Technical question re. SHM-CD, Blu-spec CD & Digital Files

[jimfisheye]

...

The manufacturer claims the substance used allows superior resolution of data vs "regular" Redbook. ...

If this is the theory to why you hear clearer sound... What you are saying by that is the real reason for the degraded sound on the redbook CD example is not the recording put to the disc but distortions caused by read errors. ie. Dropout riddled audio that the system is trying to error correct. It's damaged beyond what can be 100% corrected which results in audible artifacts in the audio output. If the claim is a design flaw with redbook CD reads, that's how that would play out. Again, this part is reading data. It worked or it didn't. There's no "Schrodinger's audio samples" thing going on with this stuff!

I understand that you didn't post those words and you may not think that! Stating the above leads to that though. That begs for evidence. Like reading that redbook CD with a drive that doesn't error out. Then you could point to the corrupt data called out by comparing them.

Unless the claim is that no redbook CD is able to successfully be read without severe errors. I can burn a file to disc, rip it back in, and null it against the master and see this work. I expect other folks can too. And for the last 40 years.

The more reasonable explanation is those two discs had different recordings on them. Different masterings in this case. You weren't hearing dropout riddled audio with error correction artifacts from that 1st disc. You were hearing a different mastering of the album recorded to that disc.

 

[Horbus]

I just went through this thread and like to give my opinion on this. The initial question if I understand it right is: Does extensive real time error correction harm the sonics of a CD or not. If it does and it is audible, then a ripped file theoretically could sound better and also SHM/Bluspec/2 could sound better when the responding normal CD forces the error correction to work much more. Of course different mastering and mixing have a much higher effect on sound quality than the initially asked effect. For me in general it is difficult to differentiate digital sources from the same master, even mp3 sounds good to me when mastering was carefully applied before. Same with High Res (SACD/DVD/Blu-ray) material vs. CD when all masters are good it is hard for me to tell which one's better, it's only nuances to me. Of corse for audiophiles it's those nuance that count!
I ripp all my CD's to a dedicated device (Bluesound Vault 2i) and this one is very sensitive to surface impurities (scratches, smear/grease, etc.) of the discs and does not even ripp brand new CD's/Hybrid SACD's when not perfectly clean. That happened to some SACD's because of some production residues and I had to extensively clean them before the ripping worked. Playing the same disc before on my Multiplayer there was no sign of any problem and it worked absolutely fine!
What I wanted to say is, that this device is much more sensitive than my ears would be and differences detected are more on the technical than the audible side.

 

[Rango]

What I wanted to say is, that this device is much more sensitive than my ears would be and differences detected are more on the technical than the audible side.

That seems to be in keeping with the general consensus of opinion.

...with no remastering claimed.

But that's the problem: the claim, and whether we can trust the corporation that's making the claim. If (and please note that I did say "if") we believe that Blu-spec CD & SHM-CD are snake oil and that the claims from the companies that create them are bogus, then we have to be open to the idea that they might be writing new remasters to those discs, without advertising it, in order to falsely substantiate those claims...

...general consensus of opinion suggests that the companies' claims for Blu-spec and SHM-CD are not valid. That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc; which is seemingly not something that can be said of Blu-spec CD or SHM-CD, hence why these disputes persist.

My one comparison point is with the Nantucket Sleighride Blu-spec discs and I'm disappointed that they couldn't have at least burned a marginally better master to the Blu-spec discs, because the difference in audio is so granular that you almost certainly couldn't get an objective measurement of it in a properly conducted study.

Sound engineers will swear up and down that you can get Blu-ray quality audio from a CD; they claim there are papers, studies etc. that show this, and the note on HD audio in the study linked to above, also seems to bare this out, although it should be noted that that particular part of the paper is anecdotal.

It seems that it's various and complicated market forces that cause manufacturers to manufacture CD's as they do; I wouldn't expect that they set out to deliberately do a bad job. It seems they're likely manufacturing to a standard that's probably notably lower than the spec. of the equipment that people on this forum might have, probably due to specific market forces where volume is more of an imperative than audio quality. Maybe it could be argued that SHM-CD and Blu-spec CD do make a difference in that particular context, but whether that's actually a credible argument and whether it's to benefit the consumer or the producer is (at least to me) unclear. On the face of it, it would seem that no measurable difference in quality would hold across all hardware and that the companies claims are purely to drive sales.

Edit: While the claims made by the companies producing the discs might be true on a "micro" level, in our "macro" world, it seems there's probably no discernable difference in the result. Technically they can probably legally claim improvement while just not telling you that it makes no practical difference in terms of output.

 

[dobyblue]

That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc

It’s measurably different, that doesn’t mean it sounds different - the stereo mastering of Pearl Jam’s new album is noticeable right away because it’s 12dB lower, level match and it sounds just as arse as the CD.

