Anyone here into DVD-A or SACD?

[neorichieb1971]

I have just bought Dark Side of the moon (Pink Floyd) and Becks Sea of change on SACD which both came highly recommended. Since I have a 60GB PS3 I thought i'd take a look into the world of high definition audio.

I just wondered if anyone else has entered this strangely unfamiliar ground. I must admit some of the prices are ridiculous but quite a few of the discs can be had for around $15 (£10) if you look hard enough.

For those people not in the know you can look up www.sa-cd.net to see that about 700 titles are pressed each year on this dead format. I haven't indulged into DVD-A (DVD audio) yet. The benefits are 5.1 audio at 96khz per channel (CD is 48khz and only 2 ch). Basically, we are talking the creme de la creme of audio.

Blu ray disc is the next step, lets hope it happens. It is strange that movies and concerts on blu ray have a better sound quality than CD with 1080p picture to boot. If you just had audio on the disc and it became mainstream we would have room for much higher resolution audio. I know some people can't tell the difference, but you would if you bought a decent set up.

[Domino]

Not enough stuff that I want on either formats. Blu-Ray Audio won't be pushed too hard so I'm not interested in it.

[trivial]

I have equipment that could probably resolve the difference between those and red book, but it's utterly wasted on me. If I can't make a FLAC out of it, fuck it.

[t0yrobo]

I have Dark Side of the Moon on sacd, unfortunately I don't have surround sound anymore. But when I did it was really great. I found that you can get copies of sacds and old quadraphonc recordings converted to DTS on various torrent sites.

[dcharlie]

P , i bought a fair amount of sacd disks for the ps3 - pixies "surfarosa" , couple of bob dylans , some nick drake, keane and snow patrol (not that i am a fan of the last two)
And of couse Dark side of the moon.

Best sacd i've heard is War Of The Worlds - so well mastered. The effect of Spirit of Man's accoustic guitar is convincing to the point that it sounds like someone is sitting in the corner playing (though i do have a fairly expensive setup)

The problem with the formats is that the artists i want are never going anywhere near these new formats

[evil_ash_xero]

I have a few SACDs. Ziggy Stardust, Pixies' Surfa Rosa and Doolittle, Depeche Mode's Violator, and NIN's The Downward Spiral. I think that's about it. I really like the sound on them though. Not enough in this format.

[Heartwork]

I've got a player that plays SACD, and a nice enough system that I'm sure it would sound great, but there's just nothing released in the format that I give a shit about. Most of what I listen to is independent hardcore and post-hardcore, and a lot of obscure electronic crap.

I've got a media server with 135GBs of lossless audio on that works just fine anyway, physical media be damned.

[neorichieb1971]

So lossless formats (2ch and multi ch) are already hacked and online? Damn. I figured the masses had MP3 and that was good enough for them.

I found one thing though. If you just download, sometimes your HDD crashes, you lose stuff and you can't find it and quite often you put all your eggs in one basket.. If that PC crashes with a virus, your stuffed. Besides, if I had more than 20gb of anything I wouldn't listen to it.

[njiska]

DVD-A:
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral (Dualdisc)
Iron Maiden - Dance of Death
Metallica - Metallica
The Who - Tommy (This one is the best of the bunch)
Motorhead - Deaf Forever (Sounds like graveled shit)

SACD:
Nine Inch Nail - The Downward Spiral

Unfortunately at the moment I don't have an SACD player or I'd be buying more. For DVD-A I have a 5-disc Panasonic DVD-V/A player. Don't remember the model off hand.

[Despatche]

So lossless formats (2ch and multi ch) are already hacked and online? Damn. I figured the masses had MP3 and that was good enough for them.

They are pathetic for this reason; I, for one, welcome our new lossless overlords, and despise loltrolluwith128kbps.mp3.

If you just download, sometimes your HDD crashes, you lose stuff and you can't find it and quite often you put all your eggs in one basket.. If that PC crashes with a virus, your stuffed.

Only retards. This is does not differ with any lossy format.

if I had more than 20gb of anything I wouldn't listen to it.

