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  1. #1
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    SACD's - the best?

    When I purchased my Marantz SA-8001 SACD player, I purchased it primarily for its highly rated playback of redbook CD's, and regarded its SACD capability as an added frill that I probably wouldn't use much. Now that I've had the player for a while, and have had the opportunity to listen closely to CD's and SACD's, and compare the two, I have to state that the sound of a well engineered SACD is second to nothing else out there.

    That's a pretty bold statement, but one that's also shared by the folks at Telarc. I've been enjoying a running dialog with one of their current engineers (in addition to continued dialogs with ex-Telarc exec, Jack Renner), and he's made it very clear that Telarc is steadfastly committed to the SACD format because they believe it's the best thing out there. (Their website makes it very clear that, whie they have a few DVD-A recordings available, they've abandoned the format in favor of the SACD.) When I asked him why some Telarc SACD's sounded a bit distant, "soft," or even outright dull, he responded by stating that a certain microphone (the Sennheiser MKH-800, for a staggering $3,000 each!) is the culprit. While that mike is capable of making things sound lush and full, it lacks upper end detail, which is why a handful of Telarc discs sound decidedly lackluster when compared to others. The Beethoven's 9th, conducted by Donald Runnicles, for example, is probably the worst sounding Telarc disc I own, and is easily eclipsed by a much, much older "ordinary" CD of the piece. The culprit: The Sennheiser MKH-800.

    Fortunately, not all Telarc SACD's use this mike, and the remastered Soundstream discs certainly don't, because the mike didn't exist when they were first made. And, it is those remastered Soundstream recordings that continue to amaze me: the audible difference between the older, "redbook" CD of such a recording, and the newer 2-channel SACD transfer is nothing less than extraordinary. Anyone who owns some of those older discs, and now has an SACD player, has no idea what he's in store for by replacing those discs with their newer counterparts. The differences, and this may sound trite, are as different as night and day

    Many of the Soundstream remasters are also very good values: often, two older discs are combined onto one new SACD. Tchaikovsky's 4th and Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring," for example, are now on one disc, and there are a number of other combinations available too.

    The transfer is an exceptionally tedious and time-consuming one, but the sonic results, at least to me, are well worth it. I haven't yet received my $600 from the government, but when I do, I intend to load up on some more Telarc SACD's, and in particular, those Soundstream transfers I don't already own.

  2. #2
    Shostakovich fan Feanor's Avatar
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    Sure it's best

    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    When I purchased my Marantz SA-8001 SACD player, I purchased it primarily for its highly rated playback of redbook CD's, and regarded its SACD capability as an added frill that I probably wouldn't use much. Now that I've had the player for a while, and have had the opportunity to listen closely to CD's and SACD's, and compare the two, I have to state that the sound of a well engineered SACD is second to nothing else out there.

    ...
    As I've said ad nauseum, (1) if only because of better mastering including better dynamics, and (2) because of multi-channel.

    There are hardcore vinylphiles who hotly dispute the sound quality of SACD, basically lumping it with CD as just another digital format that can never equal vinyl analog. I suspect the reasons are that these folks:
    • Own a relatively great vinyl playback kit in combination with a relatively mediocre SACD player, and/or
    • Vinyl as become their absolute reference standard such that anything that sounds different by definition is inferior.
    Last edited by Feanor; 05-16-2008 at 06:38 AM.

  3. #3
    Ajani
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    Quote Originally Posted by Feanor
    As I've said ad nauseum, (1) if only because of better mastering including better dynamics, and (2) because of multi-channel.

    There are hardcore vinylphiles who hotly dispute the sound quality of SACD, basically lumping it with CD as just another digital format that can never equal vinyl analog. I suspect the reasons are that these folks:
    • Own a relatively great vinyl playback kid in combination with a relatively mediocre SACD player, and/or
    • Vinyl as become their absolute reference standard such that anything that sounds different by definition is inferior.
    lol... I suspect both points are true + the second point applies to more than just vinyl vs SACD.

  4. #4
    Gab
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    I dont know anything about sacd except i do have some on my computer, but i know a lot about vinyl and cd having listened and compaired both on the best audio.

    emaidel there is one thing that worries me, you said 3 k microphones... well i have bad news , most of my classical was taken by 50 - 100k $/mic , i talked with the guys at the national orchestra and they use 100k a piece...

