Hi Res CDs

[Brad]

I received an email from CD Japan this morning announcing hi res CDs from Universal. 

http://www.cdjapan.co.jp/feature/Worlds_First_HiRes_CD_by_Universal_Music_Japan?utm_source=MAIL&utm_medium=text-artistmail&utm_source=MAIL&utm_medium=text-genre&utm_campaign=JazzFusion_HiResCD_20180424

[Dan Gould]

Incoming from Dolan in three two one ...

[Kevin Bresnahan]

" Even if you do not have MQA-enabled hardware/software, the disc can also be played on regular CD players in UHQCD 44.1kHz/16bit resolution, which is far better than that of regular CD."

What does this even mean? All CDs are encoded at 44.1 kHz with 16 Bit resolution. There must be a problem with the translation or some marketing person got a bit off track, particularly with "far better".

[Brad]

12 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Incoming from Dolan in three two one ...

We are all waiting with bated breath!

[Dan Gould]

19 minutes ago, Brad said:

We are all waiting with bated breath!

Kevin isn't his sock puppet is he?  

[Scott Dolan]

No, he's just someone else that understands how audio works and knows that "hi-res" is nothing more than a marketing ploy. 

That quote he posted is pretty funny, though. Shows they know absolutely nothing about what they're doing. 

Ultra High Quality Compact Disc! 

[Scott Dolan]

Probably a good thing since no human can hear frequencies of 176kHz, no musical instrument produces frequencies much higher than 16kHz, and there are no recordings I'm aware of that have a dynamic range much higher than 40dB, thereby making the 144dB dynamic range of 24bit useless by about 100dB. 

[Brad]

So, is it a total con job?

[Scott Dolan]

Well, the idea of "hi-res" is. But if it's a remaster that isn't released on any other format, it may be worth checking out if it's a favorite album of yours. I know there are several Classical releases that only come out on SACD. So while the format itself is silly, it'll still be the only way to obtain said releases. 

All I encourage anyone to do is learn what the numbers mean when it comes to digital audio. For example, 16/44.1:

16 is the bit depth which gives you a dynamic range of 96dB, which is around 10-15 more than vinyl. And as I noted above, I'm not aware of any recording with a range much greater than 40dB. 

44.1 is the sampling rate, which gives you a maximum frequency of 22.05kHz. By the time we reach adulthood, most of us cannot hear anything above 18kHz, and as mentioned above, no musical instruments get much above 16kHz. 

No, there is no more "information" just because it was mixed at a higher bit/sampling rate. The mastering is everything. But anything that is purportedly "hi-res" can be released on any ol' CD and sound EXACTLY the same. Which this company kind of inadvertently admitted in the quote Kevin posted. 

Edited April 25, 2018 by Scott Dolan

[CJ Shearn]

That's ridiculous, a "hi res" CD.  UHQCD is a load of crap, I have a few.  The CTI RVG reissued remasters I picked up while in Tokyo last November sound no different than regular CD b/c as stated above CD is CD.  I have a friend who will be going nuts over this I'm sure. He has the Japanese SHM CD of Michael Brecker while I have the original, MCA/Impulse disc from the 80's.  He was CONVINCED b/c it was SHM it would sound better, when  I told him it's all in the mastering, not the material the disc is pressed on.  He sent me the WAV files, I listened to my WAV files ripped from my CD then to his files and guess what? they sounded EXACTLY the same!  That SHM used the old existing mastering.

 

Why formats like UHQCD and SHM go over big in Japan is because Japan is a culture that loves limited edition special items, anything that can be made to seem special will.   Japan only bonus tracks for example, but that's only there to encourage buying the product domestically in Japan as opposed to importing from overseas.

Edited April 25, 2018 by CJ Shearn

[sidewinder]

Some of the best sounding CDs I have are very early masterings, way before compression became an issue.

Having said that, I prefer vinyl on the whole. That verdict is on the basis of my particular implementation - and there is no doubt that the transient response is superior. 

Both are excellent formats !

Edited April 25, 2018 by sidewinder

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Here is the MQA website: http://www.mqa.co.uk/professional/the-tech

More mumbo-jumbo in there too and they really don't ever say what they're doing here. "MQA captures the entire signal and then ‘folds’ it up"? They also claim that "This file will play at above CD quality on any device", without anything to back this statement up.

Of course there are several (paid?) endorsements from record producers and musicians to give this some cachet.

[Scott Dolan]

Unless the vinyl is using a different master than the CD, the transients will be exactly the same. Unfortunately, very few LPs have separate masters, and it's been that way for almost three decades. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

More fun - they compare MQA to "air" (another WTF there) and claim that MQA has less ringing. Hey, anyone guess which of these plots shows "ringing"?