You have no 'comprehension'. Forget backups and piracy, you should buy everything material.

[Heartwork]

So lossless formats (2ch and multi ch) are already hacked and online? Damn. I figured the masses had MP3 and that was good enough for them.

I found one thing though. If you just download, sometimes your HDD crashes, you lose stuff and you can't find it and quite often you put all your eggs in one basket.. If that PC crashes with a virus, your stuffed. Besides, if I had more than 20gb of anything I wouldn't listen to it.

FLAC has been around since 2003 or so. It's lossless, it's open source, and it's awesome.

If you lose your music library when your computer dies, you're doing it wrong.

[njiska]

FLAC has been around since 2003 or so. It's lossless, it's open source, and it's awesome.

If you lose your music library when your computer dies, you're doing it wrong.

Or you had a massive fire.

FLAC is actually starting to be a problem for me. Great when i was only sharing media with XBMC, but not so nice now that I have a damnable iPod. Had to start keeping two collections, one FLAC, one 320 KBPS lame MP3.

Also got to give credit to Trent Reznor for selling Ghosts I-IV and HTDA online in Flac and The Slip in 96/24 FLAC. Nice to see something mainstream adopt it.

[nZero]

FLAC is actually starting to be a problem for me. Great when i was only sharing media with XBMC, but not so nice now that I have a damnable iPod. Had to start keeping two collections, one FLAC, one 320 KBPS lame MP3.

At least you had the FLACs to transcode from instead of having to go back and re-rip from CDs.

[Heartwork]

FLAC has been around since 2003 or so. It's lossless, it's open source, and it's awesome.

If you lose your music library when your computer dies, you're doing it wrong.

Or you had a massive fire.

FLAC is actually starting to be a problem for me. Great when i was only sharing media with XBMC, but not so nice now that I have a damnable iPod. Had to start keeping two collections, one FLAC, one 320 KBPS lame MP3.

Also got to give credit to Trent Reznor for selling Ghosts I-IV and HTDA online in Flac and The Slip in 96/24 FLAC. Nice to see something mainstream adopt it.

Have you looked into Rockbox? Depending on which generation of iPod you have, you may well be able to install third-party firmware on it and play FLAC! I did this with my old 5th gen classic,and it works wonderfully. You can even revert it to the stock firmware if you need to for any reason.

The only catch is that Apple encrypted the firmware on the newer generations, so you can't do this anymore. Thanks, assholes.

[AAA]

alright rich.
i have the Dragon Quest VII Symphonic Suite on SACD, and also Dark Side of the Moon on DVD-A - both are great.
there are a few blu-ray audio discs out there now - inc the soundtrack for The Social Network which is mastered in 24/96. Can't find it anywhere though. If you find it let me know as I'm interested in getting it.
Several Blu-ray movies have 24/96 audio or better as you prob know already (Akira perhaps being the most high profile poster boy with it's 24/192 in 5.1).

Also, check this out.
http://www.referencerecordings.com/HRx2.asp

[njiska]

Have you looked into Rockbox? Depending on which generation of iPod you have, you may well be able to install third-party firmware on it and play FLAC! I did this with my old 5th gen classic,and it works wonderfully. You can even revert it to the stock firmware if you need to for any reason.

The only catch is that Apple encrypted the firmware on the newer generations, so you can't do this anymore. Thanks, assholes.

It's a touch 4, but regardless of playability, FLAC takes up too much space for the small 32GB data store.

[neorichieb1971]

alright rich.
i have the Dragon Quest VII Symphonic Suite on SACD, and also Dark Side of the Moon on DVD-A - both are great.
there are a few blu-ray audio discs out there now - inc the soundtrack for The Social Network which is mastered in 24/96. Can't find it anywhere though. If you find it let me know as I'm interested in getting it.
Several Blu-ray movies have 24/96 audio or better as you prob know already (Akira perhaps being the most high profile poster boy with it's 24/192 in 5.1).

Also, check this out.
http://www.referencerecordings.com/HRx2.asp

http://www.nullco.com/TSN/

There you go.