    All i know on sacd is that they use more bits or more bandwidth something like that, i dont know if it makes a difference , but more bit rate always is good making the sound reach analog perfection, but the 100k band is just useless there is little to hear over 15 k hertz...

    About CdvsLPs : i think cd is a compromise on the level of purity of sound / Lp is a compromise on quality and consistency uncolored sound.
    CD;The distorsions are mostly jitter/unaccurate peaks and wave/digital remastering
    PL: mostly mechanical noise , acceleration /deceleration problems etc.

    My opinion is the LP has more data capacity on the micro size than cd / sacd but i only speculate My experience is that CD are mostly disapointing compaired to LP, One major problem on cd's is the sony 24 bit or 20 bit original tapes downsized to 16 bit cd format : it introduce extreme jitter and disfigure the sound wave. Upsample is good, downsample is ALWAYS BAD ! sony got to learn this... you guys with sacd should not have this problem and it's imo the only reason that can justify buying SACD.... if you have 40 k sound system and your bored of cd's , buy a sim yorke and 47 lab , these are uber cool....

    Thats my 2 cents, the only important thing is do what you feel sounds the best, personaly i get more into the music on cd's because of the absence of mechanical artefacts you get more the real feeling, and lp's sound unbelievable GET BOTH!

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    Quote Originally Posted by Gab
    I dont know anything about sacd except i do have some on my computer, but i know a lot about vinyl and cd having listened and compaired both on the best audio.

    emaidel there is one thing that worries me, you said 3 k microphones... well i have bad news , most of my classical was taken by 50 - 100k $/mic , i talked with the guys at the national orchestra and they use 100k a piece...

    All i know on sacd is that they use more bits or more bandwidth something like that, i dont know if it makes a difference , but more bit rate always is good making the sound reach analog perfection, but the 100k band is just useless there is little to hear over 15 k hertz...

    About CdvsLPs : i think cd is a compromise on the level of purity of sound / Lp is a compromise on quality and consistency uncolored sound.
    CD;The distorsions are mostly jitter/unaccurate peaks and wave/digital remastering
    PL: mostly mechanical noise , acceleration /deceleration problems etc.

    My opinion is the LP has more data capacity on the micro size than cd / sacd but i only speculate My experience is that CD are mostly disapointing compaired to LP, One major problem on cd's is the sony 24 bit or 20 bit original tapes downsized to 16 bit cd format : it introduce extreme jitter and disfigure the sound wave. Upsample is good, downsample is ALWAYS BAD ! sony got to learn this... you guys with sacd should not have this problem and it's imo the only reason that can justify buying SACD.... if you have 40 k sound system and your bored of cd's , buy a sim yorke and 47 lab , these are uber cool....

    Thats my 2 cents, the only important thing is do what you feel sounds the best, personaly i get more into the music on cd's because of the absence of mechanical artefacts you get more the real feeling, and lp's sound unbelievable GET BOTH!
    Uh, er, OK, I guess...

  6. #6
    Gab
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    Telarc make excellent recordings i want !!!!!!
    and btw the Sennheiser is very trusted company , i learned one thing in audio and it is that price is just one variable....

  7. #7
    RGA
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    It's always always down to the recording not the medium. Plenty of vinyl albums sound better than their digital counterpart and the reverse is also true. Plenty of vinyl not available on CD or SACD which makes it worthwhile. Sonic attributes aside that makes Vinyl and CD and SACD worthwhile to own. People who actually love music should have a good turntable because of the thousands of discs not available on the other formats. Unfortunately you do have to spend a bit of time on turntables to get them to sound their best - unlike a cd player you plop down plug in and turn on.

    You should also try and hear the Linn direct from masters technology as it is said to be the king of digital sound right now.

  8. #8
    Big science. Hallelujah. noddin0ff's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gab
    I dont know anything about sacd except i do have some on my computer, but i know a lot about vinyl and cd having listened and compaired both on the best audio.
    SACD to the best of my knowledge cannot be ripped to a computer or played back on a computer. I believe you are mistaken. There is no software available to decode SACD; Sony makes all the decoding hardware based. If you don't have the chip you don't get the music.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by RGA
    It's always always down to the recording not the medium.
    I would respectfully disagree: all Telarc SACD's (and, I believe all SACD's in general) have both an SACD and a CD layer. Playing the material as a CD, and then playing it again as an SACD reveals many sonic improvements, attributed solely to the medium, and not the recording.

  10. #10
    Shostakovich fan Feanor's Avatar
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    I greatly fear ...

