Quote Originally Posted by RobotCzar
Amen. I fully support all your comments, but I want to draw particular attention the fact that recording "engineers" do not adhere to scientific standards (well put)
Where is the scientific evidence that support this assumption? Do you sit in every studio in the world and watch what engineers do? NO, because you cannot do it. Stick to facts, not your own inexperienced beliefs.

and they are often not trained as electrical engineers and cannot be expected to have technical answers to many questions that vex audiophiles.
We are talking about mixing audio, you don't need an electrical engineering degree to do this. Most engineers do have extensive knowledge of the principles of digital audio, and how to effective use the tools they have at their disposal. Do you?

Even well-respected engineers have, for example, backed expensive cable.
Yes, and so have some electrical engineers too!!

Worse yet, as I have pointed out, many recording engineers are a vested interest in new formats adopted by their employers.
Sorry, but 90% of all working engineers are independent. The main engineers pushing these high rez formats are independents. Jack Renner and Michael Bishop(biggest supporters of SACD) work for Telarc, not Sony. Tony Brown, Chuck Ainley, Eliott Schneider(major supporters of DVD-A) all own their own studios. Most of the recordings that Warner(DVD-A) and Sony/BMG(SACD) release come from independent engineers. They are not employed by any studio, and are not obligated in any way to support either format. If these engineers support these products, they do based on their own experience, not pressure from Sony or Warner. A audio engineer can do quite well without every releasing anything on both of these labels. They could also do quite well without openly supporting either high rez format. So when you want to point something out next time, be at least factual. Otherwise you are just another bloke spewing out a bunch of mindless uneducated words.

Bottom line is that the new bit-wasting playback formats have not be shown empricially to be superior in a controlled test and also have zero theoretical reason superior AUDIBLE performance.
DCs has done a controlled double blinded comparison, and they published their results.

http://www.dcsltd.co.uk/technical_papers/effects.pdf

It compares 16/44.1khz with 24/96khz, 24/192khz, and DSD. If you notice, there are no comments in the CD box. That is because the comments in the other boxes are observations that are derived from the comparison. In other words the comments are derived from the differences found between the different sample rates and DSD as compared with the reference (CD)

This comparison was done in 1998 back when the editing tools for DVD-A and SACD were limited and of lower quality than those used presently. Now these tools are of better quality, and are in most studios that frequently use both of the high rez formats, so I know for a fact the quality of both of these formats have improved greatly.