[Scott Dolan]

2 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

Here is the MQA website: http://www.mqa.co.uk/professional/the-tech

More mumbo-jumbo in there too and they really don't ever say what they're doing here. "MQA captures the entire signal and then ‘folds’ it up"? They also claim that "This file will play at above CD quality on any device", without anything to back this statement up.

Of course there are several (paid?) endorsements from record producers and musicians to give this some cachet.

Check out the primer on UHQCD from the site Brad linked to if you want a steady diet of empty rhetoric. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

Truth be told, this sounds like another run at HDCD, which was also marketed for a while as a sort of "super CD". It wasn't and once everyone realized it, it faded away.

While I applaud the engineers trying to squeeze every last drop out of the CD format, be willing to admit that while your invention is a theoretical improvement, please stop with these extraordinary improvement claims. Most of them result in small incremental improvements that any mastering engineer can destroy with a single turn of a knob.

[Scott Dolan]

SACD was exposed in the same way, especially after the AES double blind testing done a few years after the format hit the shelves. The only reason SACD made it and HDCD did not is because of the exclusive contracts they were able to procure with certain Classical labels. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

9 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

SACD was exposed in the same way, especially after the AES double blind testing done a few years after the format hit the shelves. The only reason SACD made it and HDCD did not is because of the exclusive contracts they were able to procure with certain Classical labels. 

I loved the sound of SACD until those Police SACDs and those Peter Gabriel SACDs. In my opinion, earlier CD versions beat these releases handily. When Nick Davis butchered the Genesis SACDs, I really knew that the emperor had no clothes.

Now don't get me wrong, I still think a well-mastered SACD sounds better than an equally well-mastered CD, but it's not "night & day" better. It's just a little better. It's easy to compare with a hybrid SACD that uses the same mastering for both formats.

[sidewinder]

42 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

Unless the vinyl is using a different master than the CD, the transients will be exactly the same. Unfortunately, very few LPs have separate masters, and it's been that way for almost three decades. 

With CD and streaming playback you have the D-To-A conversion process - which tales time and is subject to jitter. With vinyl the signal is continuous.

Edited April 25, 2018 by sidewinder

[Scott Dolan]

6 minutes ago, Kevin Bresnahan said:

I loved the sound of SACD until those Police SACDs and those Peter Gabriel SACDs. In my opinion, earlier CD versions beat these releases handily. When Nick Davis butchered the Genesis SACDs, I really knew that the emperor had no clothes.

Now don't get me wrong, I still think a well-mastered SACD sounds better than an equally well-mastered CD, but it's not "night & day" better. It's just a little better. It's easy to compare with a hybrid SACD that uses the same mastering for both formats.

But the thing is, that well-mastered SACD could be pressed to CD and sound absolutely no different. It has no more or less information, it's just a different master. 

 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

2 minutes ago, Scott Dolan said:

But the thing is, that well-mastered SACD could be pressed to CD and sound absolutely no different. It has no more or less information, it's just a different master. 

 

Not in the case of SACD. Unlike this MQA CD and HDCD, SACD does not use PCM to convert the analog signal to digital. The conversion is DSD, which theoretically has much more resolution than PCM. How this additional resolution is used is all that matters. Digitize crap and you going to get perfectly reproduced crap. This is true regardless of the medium used. Cut a record from a crap tape, you're going to get a crap record. Cut a cassette from a crap LP source, you're going to get a crap cassette.

This is not new.

I was in a record store the other day and saw someone yank an old Applause LP off the shelf and stack it in his pile for the trip to the cash register. I had to laugh (unfortunately, out loud). He must've thought i was insane.

[Scott Dolan]

So you’re saying that material on a perfectly mastered SACD cannot be played back identically from CD? If so, I’d love to hear the reason why. 

How does DSD supercede the audible range of humans? Because 16/44.1 already accomplished this. 

[JSngry]

If somebody tells me that they're maximizing the potential of a medium, hey, ok, that's possible. Discover new potential in a medium, sure, I mean from Benjamin Franklin to Michael Jordan, that's a lot of potential in the human body unleashed and evolved. But when they say shit like outperforms the medium, sorry, no, that's not possible,  if you're going to outperform the medium, you'll need to invent a newer medium. You can't just do the same old shit and call it different. What are they doing, anyway, quieter than air, they're not adding more music, are they taking away silence to make it even more silencier, say what, how would that work?

 

 

[Simon Weil]

The placebo effect...

[JSngry]

Fight back with Funkentelechy!