"DXD is a PCM signal with 24-bit resolution sampled at 352.8 kHz - eight times 44.1 kHz, the sampling frequency of Red Book CD."
CD lovers wake up from your delusions, CD is ONLY 16 Bit 44.1kHz and no magic anywhere on earth can change that! If you desire high resolution the choices are clear:
- SACD
- DVD-Audio
- Blu-ray Audio
- 24 Bit 96kHz DVD
- High resolution downloads of 88.2kHz or higher
REMEMBER IN NO WAY, SHAPE OR FORM WILL LOW RESOLUTION CD EVER BE HIGH RESOLUTION. IT WOULD VIOLATE THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. It is totally and completely impossible! This is just another fraud to separate the gullible from their money. I call absolute and complete foul on this phony DXD CD format. Phooey!
And here is the final kick to the gut, these charlatans want $34.99 for these fraudulent CDs masquerading as high resolution! For that price we can buy two real high resolution SACDs!
Help spread the word about real honest-to-god high resolution to everyone. The sooner the CD format dies, the sooner these snake-oil salesmen can quit taking advantage of unsuspecting music lovers.
Have you listened to any of the DXD releases? If not, I would highly recommend the Oscar Peterson Trio, we get requests. I can understand someone not thinking that redbook CDs can sound as good as SACDs but some of the DXD release sound better than some SACD. I own a number of the DXD release and yes some do not sound as good as the best SACDs. Yet the Oscar Peterson Trio release sounds most excellent and I would highly recommend it. I lent it to a close friend who is a big SACD fan and he loved it enough to order his own copy. Give it a try. I am not saying it is a replacement for SACDs but I am saying it can be very good and with the supply of great SACDs very limited, you may find it worthwhile.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the Oscar Peterson Trio suggestion, however I no longer purchase CDs of any type.
ReplyDeleteI have only heard SACDs from DXD masters such as the 2L ones, I was not impressed but I think that has more to do with 2L's engineering as I have SACDs from 24 Bit 96kHz masters that sound excellent and one would expect 24 Bit 352.8 kHz to be even more realistic.
However my big objection is to the advertising of DXD CDs since CDs are 16 Bit 44.1kHz and can never be more. It appears to me they are appealing to consumers desire for better sound with a crippled product and thus consumers may end up rejecting REAL high resolution digital without ever listening to it based on the phony so-called high resolution CDs that actually are still CDs.
In my humble opinion DXD recordings SHOULD only be released as SACDs or at the very least as high resolution downloads.
The great thing about DXD is that the studios can process them (in DXD) into DSD versions, put them on SACDs, and still retain an edge which recording engineers might be able to hear. But to release them as CDs and call them hi-res is despicable, because their bandwidth is limited and the decimation process will always introduce a certain amount of artificiality due to round-off errors, even if they're played back without interpolation. Teresa's right - there's no good reason to compromise.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the Linn CD-12, widely regarded as the best-sounding CD player on the planet (an admission of the impracticality of the CD format - i.e. it costs $20K to "get it right") does use oversampling, I wonder how it would stack up against a non-oversampling CD player of comparable quality (perhaps a tricked-out Audio Note DAC), and an SACD player, in a long-term double-blind listening test. How much of its reputation for electronic perfection is due to its cost and mechanical quality?
ReplyDeleteWadia touts its time-domain interpolation algorithm as the ultimate approach to extracting music from CDs, but consider the following from its 922 advertisement (http://www.wadia.com/directory/index.php):
Although the interpolated samples are calculated by DigiMaster 1.4 to 48-bit precision, the original data samples from the compact disc are not altered in any way.
The original samples from the cd are part of the output? How can they obtain a 24-bit-accurate waveform if they include these samples which can be off by as much as 1/2 of a 16-bit LSB? It seems to me that it would be better to determine the actual waveform and throw our the original samples. This is what a non-oversampling approach does, effectively (assuming that each sample on the CD is within 1/2 LSB of the original waveform).
It appears to me that the desire to maintain CD as popular medium is to keep selling the "latest and greatest" way to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse. Those with large CD collections should cut their losses and switch to SACD whenever possible. Assuming the economy recovers (which isn't going to happen if we continue to listen to the gang of bankers who deliberately got us into this mess to put the "uppity" human race back in its place as their mindless toy soldiers and slaves), they'll probably resume their game of churning out outrageously-priced CD players that "finally" get it right, just like the auto industry keeps us chained to their products, the flaws of which are becoming more and more apparent as the little ice age advances.
It's all about how good is the master from the studio. U can have poorly master on SACD, and wooha: the SACD is crap. U can have good master on conventional CD and sounds better than that on SACD. But real digital values (192kHz/24bit, etc.) never replace theory of any DXD CD (44,1khz/16bit). Cheers, High Definitions
ReplyDeletePaul I have heard many crappy SACDs that sound as bad as CD. If one combines low resolution PCM with poor engineering and mastering one can very bad sound indeed. However I have never heard an SACD that was so bad it sounded worse than its CD version.
ReplyDeleteI just think it is a waste of resources to offer high resolution masters that are then downsampled to 16 Bit 44.1kHz CD.
I really think there are people who believe this propaganda that CDs from high resolution masters are high resolution which is indeed impossible as CD can NEVER be more than 16 Bit 44.1kHz. Its all smoke and mirrors. One really needs a high resolution format to actually hear high resolution. ALL recordings greater than 16/44.1 should be offered on formats that match or exceed their resolution. It seems to be pure simple logic to me but the something most of the world has yet to grasp.