The Downward Spiral

[tsumake]

Ok, this is for all of you audiophiles....

As most of you know (well, at least I think you know), Reznor just released The Downward Spiral uber-deluxe edition, one form in SACD and the other in Dualdisc. I don't know much of either format, and I was wondering which version to get. Apparently, both are mixed in surround (5.1) but which would be better to own? And, do you need any special players to play SACD? The surround system I have is on my comp: Audigy 2 (plain) 5.1 with logitech z-640s.

Anyway, which one to get?

 

[it290]

I think the Audigy 2 comes with a SACD capable player, if you get the boxed version anyway. As for format, I really don't know...CD quality has always been good enough for me. (Actually I prefer vinyl, but that's another story...)

 

[Borisz]

I don't think there are SACD players for computers at all. soundcards from Creative have drivers for the other high-end medium, DVD Audio, but I don't know of any SACD players for home computers.

Hydrogenaudio.org might have more info on this.

 

[racketboy]

I thought the drive itself would be the issue...

maybe not?

 

[mal]

This is one of my favorite albums ever.

I might just have to keep an eye out for this.

 

[RitualOfTheTrout]

Well Ive done some research but Its still not clear to me. From what I understand current standalone DVD players for watching movies will be unable to get the full potential of DVD-Audio, but I found nothing to say that I normal PC DVD player with the right software and sound card would have any problems.

As with SACD it seems that you need a seperete player to play the enhanced version of the music, while some SACD's have a regular CD layer that works just like a typical CD in a player.

So im assuming SACD would not work in a PC CD rom drive, at least with the enhanced audio. I also assume DVD-A will work in a normal PC DVD drive assuming you have the right software and card to play it.

Overall I see SACD has better sound and DVD-A lacks controll of the LFE channell

Perhaps someone with some more knowledge on the topic can help clear this up..? :huh

 

[Borisz]

DVD-A uses some encryption which renders the data on the disc useless unless you have the correct drivers, which is Creative's DVDA plugin. You can still access the data, only you can't do jack with it. Like if you had a MP3 CD and no MP3 player. And yes, with a Creative Sound Blaster card, you can playback DVDA discs on computers fine.

Here's the Iron Maiden Dance of Death DVDA running on my Sound Blaster Live card, via Intervideo's windvd:

http://web.axelero.hu/fka2636/DVDA.png

as for SACD, I don't even know what method it uses to store audio data, as I heard it isn't even PCM but some other method which is more close to actual sound wave progressing then regular PCM. don't quote me on that though. most SACD discs are dual layered, with a regular CD layer having regular CD Audio, and the SACD layer with the enchanced high-resolution 5.1 sound. PCs and incompatible players can only progress the CD Audio layer, while SACD compatible players will read the enchanced audio.

I'm unaware of any SACD compatible CDROMs for PC that might exist. As far as I know, there are none.

 

[tsumake]

Well, I just got the DVDA version of TDS. Hmm, I don't know. I played it first at home on my home theater setup in DD 5.1. It was, ok, but nothing I found to be spectacular. I then played here on my rig in full DVD-A resolution. Now, mind you I don't have the best 5.1 speakers in the world (Logitech Z-640's) but still I'm not digging it too much. It's probably because of the speakers that I'm getting the full flavor of the DVD-A. On the other hand, a lot of people were confused on how to get 48 khz quality out of a master that wasn't recorded on 48 khz.

Also, I'm not too happy with the surround mix in general. What makes TDS interesting is the cacophony of various sounds, and while the surround mixing makes them easier to distinguish, I still can't dig the experience. I don't like how Trent displaces the various sounds around the speakers. Sometimes it's inspired, even obvious as to the positionings of the sounds, but sometimes he places a particular sound in a speaker that just doesn't feel right. I have a pretty good ear and I could make out most of the individual sounds in TDS, and appreciated how they came together so well. Separating them like this kind of spoils the experience.

I don't know much about DVD-A or the quality of other discs, since I only have this one, but while I think it's possibly to do something interesting and great with this medium, I guess many people will have to fuck up great albums before producers get the hang of it.

 

[Berty]

Hi,

You have all heard about sample rates right? DVD-A uses a sample rate or 96KHz which means that the audio stream is "sampled" each 96000th of a second.

SACD on the other hand has a sample rate of 2.8GHz so its audio stream is sampled each 2800000 of a second.

Now this doesn't mean much by itself, until you look at a thing called "nyquist theory". Nyquist theory states that the highest possible frequency that a digitally sampled audio stream can reproduced is found by halfing its sample rate.

So the highest possible frequency that SACD can reproduce is 1400000Hz or 1.4GHz. DVD-A on the other hand can reproduce a frequency of 48000Hz or 48KHz

To put this into perspective, the human ear at birth can only hear up to 20KHz (20,000Hz) But as you get older it goes down to around 16KHz at the age of twenty (this doesn't inlcude NIN fans though that listen to March of the Pigs too loud).

