SACD, DVD-Audio and DualDisc recommendations

[dannyjl]

Probably no single artist has the SACD field covered so completely as does Genesis. I have the two box sets that are out now and highly recommend them if that's your style.

[oscar_in_fw]

Lot's choices if you are a classical/jazz fan. Not so for Pop/rock though if you are an early Stones, Police, or CCR fan, you are in luck. I found the following site to be useful for SACD title-browsing.

http://www.sa-cd.net/

[moviefan]

Has anyone had a problem playing any partivular SA-CD on the PS3?
I have 3 Telarc Hybrid SA-CDs, 2 play fine, one comes up as a "data Disc", and shows "no tracks" when I attempt to play it.
I took it to an A/V store and it playes fine. The CD track played fine on my music system.
Any ideas????

[toon12]

Originally Posted by cembros

just got a ps3 and im looking to get some SACD's, any suggestions?

The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd is pretty readily available, although you may not notice that it is the SACD version. At the HMV in my office building it is in a sales rack at 2 for $20. It is a very dark blue cover, and it is the 30th Anniversary edition. A hybrid SACD. I think it would make a perfect introduction at a reasonable price.

[BLUNT]

The Who Tommy
Allman Bros. Eat A Peach, Live at the Filmore East
Elton John Yellow Brick Rd.
George Harrison Live in Japan
Dark Side Of The Moon

[Caligula]

i feel ingorant to ask. what is SACD? some kind of musical terminology?

[nhaase]

Originally Posted by Caligula

i feel ingorant to ask. what is SACD? some kind of musical terminology?

Super Audio CD. It is uncompressed surround sound audio.

[Caligula]

Originally Posted by nhaase

Super Audio CD. It is uncompressed surround sound audio.

OK THANKS SIR!

[blu-backer]

Your sig doesn't say what model PS3 you have. Note that the 40G PS3 does NOT have SACD playback capabilities.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by Caligula

i feel ingorant to ask. what is SACD? some kind of musical terminology?

Super Audio CD.
A format released in 1999 by Philips and Sony, utilising DSD instead of PCM.

http://sa-cd.net/faq

What is SA-CD?
SA-CD is short for Super Audio CD or, if you prefer, Super Audio Compact Disc - an optical music carrier that may or may not be intended to succeed the regular audio Compact Disc format introduced in 1983. In short it is designed to provide better sound quality, both in the form of higher fidelity and, optionally, in the form of multi-channel (surround) sound, while maintaining backward compatibility with CD. For more details, read on.

Who invented SA-CD?
SA-CD was developed by Sony and Philips. Who invented what exactly remains a secret shared between the two companies but is quite irrelevant. The trademarks are owned by Sony. Philips is the licensor of the disc format and the trademark.

What is DSD?
DSD is short for Direct Stream Digital, the way in which the analog sound signal is described in the digital domain. It was originally invented by Sony for archiving studios' master tapes with the idea that they shouldn't be left wondering ten years later why they hadn't used a better encoding scheme before transferring and discarding these masters.

How does DSD work?
Technical experts will tell you DSD is basically a 1-bit Delta/Sigma conversion scheme. We'll try explaining it in somewhat more understandable terms but cannot avoid using some technical terms too.

Basically it works as follows: DSD being a 1-bit signal means that every bit represents a sample - a measurement of the amplitude of the sound wave at a certain time. Since a bit can only have two values, every bit in a DSD stream only tells weather the amplitude of the sound signal was higher or lower than the previous sample. Because it doesn't tell how much higher or lower the amplitude is, you can imagine you need a lot of samples to accurately describe the signal. Well, DSD uses 64 times the sampling frequency of CD: 2.822 MHz vs 44.1 kHz. The factor 64 is not randomly chosen. It's a power of two, meaning that it's relatively straightforward to upsample from typical PCM frequencies including 44.1 kHz and multiples like 88.2 kHz.

What is the difference between PCM and DSD?
PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) is a very abstract way to describe an analog signal in a digital way but it's the best way that existed at the beginning of the eighties when CD was developed and introduced. In PCM, every sample consists of a combination of bits (typically between 14 and 24, depending on the carrier) describing the amplitude of the signal. The number of bits determines the resolution of how finely the signal can be described, where every added bit doubles the number of levels that can be distinguished.

Converting from analog sound to PCM and back to analog sound involves a fair number of processing steps, such as quantization. Every step can cause further distortions such as quantization noise, which has to be filtered out, in turn again deteriorating the sound quality.

DSD on the other hand is an extremely simple way of converting from analog to digital and back. The entire process is extremely transparent. In fact, the DSD bit stream is so closely related - perhaps analogous would be a proper term here - to the analog signal that if you were to feed it to a speaker (as a series of +1 and -1 values) you'd get back audible music.

Wasn't CD supposed to deliver perfect sound?
Yes, it was and it did represent the state of the art in 1982 - what could be put into a CD player but also what could be put on a practical, 12-cm optical disc - but technology has progressed and so has insight into human perception of sound. For instance, it only became apparent later that although the human ear cannot directly pick up frequencies above 20 kHz they are actually of importance for the way we hear sounds. SA-CD with DSD extends the frequency range towards 100 kHz.

A possibly more important difference between CD's 44.1 kHz 16-bit PCM sound quality and SA-CD's 2.8 MHz 1-bit DSD sound quality is the accuracy in the time domain. As it turns out, the human ear is extremely sensitive to minute timing differences. In fact, of the various cues our brain uses to determine the direction of sound sources, probably the most important cue is the difference in time it takes for a sound to reach our left ear versus the right ear. With a sampling frequency of CD, 44,100 times per second it's very difficult to reproduce a good 'sound stage' which is why you may find that the sound of a CD often 'sticks to the speakers': you'll hear it coming from the left speaker and from the right speaker but there's nothing in between - the proverbial 'hole in the middle'. This is an area in which DSD excels.