I'll try downloading some FLAC to get the idea of quality. I'll do Dark side of the moon since I already own it.

edit - 2.57gb for one CD.. I think I prefer the CD for £6.99. I will admit though thats a lot of £7's saved by not buying but I can imagine it will take a lot of space doing that all the time.

[Heartwork]

alright rich.
i have the Dragon Quest VII Symphonic Suite on SACD, and also Dark Side of the Moon on DVD-A - both are great.
there are a few blu-ray audio discs out there now - inc the soundtrack for The Social Network which is mastered in 24/96. Can't find it anywhere though. If you find it let me know as I'm interested in getting it.
Several Blu-ray movies have 24/96 audio or better as you prob know already (Akira perhaps being the most high profile poster boy with it's 24/192 in 5.1).

Also, check this out.
http://www.referencerecordings.com/HRx2.asp

http://www.nullco.com/TSN/

There you go.

I'll try downloading some FLAC to get the idea of quality. I'll do Dark side of the moon since I already own it.

edit - 2.57gb for one CD.. I think I prefer the CD for £6.99. I will admit though thats a lot of £7's saved by not buying but I can imagine it will take a lot of space doing that all the time.

FLAC is generally in the 300MB range for a normal length album, sometimes running closer to 400MB is it's a particularly long album. I have no idea what you could possibly be finding that's that huge, unless it's some sort of enormous compilation.

[neorichieb1971]

Well a normal CD is 700mb in size right. SACD must be much bigger since it holds 6 channels at 96khz vs CD's 2 channels of 48khz.

I downloaded Dark side of the moon and listening to it right now. PS3 media server is converting the signal to PCM and my PS3 is playing it. It sounds really good. Its only an hours worth of audio that is 2.57gb or whatever it was. Just look it up in the torrent sites if you don't believe me.

Since DVD-A is basically a DVD with only audio on it (4.7GB) and SACD is basically a match for match competitor it stands to reason DSOTM is the size it is.

[njiska]

If anyone wants to see how awesome 96/24 FLAC sounds download this http://dl.nin.com/theslip/signup. Full album for free.

[Heartwork]

Well a normal CD is 700mb in size right. SACD must be much bigger since it holds 6 channels at 96khz vs CD's 2 channels of 48khz.

I downloaded Dark side of the moon and listening to it right now. PS3 media server is converting the signal to PCM and my PS3 is playing it. It sounds really good. Its only an hours worth of audio that is 2.57gb or whatever it was. Just look it up in the torrent sites if you don't believe me.

Since DVD-A is basically a DVD with only audio on it (4.7GB) and SACD is basically a match for match competitor it stands to reason DSOTM is the size it is.

Oh, sorry, I thought you meant just a regular album in FLAC. Yeah, 24/96 rips are fucking gigantic.

IMO listening to music in 5.1 is pretty pointless, since it's all recorded in stereo anyway.

[njiska]

Well a normal CD is 700mb in size right. SACD must be much bigger since it holds 6 channels at 96khz vs CD's 2 channels of 48khz.

I downloaded Dark side of the moon and listening to it right now. PS3 media server is converting the signal to PCM and my PS3 is playing it. It sounds really good. Its only an hours worth of audio that is 2.57gb or whatever it was. Just look it up in the torrent sites if you don't believe me.

Since DVD-A is basically a DVD with only audio on it (4.7GB) and SACD is basically a match for match competitor it stands to reason DSOTM is the size it is.

Oh, sorry, I thought you meant just a regular album in FLAC. Yeah, 24/96 rips are fucking gigantic.

IMO listening to music in 5.1 is pretty pointless, since it's all recorded in stereo anyway.

It's all recorded in Mono. It's mixed in whatever the producer wants. Properly remixed 5.1 CDs are great. The Who's Tommy in 5.1 sounds way better than the traditional 2.0 mix. Hotel California is also really neatly mixed. For life in the Fast Lane the back ground "Life in the Fast Lane" comes only from the rear channels. This is of course assuming you're listening to discrete 5.1 mixes, not just pumping stereo into a dsp. In the case of Dark Side that should be a proper discrete 5.1 mix.