DSOTM Gold vs. SACD

You left out two pieces of equipment. The ears, and the brain.

Yeah, me too!

 

For a copy of the black triangle disc, I will compare it against the SACD, the 20th Anny release, the MOFI gold, and a highly distressed and apparently pee-stained cassette tape.

Seriously.

(Dave)

 

That reminds me... I did compare the SACD layer against the BT redbook. Also both redbooks on both players and got the exact same impression.

 

This is correct. The MoFis suck. Believe me as I have several at great cost. The stereo SACD layer is simply fantastic. There is no comparison between 16/44 anything and an analog to DSD transfer as well done by Guthrie as this one. I personally know he is using top of the line converters as well.

Geoff is correct, you have to listen to good equipment to have the differences highlighted as much as possible.

For giggles, I played the MoFi on my car's Mark Levinson system and was disappointed anyway...

What we are fighting here in the search for the truth is a deep seated brand awareness/fondness for MoFi that is well deserved in many cases (I'm particularly fond of the new Music Direct owned stuff) but for whatever reason does not hold here.

No offense to Dave but the 563 does not sound very good with SACDs. I just sold mine which I had purchased for DVDA capability. It's a great machine for the money and a nice DVD player as well but not the last word for a SACD-Red Book comparison. Also, the player sounds bright in the HF itself so you may be hearing that but not what Geoff and I are hearing on the SACD.

 

None taken Lee, I know the weaknesses of my 563A, but what I'm speaking about is not player related. It is in the mastering itself as I have proven to myself umpteen dozen times by the fact that Steve's SACD work sounds fine on my cheap player and yes, it does beat out Redbook. Same thing with the first year of production from Sony itself and MFSL when they first did Patricia Barbers 3 albums. Those sound fine to me.

 

such is not the case.

for waveform comparisons go here:

http://www.stereophile.com/news/11649/

later, chris

 

I was talking about comparing the SACD compression to the previous CDs, not the redbook layer of the new disc.

 

Is anyone planning on posting clips of this stuff so we can hear it?

 

Actually I listened to DSOTM SACD on top of the line equipment, like the ones most of the forum members have, you know, with rocks under the components, $ 1000 cables, dreamcatchers, voodoo dolls, garlic and crucifixes around them. We even used a green marker around the outer edge of the SACD and I still didn't like it, it sounded very harsh to me. Pink floyd and Elton john gold cds sell for a lot of money on Ebay for a reason.

 

Thanks for the best laugh I've had all day!

 

I have the UDI, the Japanese "Blackface" Harvest, the infamous "Black Triangle", and the SACD. I don't have Hi Rez playback yet, so I can't comment on anything other than redbook. In that case, if I had to choose between the SACD and the UDI I would go for the UDI, but I don't like either of them really. The Black Harvest, NR and all, is still the best of that lot. With NR and without NR, DSOTM is still a noisy, congested recording, and I think there is NR to some degree on every reissue I've heard. Of course, that is my impression based on my current setup. Even when I had a less "analytical"? system, there were always parts of DSOTM that gave me a headache. This may sound like a joke, but the best system I've heard this album on was at the Hayden Planetarium in NY about ten years ago, but I don't know what the source was. It was just smoother on the ears.

It's kind of frustrating, looking for the "best" DSOTM on CD. I'm slowly turning to the idea that vinyl may be the way to go in this case, but that doesn't answer the question. Yeah, I guess the UDI, if that's the only choice.

 

real quick...cause i'm tired

the clips are the last few seconds of eclipse...generally speaking that are at the same timings...i did not use a nuclear clock. the fidelity of each transfer and/or mastering is obvious. They were heavily amplified, no clipping. one thing overall is that i always noticed voices after the seemingly last statement (matter of fact it's all dark). there are voices (unintelligible) throughout all of the very ending heartbeats, most clear on the toshiba due to the lack of no orchestral arrangements drowning them out. I'm not talking about the clearly less than audible voices...under normal circumstances i would not turn my amp up (Yamaha MX1000) to this level to have heard this. They have to be turned up LOUD. Best with good cans. right click and save, the files are in .flac.

the first clip is of the toshiba (triangle).

i think I hear "dark side of the moon"...dunno.

http://mysite.verizon.net/dogofdoom/dsotmtoshiba.flac

second clip is the MFSL.

orchestra is apparent...still hear them freakin voices though.

http://mysite.verizon.net/dogofdoom/dsotmmfsl.flac

third is US capitol release.

orchestra and voices...although, not so good.

http://mysite.verizon.net/dogofdoom/dsotmcapitol.flac

the MFSL ends abrubtly on a heartbeat...or the middle of one.

