seemed a little too over the top negative for my tastes, I believe that Sony/Philips left themselves open for this by originally claiming that DSD was a true 1-bit system, when in reality it was more like an 8-bit system. If you remember the early Sony ads, they highly toted this aspect of DSD, which in my opinion is at least bordering on false advertising. Sony's corporate image was sullied last year by revelations that they fabricated a movie critic who turned out to exist, how shall we say, only in the ether. I believe that this reveals a corporate culture at Sony that will tolerate any shananigans to further it's agenda. Tell me that a company that will go so far as to fabricate a human being to give themselves glowing movie reviews would NOT stupe to "downgrading" the CD side of a hybrid SACD. Let's not be so naive.
It would be interesting to see a point by point rebuttal of the Lipshitz/Vanderkooy position as put forth in the IAR article by Sony/Ed Meitner, but I'm afraid that would be wishful thinking. Eventually, all this hi-res business will get sorted out, but until then I'd hesitate to put alot of money into ANY digital format.
I think it's interesting to note that in his Feb. 2002 Stereophile review of the $5500 (53 lb) Pioneer DV-AX10 SACD/DVD-A/CD player, Jonathan Scull was extremely impressed with the DVD-A side of the player (not so with the SACD side, probably because of it not being "true" DSD). You can argue about the unfairness of comparing the competing formats on this particular player, however, it's clear from the review that DVD-A made a big favorable impression on Mr. Scull, and that to dismiss DVD-A just because it's PCM is not fair either. Obviously both formats have tremendous potential and ultimately they will each have enough strengths that either could be perceived as superior by different listeners. The truth lies in the middle and is subjective, and that's the only way to look at the debate at this point. Happy listening.
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Follow Ups
- Re: Come-on DSD -- why still no technical rebuff for Lipshitz/Vanderkooi? . . . - Davea 18:06:10 03/10/02 (1)
- But Sony don't release hybrid discs - Metralla 21:24:05 03/10/02 (0)
- . . . But they do control the hybrid technology & pressing . . . - Martin says 03:27:54 03/11/02 (0)
- Funny that accusation has been leveled by him...the Redbook layers of hybrid discs are about my best - Methos 10:22:58 03/11/02 (0)
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