    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    I would respectfully disagree: all Telarc SACD's (and, I believe all SACD's in general) have both an SACD and a CD layer. Playing the material as a CD, and then playing it again as an SACD reveals many sonic improvements, attributed solely to the medium, and not the recording.
    ... that I agree with RGA on this point. It's the recording more than the medium. If there's a significant difference between the CD and SACD layers, then it's likely to be less compression and/or more headroom in the SACD case. Have look at Wikipedia's SACD vs. CD section. I do assume that we're talking a new recording or at least a new master where the SACD and CD layers were mastered at the same time by the same engineer.

    In Wikipedia, note the following quote in particular,
    "... the properties of DSD and the authoring process tend to discourage the kind of extreme compression and unpleasant-sounding hard digital clipping often found on PCM recordings. Unlike CD, which sets the 0 dB level right at the theoretical PCM signal limit, and doesn't take into account oversampling, SACD sets the 0 dB level at 6 dB below the theoretical full-scale DSD signal, and prohibits peaks above +3 dB. DSD processing is less amenable to simple clipping to meet these limits, forcing more care to be taken during mastering. The extra headroom also eases the job of DACs in playback equipment, which often suffer overload distortion when fed the full-scale PCM common on heavily-compressed CDs. Thus, improved quality may result from simply preventing the kinds of poor mastering often found on PCM, rather than from any fundamental audible difference between DSD and PCM; PCM mastered several dB lower would also obtain the same benefit."
    So is it the medium or the recording? Or is the medium's standard enforcing good recording practice?

    My experience is almost entirely with classical music where even CDs aren't subject to excessive compression, and I don't heard any significant differences in resolution or "air" between the layers. (The true this that I prefer the CD layer recorded to ALAC and played back using Foobar and my DAC, over the SACD layer. OK, perhaps the only proves it's time for me to get a better SACD player.)

  11. #11
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    Quote Originally Posted by Feanor

    My experience is almost entirely with classical music where even CDs aren't subject to excessive compression, and I don't heard any significant differences in resolution or "air" between the layers.
    My experience is exclusively with classical music. On Telarc SACD's, all mastered via the DSD process, the CD layer sounds quite good, but the SACD layer sounds better in all respects, certainly providing "air" and other sonic attributes not existing on the CD layer. I can only speak from experience with my 8001 player, but it's been the case each and every time I've ever made a comparison, and the 8001 is an acknowledged, reputable player for standard CD playback..

    On the Soundstream remastered SACD's, the CD layer significantly outperforms the redbook disc, simply due to the remastering via the DSD process, but when played through the SACD circuitry of the 8001, it's as if a heavy curtain were lifted from the front of my speakers.

  12. #12
    Shostakovich fan Feanor's Avatar
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    Guess ...

    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    .... I can only speak from experience with my 8001 player, but it's been the case each and every time I've ever made a comparison, and the 8001 is an acknowledged, reputable player for standard CD playback..
    ....
    ... I gotta git me one ah dem 8001s.
    ...
    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails SACD's - the best?-marantzsa8001.jpg  
    Last edited by Feanor; 05-17-2008 at 03:13 AM.

  13. #13
    Gab
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    I think it all come to one thing, the mastering / downsampling etc ,

    If you listen to 24 bit sound 192 k on sacd and then listen to the transcription into 16 bit 44.1 k You get JITTER + SCRAP peak sound resolution, the downsampling software disfigure the wave. Thats why many sacd sound better, if you listen cd's and got a very good system dont buy recordings with 24 bits mastering and stuff , when they put it back on the cd its not as good, the advantages of lower distorsion of 24 bit mastering are nullified by the downsampling and is in fact worse imo - also based on testing with cd ripping etc - if i take one track audio and upsample to 55 k 32 bits, it will play very well , if I reconvert it to 16 bit 44 k I can hear a good difference with the original no bs no snake oil Also maybe my converter is to blame


    And yes the sacd i have are just cd's portion , its impossible to rip the sacd...

    If you listen to air and stuff then i am going to buy a sacd, i tought that was only on vinyl !!!

  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by Feanor
    ... I gotta git me one ah dem 8001s.
    ...
    I suspect you'll be very happy with one. I certainly am! The 8001 is the best purchase of an audio component I've made in a very, very long time. I still can't get over how much better my CD's sound whenever I play them, and, at least according to the folks at Marantz, who claimed that burn-in "can take as long as 200 hours," the unit's still not at its peak, as I don't think I"ve yet played it for that long.

