Cavaille

My dear Eloise, I deeply regret that I wrote some of the sentences I wrote - because they just were not true. I wrote for example that this article wasn´t needed at all because I thought it to be common knowledge. Obviously I was very mistaken there - because I just stumbled upon an article on hydrogenaudio.org which discusses this very dCS paper. Some of them were quite surprised of the findings and some of them didn´t even know it. I apologize for my misinformation and my belief. The people over at hydrogenaudio.org were extremely disturbed by the test results for Windows Vista. They ran a few tests themselves and couldn´t confirm the results mentionend in the dCS paper for Vista. In their tests, Vista performed much better at resampling. They found another flaw which I didn´t mention (I did not see it): the article doesn´t describe the hardware that was used. The Vista testresult could very well caused by a hardware resampler on the sound interface - and not by Vista. Read it all here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=2a0ed13ef665428678a47711e70494f8&showtopic=72675

Harald, the Esoteric might not be the "best" SACD player - but it has a hell-of-a-drive. And the little Pioneer you were talking about... well... the bigger one should indeed be more robust. At least from what I´ve read about it. Despite all my talking, I don´t own a SACD player. Shame on me. But I´ve heard some true DSD recordings (mostly via digital download from LINN) And I will own a SACD player somewhere in the future which is the reason I buy SACDs. I buy them in advance to play them when I finally have a SACD player. But then... I hope the industry will have mercy and provide us with computer drive that will be capable of recognizing the DSD stream. I mostly listen to SACDs from Telarc. Classical recordings. Mostly orchestral and organ. I have some recordings from RCA and MDG (organ & orchestral) and some Pop SACDs (Björk, Rolling Stones). I have three movie scores on SACD from Varese Sarabande (Star Trek: Nemesis, The Great Train Robbery and Timeline). Until I have my SACD player I sadly can only the CD layer... but well... I´ll continue to buy and buy. I´m not interested in the multi-channel layer. That´s why I also buy two-channel SACDs. And I´m coming from Germany.

@Harald: You know, you could be the only person here with a HiFi component where I would not dare to question the quality of your rips. Your Esoteric X-03 SE has a monstrous drive, known for perfect playing quality (the famous VRDS drive) and I assume it also has a decent power supply. This should theoretically give superior results to the DSD-rip. And I would love to get my hands on a professional DSD extracting transport. I own quite a lot of SACDs from Varese Sarabande, Telarc and MDG and I´d love to hear them in the full resolution they have to offer - regardless if the source was pure DSD, DXD, 24/96, 24/192, 24/176, 24/44.1 or 24/48. The higher bit resolution itself can be an advantage worth enough. We could make a comparison between formats though. LINN offers digital downloads in 24/88 derived directly from a DSD source. You can compare them directly to 16/44.1 which they offer also. I used some of those tracks to configure the iZotope RX Advanced SRC for upsampling "normal" 16/44.1 stuff. By upsampling only I can reach approximately 50-70% of the sound of an original high resolution recording. I published this here (for publishing I used a track from Reference Recordings): http://www.thesoundtrackzone.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=323

The question is if we really would get a benefit from "ripping" a SACD to the computer with the help of a drive built for a HiFi component. Just because the path from the component to the PC is digital it doesn´t necessarily mean that the sound will be superior to the CD layer ripped by a decent computer drive. We have to consider that the drive within the HiFi component can strongly be influenced by things from the outside. Only a few ones: 1. Vibration. The ground the component is placed on shouldn´t vibrate. 2. Leveling the component out. If not, the laser drive maybe has a "harder" time reading the data 3. The power supply for the drive - a weak power supply doesn´t sound necessarily good. 4. Jitter induced by the S/PDIF interface The same goes for a "normal" computer drive. But maybe not that much. I thought for years that the influences brought to the sound of drives from the outside affect audio material less compared to the drive of a HiFi component. Are their any professional "SACD-Roms" out there? Bruce talked about getting the SACD information on a Pyramix, I´d be very interested how. I assume he uses some different methods. I think that the quality we CAN get from the CD-layers with a computer drive inside a computer and good software like EAC exceed the possibilities we can get if we wire a HiFi component digitally to the computer. You know, bandwidth isn´t everything. The better sound of the SACD layer could be eaten up by the obstacles a drive in a component encounters. I have an external drive for my PC (a Samsung). My rips are sounding better if I level that drive out, provide a good ground and a better power cable. And the sound I get is far better than the sound from a HiFi drive treated to the same methods. On the other hand I have not heard a "rip" of the SACD layer (I´ve heard a pure DSD source though). Maybe the sound is so much better that it obscures the obstacles.

