Quote Originally Posted by markw
It's this kinda stuff that makes discussing which is a "better" format or recording useless. Unless all is equal, there is no valid comparison.

...and Pink Floyd laughs all the way to the bank...
You're so right about that. The most laughable part of these format debates is that NOBODY, aside a professional recording engineer, has access to the master source material that you would need to conduct a proper and equitable listening test. If you really want to test the SACD format versus CD, you'd have to have something recorded in DSD and PCM simultaneously, and then comparably mixed and mastered. As far as I know, no source out there is available for hobbyists like us that allows for this kind of comparable evaluation. Everything is either an analog, PCM, or DSD source and then transferred and/or converted into the playback format. If you're doing a true test of the format itself, you have to eliminate the other potential variables including the format conversions, and nothing I've seen even comes close to meeting this kind of standard.

With Dark Side of the Moon, keep in mind that for that 30th anniversary hybrid disc a BRAND NEW two-channel master tape got created with the involvement of the band members and David Guthrie (who engineered several of Floyd's later albums; Alan Parsons, the original recording engineer, was not involved). This isn't even a format-related change, this is a completely different master source since they are not using the original two-track master tape that was used in the 1973 release and subsequent rereleased and remastered editions. They had an opportunity to do this because in order to create a 5.1 mix, the mixing engineer has to go all the way back to the multitrack session tapes (not just the "original master tape") and generate a completely new mixdown. This affords the opportunity to do the mixdowns without the degradations that would have occurred using the kinds of 1973-vintage analog tape machines that generated the original mix. From what I understand, the new hybrid DSOTM also made some changes in how certain sounds got mixed in (levels, imaging cues, etc.), so the end result is not necessarily comparable.

Improving upon the original CD issue would not be that difficult. In my comparisons with the Mobile Fidelity half-speed mastered LP version, it wasn't even close. The low level linearity of the CD was flawed and almost had a "fuzzy" sound, whereas the LP sounded much cleaner especially during the low level passages. Almost makes me wonder what generation master tape Capitol/EMI was using for that transfer, because the LP actually sounded quieter in my A/B comparisons.