    I had little interest in SACD's, but am now completely sold on them, particularly the remastered Telarc Soundstream recordings. The final decision to buy it was based on an email with Jack Renner: as I had no interest in the multi-channel capabilities of SACD, I wanted to know if I would benefit from the 2-channel layer of an SACD, and his answer was (in caps) , "YES!" And it was he who recommended I look into the reissue of the Soundstream recordings.

    Be careful: there are a number of unauthorized online retailers offering the unit for as much as $200 less than others. Most of the time, those dealers don't have the unit in stock, charge exhorbitant shipping rates, or strong arm you to buy an "extended warranty." And, most importantly, Marantz will NOT perform any in-warranty work on a unit purchased at an unauthorized dealer. Check Marantz's website for a list of authorized dealers to be safe.

  15. #15
    Shostakovich fan Feanor's Avatar
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    Would be nice

    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    I suspect you'll be very happy with one. I certainly am! The 8001 is the best purchase of an audio component I've made in a very, very long time. I still can't get over how much better my CD's sound whenever I play them, and, at least according to the folks at Marantz, who claimed that burn-in "can take as long as 200 hours," the unit's still not at its peak, as I don't think I"ve yet played it for that long.
    ...

    Be careful: there are a number of unauthorized online retailers offering the unit for as much as $200 less than others. Most of the time, those dealers don't have the unit in stock, charge exhorbitant shipping rates, or strong arm you to buy an "extended warranty." And, most importantly, Marantz will NOT perform any in-warranty work on a unit purchased at an unauthorized dealer. Check Marantz's website for a list of authorized dealers to be safe.
    Our conversation has convinced my that Sony SD-CE775 isn't really cutting it. Yes, an SA-8001 is at the top of my SACD player list for my stereo system but I don't know when it might happen.

    First, the wife & I want to get an HDTV -- still using a 27" CRT.
    And then there's the BulRay player. After that, since I listen 80% to computer-sourced music, a DAC is higher priority and my current DAC isn't SOTA by a long shot.

  16. #16
    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    I would respectfully disagree: all Telarc SACD's (and, I believe all SACD's in general) have both an SACD and a CD layer. Playing the material as a CD, and then playing it again as an SACD reveals many sonic improvements, attributed solely to the medium, and not the recording.
    Keep in mind though that Telarc (and presumably others) uses dynamic range compression when mastering the CD layer in order to raise the overall levels, while the SACD layer is pretty much an unadorned one-to-one transfer. This was pointed out during an earlier thread in which someone reposted an e-mail exchange he had with Michael Bishop. That thread wound up disintegrating into a flame war, but there's a lot of good information once you filter out the conspiracy theories and other nonsense.

    SACD vs. CD - Unfair competition?

    I agree with RGA (welcome back!) on this point. It's more about the recording than the medium -- SACD resolution alone cannot rescue a recording that was poorly done to begin with, and conversely a stellar recording can still sound stellar at CD resolution.

    As far as SACD itself. When comparing the CD and SACD layers (again, noting that there may still be differences in how they were transferred) I notice that the SACD layers often blunt any harsh edges that might pop up during the CD playback. The highs can sound more extended, yet the overall "character" of the playback sounds more relaxed. This seems most apparent with those recordings originally done in DSD.

    But, I also concur with Feanor in that SACD's potent difference maker is in its multichannel capability. A well done multichannel recording can produce absolutely stunning results, even on a relatively modest audio system. The key is paying close attention to the speaker alignment and level matching. Once calibrated properly, the stability of the side imaging, and the sense of depth perception on a good multichannel mix surpasses anything I've heard from two-channel.

    The SF Symphony's ongoing Mahler series and the LA Philharmonic's release of Le Sacre du Printemps are great SACD releases. The two channel SACD layers sound great and have been cited as reference material by some reviewers. But, the multichannel mixes are jawdropping in their sense of realism. I regularly attend concerts at SF Davies Symphony Hall, and the multichannel mixes from that Mahler series are far more representative of how that hall actually sounds than the two-channel mixes.
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    I read Bishop's email, and while he acknowledged that a popular disc of theirs has compression and limiting (primiarily to "stand a chance" when loaded into a changer with discs from other manufacturers), I don't believe that such compression or limiting takes place on Telarc classical CD's. My comments have been only about Telarc classical discs, most of which have the following disclaimer on them:

    "The signal was not passed through any processing device (i.e., compresion limiting, or equalization) at any step during production."