Furthermore, at 120 dB the dynamic range of SA-CD is much improved over CD.

Above all, SA-CD provides the option of multichannel sound where Audio CD only offers stereo. More about that later.

Will SA-CD and/or DVD-Audio be superseded by Blu-ray Disc or HD-DVD?
No, that isn't likely to happen. Blu-ray Disc (BD) and HD-DVD are aimed quite squarely at storage of (high-definition) video and secondly on data storage for computers. No audio-only variant of BD has been specified, and as far as we know DSD hasn't been included in the range of optional audio formats on BD. You may consider SA-CD to be the HD Audio complement to BD.

[dobyblue]

Originally Posted by nhaase

Super Audio CD. It is uncompressed surround sound audio.

Super Audio CD does not mean surround sound.
You can have:

• Stereo SACD
• Multi-channel SACD
• Stereo/Multi-channel SACD
• Stereo Hybrid SACD
• Multi-channel Hybrid SACD
• Stereo/Multi-channel Hybrid SACD

The format on the disc is compressed, it is called DST. That's losslessly compressed DSD.

[nhaase]

Originally Posted by dobyblue

Super Audio CD does not mean surround sound.
You can have:

• Stereo SACD
• Multi-channel SACD
• Stereo/Multi-channel SACD
• Stereo Hybrid SACD
• Multi-channel Hybrid SACD
• Stereo/Multi-channel Hybrid SACD

The format on the disc is compressed, it is called DST. That's losslessly compressed DSD.

I just came back to edit my post because I remembered that it's not all surround sound, I was going for the nutshell explanation, thanks for clarifying.

[The Seventh Taylor]

Originally Posted by Caligula

what is SACD? some kind of musical terminology?

There's also a FAQ specifically about SACD on PS3. See http://www.ps3sacd.com/faq.html

[buckshot]

i just bought dire straits "brothers in arms" and elton john's "Goodbye yellow brick road" holy crap, they're both awesome. makes me wish sacd wasn't just some obscure audiophile format.

[Clark Kent]

"Doolittle" by the Pixies just came out on SACD.

[Gremal]

Originally Posted by buckshot

i just bought dire straits "brothers in arms" and elton john's "Goodbye yellow brick road" holy crap, they're both awesome. makes me wish sacd wasn't just some obscure audiophile format.

No offense, but that came out years ago. Where were all you guys when we were pleading for consumers to adopt sacd. the lack of support was what essentially forced the major studios to drop the format.

[B.RAYBURN]

Originally Posted by Gremal

No offense, but that came out years ago. Where were all you guys when we were pleading for consumers to adopt sacd. the lack of support was what essentially forced the major studios to drop the format.

I agree. My dear friend Gus who was a pioneer for Sony and the format, is still hard at it, and making strides everyday, but it just never took off. Too bad Sony didn't put the energy they put towards Blu-ray into the marketing of SACD, the world would be a different place for us audiophiles.

[Todd]

Originally Posted by db2

Can anyone recommend any Classical music on SACD or dualdisc? Specifically I am looking for something soothing and relaxing, not a collection of loud, thundering symphonies. I am totally ignorant to classical music so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

Amadeus / Academy of st. Martin-in-the-fields / Sir Neville Marriner
Label is ( FANTASY 2WAMSA-1791-6 ) SACD

Berlioz Requiem / Robert Spano /Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Label is ( TELARC surround ) SACD

Carl Orff / Carmina Burana / Donald Runnicles / Atlanta Symphony Orchestra & Chorus
Label is ( TELARC surround ) SACD

Gustav Holst / The Planets - The Mystic Trumpeter / Royal Scottish National Orchestra / David Lloyd - Jones
Label is ( NAXOS ) DVD-A

I like jazz rock blues some country some bluegrass and anything else that grabs my attention if you want anymore ideas let me know here or through pm. Todd

[dinoslino]

Originally Posted by B.RAYBURN

I agree. My dear friend Gus who was a pioneer for Sony and the format, is still hard at it, and making strides everyday, but it just never took off. Too bad Sony didn't put the energy they put towards Blu-ray into the marketing of SACD, the world would be a different place for us audiophiles.

Since Gus did DSD authoring for DSOTM SACD, could you ask him if there is any indication we ll see WYWH SACD soon?

Cheers

[Gremal]

Originally Posted by B.RAYBURN

I agree. My dear friend Gus who was a pioneer for Sony and the format, is still hard at it, and making strides everyday, but it just never took off. Too bad Sony didn't put the energy they put towards Blu-ray into the marketing of SACD, the world would be a different place for us audiophiles.

Is that Gus Skinas who does SACD authoring? He was very helpful in getting me info and photos for an article I did in Positive Feedback.

I believe Sony did put the effort into SACD. A tremendous amount of marketing and production efforts went into the format, and Sony also got the support of several other labels, including UMG, ABKCO and the Fantasy/Stax/OJC umbrella. There was significant consumer electronics support too, with Samsung, Pioneer and many other companies manufacturing SACD players. The audio/HT press was mostly very slow to pick up on the importance of the format with Positive Feedback being the only one that was fully applauding it from the start. Stereophile, Absolute Sound and the HT publications including Sound and Vision were very slow to catch on to the significance and initially really harmed adoption of the format. Sam Tellig was especially unhelpful. It's a real shame, but I believe Sony did everything within reason to make it work and consumers chose iPods instead of SACDs.