I´m sorry. I did not want to use the usual clashing of arguments. I indeed try to avoid Kernel Mixing or else like the devil tries to avoid Holy Water. I think I´m hearing a difference, in my opinion ASIO always sounds best. I can´t prove it of course and I can´t provide measurments. I´d love to but my means are insufficient for that. And I didn´t say that the dCS document is just "wrong" - it was just done in a way where mistakes could sneek in. Furthermore, if I consider the authors background then I conclude that I would have done it more painstakingly if I had the means like him, especially if I´d be going public with it. There are some loopholes I talked about - and only these loopholes are the reason for my critique.

My reading of the document was that it was saying the same as (I read) you saying here: that Windows XP (and Vista) have rubbish SRC which need to be avoided. Though I suspect that you doubt that can be avoided so simply? My observations are somewhat different: WinXP has a very crappy resampling engine, Vista has a better one. Still, both are far away from such SRC as the one from iZotope. That doesn´t necessarily makes them worse. The fine thing with SRC in those mixers for sure is their convenience. They work without most people noticing them. For me that is exactly the biggest problem. If one like me wants the perfect sound quality a source can offer (may it be FLAC, WAV or even MP3) they have to be avoided at all costs. Some may observe that with these internal Windows mixers and SRC the sound is "better" because of introduced distortions or rounding errors - but this impression is only a colourization that suits some music. So one has to use players which can avoid those mixers. You can do it with Kernel Streaming, WASAPI and ASIO while the latter one is the only one who "talks" directly to the hardware. Software being able to use at least one of those three is foobar2000, Winamp and MediaMonkey. And let me tell you, I truly believe that there are differences between bit-perfect. The reasons for this may be many. According to the opinion of science, technicians and measurments there shouldn´t be any at all. I wonder how Peters software changes the sound while being bit-perfect. He won´t say it of course, that would take away a marketable advantage.

Peter's comments were meaningless. The written equivilent of sticking tounge out because you don't like what someone said. If he has 8 points where he feels the document is misleading or wrong. Let him say them rather than playing a "I'm cleverer than you because I've spotted flaws can you spot them too" game. Yes the document has limits, it's not meant to answer everything. There was an omission about WASAPI and Foobar, but that doesn't make the findings invalid. It still showed (pending Peter's revalations) that you can avoid SRC with Windows Media Player and iTunes. They never claimed it proove all sounds the same or anything more. My dear Eloise, I tend to side with Peter. And I would like to explain it a bit. I guess (Peter may clarify that) that he just was tired to read this article. You know for someone like me who deals with audio on the computer since 1995 as a hobby all the things written in the article aren´t exactly new. The audio engine of Windows basically has been the same since Windows 98, with only a few additions. If my memory isn´t faulty, mixing by the Kernel was introduced in 1998 when WDM drivers were introduced. To be honest I do not know Windows Vista. But I know Windows 7 and I doubt that Microsoft changed that much regarding the audio engine. From my observations (by ear & measurment) Windows 7 does a pretty good job when it comes to audio processing. It´s not very good but decent. Maybe my assumption is wrong but I think that one has to know about the shortcomings of Windows Audio Engines. I don´t care much for Mac, I´ve never owned one so I can´t say anything about this. But the article is in so far ridiculous as members of Hydrogenaudio.org years ago wrote about the crappy resampler in Windows. I find it very disturbing that so many people don´t know about this. I then have to ask myself if some people here actually are looking elsewhere for information and if the things they are hearing are "real" and not just some distortion found to be pleasing to the subjective ear. Don´t get me wrong, I´m no fan of Hydrogenaudio.org either. Their attitude is sometimes extremely tiring. But at least they do one thing right: they know how to do measurments. And the guy in this paper is far from doing good measurments. He presents some little and lovely charts - and hooray! (forgive me) the community is in awe. So my conclusion is that people also need to look at other sites for more information, not only here. If some would have been looking over the horizon, the "revelation" of this article could have been prevented. I´m not saying that I´m better than the next man - but for sure I´m better informed. And only because I like to see over the horizon, I sometimes like to sit between chairs. So in my opinion Peter´s additions weren´t pointless. No, this paper was. It didn´t tell me anything I didn´t know beforehand.

