One man's ears here, but I prefer the SACD audio reproduction on my mid-priced ($550 street price) Marantz universal DVD/CD/SACD player and even my low-priced ($150 street price) Toshiba universal player to ANY Sony SACD of any price I've heard. So no matter the price, it could have just been a bad SACD player.
That said, I've heard 96/24 PCM and SACD audio of the same source and can't tell any difference so my ears might not be as gold-leafed as others'. I can tell the difference between CD of the same source and either hi-rez format, and the hi-rez does seem to have a nicer top end and bit more air and space around things, but not enough that I'd go replace my whole CD collection. Unfortunately the hybrid SACD/CD format never reached critical mass, so the next hope is that at least CD-quality digital downloads will one day be the dollar choice, as opposed to the complete ripoff of iTunes and Amazon lossy-compressed dollar downloads.
Are there any Flac players for us non-geeks, something that works at least as well and is at least as fully featured as the Windows Media Player? Are there Flac add-ins for iTunes or are you stuck with Apple's proprietary but good lossless format in the iPod world?
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message ----- From: "carlstephen koto" <cskoto@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ARSCLIST@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2008 7:38 PM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] FLAC
I knew that FLAC was fast becoming the format of choice with younger folks who were looking to store their music in an uncompressed state. But, I had very little experience with it before. I was happily surprised by the sound quality of the better downloads I've now heard, and feel that (at least in it's 24/96 form)the quality is limited more often by the source recording than the math.
Regarding the difference in sound quality of the SACD's and the 24/96 downloads, to me, it sounds akin to generational losses in the analog domain. Why that is, I don't know for sure but my guess is that there are some areas of HiRez disc production that still need some ironing out.
Steve Koto
On Jun 9, 2008, at 9:46 AM, Jim Sam wrote:
I believe Trent Reznor was selling no-DRM FLAC files in the release of Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts release and the Saul Williams record he produced. He also gave away 96/24 files for free on his latest NIN album.
Jim
At 12:33 PM 6/8/2008, you wrote:I am intrigued to find that at least one website (http:// www.hdtracks.com)
is selling CD-quality music tracks, with FLAC as a format option, and no
DRM. I'm curious whether anyone else is using FLAC commercially. This is
obviously only a case or two, but would this not bode well for the future
of the format?
Matt Snyder Music Archivist Wilson Processing Project The New York Public Library