But, we can actually hear frequencies that are alot higher then this. To do this we don't use our ears, instead the brain interprets these high frequencies by the vibration of blood vessels within the brain. Using this method of hearing, the average person can hear up to 115Khz max.

Now, the other thing is that you need a pair of speakers able to vibrate at 115Khz or 115000 times per second to reproduce these frequencies.

At my university, we have a set of reference speakers (Genelics) that cost $12,000 each that struggle to do this.

If money is no option and you have an Uber sound setup then fork out the money for a SACD and some real expensive tweeters.

Else, go with DVD-A.

The other thing is that there is only one recoring console in the world that can record directlt into SACD mode, and that is owned by sony. I think that DVD-A will be a more successful format because people can already make DVD-A cd recordings in there own homw for a reasonable price.

Hope this helps!

 

[Curtis]

I've read a few things about SACD that would suggest that DVDA is the superior format. Something about the resolution of the DACs nuking the percieved advantages of the higher sampling rate, perhaps? I dunno...I'll read some more.

 

[Berty]

DVD-A using a form of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) which is a very good file format as it doesn't degrade second and third harmonics like other form of encoding can.

However, 2nd and third harmonics are completely different once converted from analogue to digital and actually sound quite bad. SACD does something though to get around this, but im not sure exactly what.

EDIT>

forgot to mention that nearly all SACD are dual layer and feature the normal 16bit,44KHz layer that can be read by normal cd players (but that aint SACD quality or 5.1)

 

[Curtis]

I found the article I was thinking of. Decide for yourself:

http://sound.westhost.com/cd-sacd-dvda.htm

Also, a few other bits and pieces (from this link):

SACD is indeed fundamentally flawed. Using 1-bit as a conversion method can

be a valid choice when the analog circuit does not have performance higher

than the 1-bit signal. To use this as a data format, thus binding everyone

to the noise and distortion limits, is quite another thing...

SACD is a typically Japannish invention in that it is a solution to a

nonexistent problem (decimation-interpolation), which in turn creates some

very real problems left for real engineers to solve. Some examples:

1. Splicing (editing) two DSD signals together creates a "click", even if

both represent silence.

2. Any processing (except delay results in a longer word length. Getting

back to 1-bit requires another stage of deltasigma modulation. Sony dreamt

of a new signal processing paradigm operating entirely in DSD. It was not to

be - they even officially admit it now. Any quantisation mixes the signal

with quantisation noise. They can no longer be separated. This is not much

of a problem at 24 bits. At 1 bit however... well...

3. The accumulated noise from previous conversions reduces the deltasigma

modulator's headroom. After 5 conversions (e.g. level control, eq, mixing,

fader etc), the modulator already overloads at silence.

4. DSD is not distortion-free.

5. The signal bandwidth and the noise zone overlap. In a correctly designed

converter, the signal occupies the "clean zone" only, thus allowing the

noise to be filtered away. With DSD, the noise zone starts at 20kHz but the

signal bandwidth extends -by Sony's definition- to 100kHz. The SNR over

100kHz is only 30dB. Many amplifiers produce audible distortions when

presented with this noise (hence the switchable filter on many SACDs).

It was "invented" when someone took a CS5390 chip, wired the 1-bit test

outputs straight to a D/A converter and liked what he heard. Thus, the

standard was fixed at 1-bit/64fs which happened to be the internal operating

parameters of this particular chip.

This chip is now long obsolete. Current ADCs operate at rates of 128fs and

over, at 4 bits or more.

 

[ExCyber]

SACD on the other hand has a sample rate of 2.8GHz so its audio stream is sampled each 2800000 of a second.

I think you mean 2.8MHz, not GHz (at 280MByte/sec, high-end hard drive engineers would have torn SACD apart to figure out how Sony did it). And I think even the 2.8MHz number is using a fairly loose definition of "sample".

 

[Berty]

2.8Million times per second, sorry my bad.

 

[Borisz]

As small correction, the maximum that a DVD-A disc can handle is 24bit 192khz.

And as of right now, the quality of the recorded data depends on how well they master it. I have CDs made in the early 90s that sounds as good as some of todays DVD material, albeit only in Stereo instead of 5.1. Recording companies purposefully do bad mastering on todays CDs to promote the hi-def formats more.

Technically, I see SACD as a superior format, but it uses an entirely different hardware setup then PCM, so I don't see if it is even possible to play back such thing on a computer, or at least without heavy quality disortion (converting the data stream to a format that can be progressed by regular soundcards).

The only thing I can imagine would be an external USB/Fireware based SACD player with its own drive, but that would have the same use as if you would buy a seperate player, and would have as much point as the USB based automatic toothbrush (works the same way as the regular, it just feeds off power from your computer).

DVD-A has better compatibility and it has the "DVD" in it, which can fool many people thinking that its better then SACD, as that one is just a "CD". Unfortunetaly.