I'm sick of Peter's know it all attitude to put it politely, nor do I care. Does zero for the discussions. People here are finding the best way to play music from their computer. It's new for all of us, with a lot more knowledge to find it's like pioneering to find knowledge at our own pace. Getting to the nitty gritty of computer audio is not easy to understand at first glance. It's a discovery and adventure, so wet blankets, please, be patient, don't spoil the journey. Peter did the right thing. He expressed concerns about this paper. We need "Cassandras" like him. You see, if I claim something like the recent things I´ve posted here (different drives are sounding different etc.) then I expect to be questioned about it. I expect some very healthy doubt about the things I´m claiming. Because: If people are doubting me that helps myself. Maybe I´ve overseen something important? That´s the beauty of sites like these: through discussion one can reach a better understanding. I won´t write that I support Peter wholeheartedly - he advertises his XXPlayer as the solution for all ill sounds on the computer. Frankly I don´t believe that. On the other hand I admire his consistency towards his project. And I´m sure that he also expects doubts about his findings when he decides to go public with them. Why not? This is the way things are. And it is good that way. Everything isn´t just black and white, it´s all greyscales. When going through those greyscales one achieves a larger, better informed picture. Therefore I find it very disturbing and disappointing that some engineer who should have much experience and a large scientific background releases such an ill-informed and badly executed paper. And in order to reach a bigger picture I question the motives of this engineer.

Never mind the serious flaws you mentioned, and never mind the other 8 or so at the same level, this is just it. Now start behaving like it ! :-) The author doesn´t know anything about WASAPI? How can he make assumptions from his measured "data" then? More flaws?? Please, point them out. Apparently I overread them. ;-)

I am listening to differences too. And my setup isn´t exactly high-end. You can see it below. I´m using foobar2000 to play music which is stored on only one drive: an external USB-drive from Lacie. Inside this drive resides a HDD from Seagate. Inside my laptop a HDD from Fujitsu is used. Both drives are defragmented regularly with PerfectDisk. To hear the differences between the internal and external drive I just have to copy an audio file from one disk to another. All in all I have to say that I prefer my external drive. However the differences are subtle and I think that 99% of all people won´t hear them at all. I myself could very well listen to a placebo.

... I know. Can I just get straight what you are saying ... You have transfered the audio data twice, using two different external (USB) drives but the same software? The tracks were saved as .WAV (or another uncompressed format) and both files were exactly the same size and checksumed identically so they contained exactly the same data. However, when you played the files back, they sounded different? Have I got that correct? Eloise You did. I tried every possibility. Everytime with EAC and the most secure configuration. Offset was configured for every individual drive. The files were exactly the same size, had the same CRC checksum and the same bit-to-bit-comparison. I did this with a lot of CDs. I compared rips from the Samsung to the one from LG. Another (internal) LG drive resides inside my Desktop PC: same results. A fourth drive resides inside my Laptop (NEC). Also the same. Three of them are sounding different. BUT: the two drives from LG have matching sound. In a blind test done with foobar2000 I couldn´t distinguish the one LG rip from the other LG rip while that was easily possible when I compared them to the drives of the other manufacturers. I therefore conclude that "something" influences the sound and that this "something" goes beyond the capabilities of bit counting checksums (which CRC and bit-to-bit are). These two things are only counting the number of bits, nothing more. I would love to have other utilities for measurment than just my ear...