    My comments relating to the superior sound of the SACD layer to the CD layer on a Telarc hybrid disc (and only on Telarc discs, as I haven't had the opportunity to make such comparisons with any others, at least yet), have to do with the quality of the sound, and not the dynamics. The SACD layer simply sounds better, not necessarily more dynamic. As a matter of fact, one of the truly amazing characteristics of the Marantz SA-8001 is its ability to really improve on the dynamic range of CD's played on it, and I'm at a total loss as to how to explain why this is so. I'm continually amazed at how much louder many of the loud passages on older CD's sound played on this unit sound. (Geessshh - one would think I worked for Marantz with all this gushing praise!)

    I too dislike many popular recordings (take Santana's "Supernatural," for example) that are simply LOUD, without any dynamic range, and can understand Telarc's (or Bishop's) reasoning to include compression and/or limiting on their popular releases.

  18. #18
    Gab
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    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    "The signal was not passed through any processing device (i.e., compresion limiting, or equalization) at any step during production."

    .

    right was i meant , your sacd is perfect , it would be fun to compair it with a cd recorded in 16 bit and untouched i am still sceptical about the medium , I promise to make experiments , first i need to find a cd company with the same recordings standards

  19. #19
    Forum Regular Woochifer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by emaidel
    I read Bishop's email, and while he acknowledged that a popular disc of theirs has compression and limiting (primiarily to "stand a chance" when loaded into a changer with discs from other manufacturers), I don't believe that such compression or limiting takes place on Telarc classical CD's. My comments have been only about Telarc classical discs, most of which have the following disclaimer on them:

    "The signal was not passed through any processing device (i.e., compresion limiting, or equalization) at any step during production."

    My comments relating to the superior sound of the SACD layer to the CD layer on a Telarc hybrid disc (and only on Telarc discs, as I haven't had the opportunity to make such comparisons with any others, at least yet), have to do with the quality of the sound, and not the dynamics. The SACD layer simply sounds better, not necessarily more dynamic. As a matter of fact, one of the truly amazing characteristics of the Marantz SA-8001 is its ability to really improve on the dynamic range of CD's played on it, and I'm at a total loss as to how to explain why this is so. I'm continually amazed at how much louder many of the loud passages on older CD's sound played on this unit sound. (Geessshh - one would think I worked for Marantz with all this gushing praise!)

    I too dislike many popular recordings (take Santana's "Supernatural," for example) that are simply LOUD, without any dynamic range, and can understand Telarc's (or Bishop's) reasoning to include compression and/or limiting on their popular releases.
    One thing about that e-mail though is that Bishop only addressed the clipping that Wmax observed on the Tierney Sutton CD. The other CD where he observed clipping was one of Telarc's classical CDs. That disclaimer indeed talks about the purity of their production process, but I'm not sure that necessarily extends to the mastering where this compression typically gets applied. My point was simply that when comparing the CD and SACD layers, you can't assume that the transfers were done on an equal footing.

    That said, the differences I've observed between the CD and SACD layers are also more qualitative in nature. Hard to describe, but the SACD just sounds more relaxed and less fatiguing to listen to at high levels.

    When I switched over to my SCD-C2000ES, the difference with the CD playback was also noticeable. I wouldn't call it more dynamic here either, but the overall CD playback really improved on the imaging and reduced harshness. The DAC might have a role here. All of Sony's low and midrange SACD players use a Burr-Brown combo DAC that handles both the PCM and DSD decoding. (Their high end models use separate circuits to decode the PCM and DSD bitstreams) This same DAC was used in Arcam's CD72 player and across the board on Denon's universal players.

    IIRC, Cirrus Logic makes the only other combo DAC that decodes both PCM and DSD signals, and that's the one Marantz uses.
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  20. #20
    Gab
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    Also creek use it,
    -- For the diy interested I am making a custom one with some tube amp directly connected to the decoder cirrus (with the chinese kit), like the lampizator ( search lampuzera something) i hope to beat all cdp dac, when i am done ill go to my hifi shop to match it against the audio research cd3 mk2 they have in demo

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    The definitive answer.

    I sent an email to Paul Blakemore at Telarc regarding the recording/mastering processes in the manufacturing of Telarc CD's (or the CD layer) and SACD's. Paul is an "Audio engineer/editor" for Telarc, and has done all the mastering in converting the Soundstream recordings to SACD's. It's been my contention that no additional work is done for mastering an SACD than for a CD, and that the SACD layer sounds better simply because the SACD itself is better. Not all AR members agree, but Paul enthusiastically does, and sent me a very lengthy and detailed email explaining why.

