Wondering about recording difference in analog & digital in this post-cd download/streaming world.I used to feel I knew where I was when purchasing CD’s a long time ago i.e. DDD was bad & AAD was good.
What about SACD?
It is said by some that DSD offers the best possible conversion when dealing with analogue tapes.
However, many of those opinions date from the time when DSD (the conversion method employed by SACD) first came on the scene (the early noughties) and, at that time, PCM A to D converters that operated above 48kHz or had a bit depth >18 were a lab curiosity. At that time, the Sony reference DSD converter probably was better than the best that PCM could then achieve.
PCM is rather better than that now, having had some serious development thrown at it and I'd happily bet anyone ££££ that they could not distinguish an A to D --> D to A loop from a piece of wire when running, say, Lavry converters at 24bit, 96kHz.
DSD has the problem that it relies on massive amounts of noise shaping, so much so that a mandatory part of the Scarlet Book spec. (the official SACD bible) is a low pass filter at about 50kHz to avoid the risk of the HF noise causing downstream problems.
The only hope that SACD now has, would be if Sony dropped the silly DRM restraints and released transports that would happily handle SACD with the same freedoms we enjoy with Red Book discs. Otherwise, SACD is clearly destined for the scrap heap before long.
Given that editing and mixing entirely in the DSD domain is all but impossible (it can be done, at a price) and that doing so is of dubious advantage, PCM will remain the format of choice and anything newly issued on SACD (DSD) is likely to be a conversion from PCM. There always will be a few specialist labels for whom 100% DSD recording and processing will remain their unique selling position but for most material, high resolution PCM will remain the closest approach to the original sound.