This is very interesting. I was always aware that computer drives are sounding different. I still don´t know how. I believed this to be only jitter but if you say you´ve ran it through a re-clocker this can maybe be ruled out. Then we have to find out why the differences are there in the first place. To normal knowledge and science there shouldn´t be any differences at all. Given the same CRC-codes and the expected outcome in bit-to-bit-comparison ("no differences were found") it should sound the same. But why doesn´t it? I have two external USB drives. One from LG, purchased in 2006 and another one from Samsung, purchased a few months ago. The Samsung sounds different, most of the time better indeed. This is something that I´ve learned in 2001 when starting using EAC to do my rips. Back then I used a TEAC drive and a Samsung DVD drive. Both sounded different but the CRC codes were the same. I´ve accepted this for myself though officially it can´t be. It is sonically so evident for me that I believe I am not listening to a placebo. Furthermore, two weeks ago I bought a new powercable for my external Samsung drive. A cheap one, with cables from LAPP, sturdy plugs.... the usual. Just an experiment, hence the price: 20,- Euros. The best thing is the sound: it changed very much. It sounds as if someone would be using a combination of subtle EQ together with a DSP that expands the stereo perspective. The sound is nice but what is worse is that I can´t explain it! I truly believe this to be caused by jitter. Let me explain: the CD uses a very powerful error correction called CIRC which can correct errors up to 4 mm on the CD transparently. According to Wikipedia CIRC is very powerful when it comes to burst errors but very weak when it comes to random errors present in ALL the data. Jitter is exactly that: random errors. This powercable of mine seems to improve the workings of the laser transport with the outcome that the rip was done with less random errors. Being a random error and becoming only evident at D/A-conversion jitter wouldn´t even show in CRC codes or in bit-to-bit-comparisons. Therefore even AccurateRip is pointless when it comes to random errors. I tried to discuss it on Hydrogenaudio.org but they were saying that my PC was faulty. Well, then all of my four PCs since 2001 have been faulty the same way, something I higly doubt. Whatever the reason for sound differences, we have to find it out.

... but a bit flawed. I´m very sure that the author is very capable - at least he comes from a famous company known for engineering perfect consumer and professional stuff. However, this doesn´t hinder him to make conclusions which I find a bit too easy. First of all, he uses ASIO4ALL. The title of this little addition to the sound interfaces driver suggests that it provides ASIO. This is not true. It simply is a wrapper that enables the audio software to use Kernel Streaming with the interface. As you may know, Kernel Streaming only applies to Windows XP - at least officially. This Kernel Streaming has the unique ability to stream the audio material through the Audio Kernel of WinXP without volume changes or resampling. The flaw of the article lies within the fact that the autor also used it on Windows Vista which does have a completely different Audio Kernel that most importantly lacks the Kernel mixer of WinXP. However, most interface WDM-drivers still can use it because they are simply ported from the XP driver to the Vista platform. This is very coincidental and in my mind one can´t draw any objective results from it. Secondly, he claims not to know software that can use WASAPI direct access. I can give at least one example: foobar2000. The author even uses foobar2000 but claims he doesn´t know that there is a WASAPI output plug-in for it. I find this very strange. Can someone not know about this? If the author doesn´t know this, then I´ll say no more. But if he does know it then I´d be saying that he follows some agenda not visible to us when he´s claiming that there is no WASAPI capable software. Other than that, it is still a very fascinating article

I´m doing "remasterings" of normal CD audio for years now. The sharp frequency cutoff is not new to me. Furthermore, it is needed in order to supress aliasing artifacts mirroring back into the audible signal. Sometimes you have the cutoff at 19 kHz, sometimes precisely at 22.5 kHz. It depends on the sample rate converter used during mastering or the ADC during recording. Transients and room impression can be reconstructed by a fair amount when upsampling to 24/96, I´d say for 60-70% with the right algorithms. On http://www.thesoundtrackzone.com/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=323 I gave an example.

I would like to listen to the files too. BTW, I also believe in the superiority of digital media - as long as bit depth and samplerate are big enough . I´d love to compare the mixdown files to the normalized ones.