I would like to chime in to the effect that I agreed totally, word for word, with BrianT's post. Bri, I didn't think you came off as cranky to the least. I found your insight highly realistic. Sometimes pure realism seems biting and caustic - so be it.
DSD:
I have no problem with it as a mastering format. Some like the sound of it, and if that facilitates their enjoyment of music, then "tally-ho" with SACD. If peeps are willing to buy my music on SACD, I'll have it mastered to SACD.
But audio engineers have to understand that processing a 1-bit signal is virtually impossible, hence "DSD-Wide." DSD-Wide is conversion from 1-bit to multi-bit PCM for the purpose of processing. All DSD processing utilizes this process. So if Mr. Paul Frindle did indeed state that "one bit is an intellectual red-herring," (and I have no reason to doubt that he did indeed state that), he may have been referring to the fact that DSD is not actually a true alternative to PCM. As I understand, DSD is actually single-bit PCM.
To wit, Mr. Ed Meitner states:
Quote:
don’t forget that every A to D converter that you see on the market today starts off as a DSD modulator. So then you have the DSD signal on the A to D that just goes to the PCM down sampler or decimator and gets turned into PCM, so the life of the audio in the digital world really starts off as a one-bit signal.
I read the interview with Ed Meitner that Jonathan "Littlelabs" posted the link to a couple of years ago. If you read that interview, you'll notice that Mr. Meitner suggests repeatedly that conversion of any kind adds noise to a signal. By Mr. Meitner's own logic, it would seem that recording to DSD, then converting to "DSD-Wide" (multi-bit PCM) for processing, then re-converting back to DSD for mastering, is counter-intuitive to that logic.
This is why it bewilders me that audio engineers would consider DSD as a recording format, because it adds unnecessary conversion steps to the signal chain. Perhaps this is the "red herring" Mr. Frindle was referring to.
The SACD product in itself, on the other hand, has its merits (according to taste, of course). My personal feeling is that SACD was a potentially interesting product, the marketing of which was poorly implemented by Sony. They tried to market DSD as "different" from PCM (which it is not), and SACD as "revolutionary" (which it is clearly not, as explained by Mr. Meitner himself).
If Sony had marketed the SACD for what it truly is: "CD's Colored To Resemble Your Old Vinyl Records," I bet they would have had a bonanza on their hands. They wouldn't be able to press the damn things fast enough.
Instead, they printed postcard circulars for stacking at hi-fi stores, hawking the 1-bit conversion (which cannot be dithered, so what engineer will be impressed by that??), and the off-the-scale sampling rates (and what exactly does the average consumer know about sampling rates when even many pro audio engineers cannot grasp that issue??). What a mess.
If anyone from Sony is lurking here, it would behoove you to email me, so I can re-configure your marketing of this badly-adrift product.