EDIT: the file will save as an .HTM document...you have to change the file extension to .flac...sorry

 

The vinyl never came off as "noisy and congested". I don't believe the recording is.

 

Oh that's the problem. You used garlic which is thin sounding, oregano makes for a more liquid midrange.

 

I was curious so I made a little comparison of my own.

Here's a few seconds of Breathe in this order:

1. SACD (dithered down from DSD)
2. Redbook of the SACD
3. MFSL UD I
4. A Black Triangle Harvest CD (CP35-3017)

The only thing I did was to level match the clips. I was quite surprised how similar the SACD and MFSL sounded. You'll also notice the DSD and Redbook layers of the SACD sound identical. The Harvest is clearly the brightest of the bunch. I know there's several different versions so this may not be the most scientific comparison but it's a start.

http://home.comcast.net/~captaincasual/01_Breathe_Compare.mp3

Enjoy!

 

Thanks Jamie, but is #4 a "blackface" Harvest (CDP 7 46001 2) or a Toshiba/EMI "black triangle" (CP35-3017)? The two can be quite different even if the Harvest cd is made in Japan with the "CP35-3017" in the matrix number.

 

Oops, sorry. CP35-3017

I made the correction to my post.

 

I read somewhere here that the redbook layer on the SACD was probably compressed or something bad. Is none of that true? Is the redbook a downsample of the DSD layer? I'm seriously thinking of getting this now.

 

Yes, the clip is a 16 bit version of the DSD layer. The DSD and Redbook sound the same (and were the same volume).

 

I think we may be missing something here. I seem to recall that in an interview with James Guthrie, he stated that prior CDs used tapes that were later generation but the SACD was actually the first to use the original tape.

Does anyone else remember this? I will try to find the article. I think Brian Moura wrote something...

 

On a related note, I continue to be interested in the whole UDI versus UDII saga, even though I only own a UDI.

For years, people claimed that the UDI and UDII were from different digital masters. We now know this to not be correct; the discs are bit-identical and this cannot happen with discs sourced from the same digital master. However, some listeners still claim that these discs sound nothing like each other, and that something is different. Perhaps some anomaly happened in the glass mastering, stamper creation, or actual disc pressing that is different. One could theorize that the UDII may have more jitter, or excessive correctible errors and that this is causing the discs to sound different during playback despite being digitally identical.

I've been mucking about with Plextools lately. I can run error (C1/C2/CU) scans and a beta/jitter test on my UDI. Can anyone with a UDII (and a Plextor drive) do the same, so that we can compare results?

It could be interesting to do this with other UDI/II discs as well.

 

Michael,

I would be interested in seeing results of your jitter tests.

I'm not familiar with Plextools, is it related to Plextor?

 

Lee,

Yes, Plextools Pro only runs on Plextor drives, and allows lots of low level testing of both pressed and burned CDs and DVDs.

There's something called Kprobe that runs on Mediatek-based drives (Aopen is one, I think) but it doesn't have as many tests from what I hear.

Anything I find I will post here.

I am experimenting on a couple of other interesting discs and have some things to post once I'm done.

 

Lee,

As Michael pointed out, Plextools Professional is Plextor's proprietary extraction/burning software. It was started by Plextor Europe and was made available as a free download. It became available in the U.S. with the release of the Plextor Premium drive and replaced the lousy Plextor Manager. Plextools Professional is a robust software and very much equals or betters EAC for Plextor drives. You can download the standard version for free on Plextools.com here:

http://www.plextools.com/download/download.asp

Here is a link to descriptions and a demo on both Plextools Professional and the newer Plextools Professional XL which I have yet to try:

http://www.plextools.com/info/info.asp

Mike