    He explained very thoroughly the difference in the actual recording by the Direct Stream Digital (DSD) process and the PCM process used for CD's. His description is far too lengthy and detailed for me to copy here, but the basics were that the sampling rate of DSD (at 2,8 million times a second) vs. that for PCM (44.1 thousand times a second) allows for a far more accurate musical waveform, as well as greatly increased dynamic range.

    All Telarc discs today are recorded via the DSD process. Nothing whatosever is done to a classical DSD recording in transferring the original to an SACD, but the manner in which that DSD recording is transferred to a CD is very interesting:

    "The DSD is then simply re-recorded to PCM in a straight transfer after the volume is set for the loudest spot. We use this analog re-recording process from DSD to PCM because we found in repeated listening tests that it sounds better than a digital "downsampling." Theoretically, the direct digital downsample should sound good, but we found that because of the amount of mathematical interpolations that are vinvolved, they actually don't sound very musical. Much of the perception of depth in the stereo image and warmth of the sound is lost or degraded in a digtal downsample."

    This would explain why the "redbook" CD of DSD masters sound as good as they do. Telarc has stated too that the CD layer of a hybrid disc, and the redbook CD of that same recording are identical. It also explains why the 50,000/sec sampling rate of the Soundstream recordings didn't translate very well to CD, but now do on being remastered as SACD's.

    Insofar as compression or limiting on classical pieces, here is Paul's response:

    "I can assure you that on Telarc's purely classical orchestral recordings, whether on SACD or CD, there is no comopression, limiting, or other such dynamic range control used in mastering either the CD version or the SACD version. This would defeat our desired goal of maintining the dynamic range of these kinds of music products. I know, because I master many of these. I also know what techniques Michael Bishop and Robert Friedrich use for mastering straight classical releases, and believe me there is not any mesing around with the dynamic range."

    "There is no "mixdown" back at the studios. the best musical performances in the various "takes of the stereo recordings are simply edited together to make the master. There is no additional signal processing or messing about with the sound." (Italics, mine.)

    I'd say that answers that question pretty thoroughly and accurately. .

  22. #22
    Gab
    Gab is offline
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    yes thanks , it should sound very realistic to listen telarc recordings, i want a sacd player !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  23. #23
    Forum Regular ldgibson76's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gab
    yes thanks , it should sound very realistic to listen telarc recordings, i want a sacd player !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    Oh really now! Well you ought to check out this puppy!!!!!

    http://www.audioadvisor.com/prodinfo.asp?number=NAT585
    http://nadelectronics.com/products/d...sal-DVD-Player

    The NAD T585 Universal Player. Originally $1199.00 On sale for $499.00!

    I'm a Marantz fan from way back and I do love the SA8001. But this NAD offers more value than anything out there! I wish I could buy one right now to replace my Denon DVD2910, but I'm closing on a house next month, I need every dime!

    Just an opinion!

    Regards!
    ldgibson76
    Chance favors the prepared mine.

  24. #24
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    Sony SCD-C2000ES vs Marantz SA-8001

    I just purchased a Sony SCD-C2000ES. Does anyone have experience with both of these SACD/CD players? I am using it primarily for redbook CD but have started to acumulate SACDs. The SCD-C2000ES is $399 and the Marantz is $899. Is there that much of a difference in playback quality to justify spending over twice as much? Or should I spend the difference on SACDs? By the way, the player is hooked up to a Denon PMA-2000IVR integrated amplifier and Onix Reference 1 monitor loudspeakers. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I still have over 3 weeks to demo the Sony and possibly trade it for the Marantz.
    Thanks,
    Scott

  25. #25
    Aging Smartass
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    I don't have any experience with that Sony unit, but as many others have pointed out, and as I've noticed on others' systems, SACD players in that price range may do an OK job of playing SACD's, but generally do a pretty lousy job of playing standard "redbook" CD's.

    That was the primary factor that made me zero in on the Marantz SA-8001. It is a superb SACD player (in 2-channel mode only - no multi-channel capability), but is also an outstanding CD player as well. It is a product that legitimately earns the "audiophile" label. It didn't earn a Stereophile "Class-A" Recommendation for nothing!

    I'd save up my money and go for the Marantz.

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