 

[jimfisheye]

I suspect you meant full audio quality by "bluray quality"?
(Otherwise, I can find some examples of lo-fi novelty mastering put to bluray!)

16 bit samples at 44.1k resolve the full audio band with 48db dynamic range (with the lowest signal still having minimum 8 bits resolution).
That's full audiophile audio quality. You have to mind your levels carefully and there will be some edge cases that need more than 48db dynamic range. Mess up with a low level and it's very easy to do damage.

24 bit gives headroom for 96db dynamic range with the lowest signal still having minimum 8 bits resolution. That covers pretty much everything. The most extreme dynamic classical or art music. And it makes recording easy and forgiving!

Higher sample rates avoid a difficult to build low pass (anti alias) filter that can distort higher audio frequencies. That's it. Upsampling is a genuine workaround for that which is why most consumer AVRs do just that.

Software tools are free and available to play with all this stuff. Don't believe a word I'm saying... just try it! If you're still reading, you must have some interest! As for the study of data transfer with dodgy disc formats... Unless the retro experience is really the point, just serve files from a computer to a convenient DAC product (AVR or interface). Now you can even A/B different releases with no other variables. You don't have to trust any remastering claim. You can matter of fact look at it and listen to it with no mystery!

Got a volume control? You can do a lot with this! Grab different copies of your favorite album. Do the DAW experiment and match the volumes between them. NOW find the best sounding (instead of just the loudest). That volume control lets you put the best sounding copy at the listening volume you want. You don't need to suffer with degraded sound for loudness baked into a file as though for some device with no volume control.

 

[splinter]

then a ripped file theoretically could sound better

Why does anyone think that btw? We are discussing supposedly better sounding CD mediums because of unsubstantiated claims (did any of the manufacturers come up with anything else than marketing slogans?) that less error correction could be applied on them and that might lead to better sound quality, but nobody is concerned about the error correction applied by hard disc drives. Why is that?

I can tell you why: because hard disc drive manufacturers do not advertise their products as such. So nobody even gets to the idea that flacs played from a Western Digital drive sound a nuance more transparent than those played from a Toshiba drive. Because there is nothing to support that.

The same is valid here, minus the advertising. Is there any study supporting that, or even any independent audio professionals or mastering engineers swearing that they never heard their work product sou ding better than when played from a Blu-spec disc? No, there is not.

So why is this discussion still going on?

That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc

Why would you say that?

1. The "quality" does not lie in the medium, but in the production. If you put the contents of an audio CD unaltered to a DVD-A or Blu-ray audio, it would not sound better (and let's not go down the "error correction" path further, because they have it, too).

2. Even if you would go back to the original audio master which might be produced in 24/48 or 24/96 and put on the medium as such, then the question remains: does it sound worse if it is downsampled to 16/44.1? The often-quoted study from above says: no, it does not for almost everybody, including trained ears.

So why do so many people think it sounds better? Yeah, well, same answer as before: because a new master was created for so many of the DVD-A or SACD or Blu-ray audio (re)releases.

 

[Horbus]

That seems to be in keeping with the general consensus of opinion.

At least I don't have the hearing capability to detect differences, others might be able to.

 

[Horbus]

Edit: While the claims made by the companies producing the discs might be true on a "micro" level, in our "macro" world, it seems there's probably no discernable difference in the result. Technically they can probably legally claim improvement while just not telling you that it makes no practical difference in terms of output.

Seems to be a fair conclusion!

 

[Horbus]

Why does anyone think that btw? We are discussing supposedly better sounding CD mediums because of unsubstantiated claims (did any of the manufacturers come up with anything else than marketing slogans?) that less error correction could be applied on them and that might lead to better sound quality, but nobody is concerned about the error correction applied by hard disc drives. Why is that?

This was a theoretical assumption in the first post of this thread plse carefully read!
And, yes we are discussing and trying to have a good time and your statements about mastering and mixing have came up before, so what is your problem??

 

[splinter]

so what is your problem??

I don't have any, I just asked questions that remain unanswered and try to find out why unsubstantiated claims are still being repeated, the latter being the main reason for why people still think there is something to it.

Not sure why you make it personal now.

BTW., I tried to get to the source of it and find out what the manufacturers (in case of Blu-spec CD: Sony Music Japan) really claimed. Nothing anymore it seems, because they removed relevant contents from their home page. But at the time of the release of the product, there was a press release PDF about it published by them. You can still find it via archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090206025731/http://www.sme.co.jp/pressrelease/images/20081105.pdf

There is not much about audio quality in there, but what they are saying is (I used Google translate):

By accurately transferring the bits engraved on the stamper to polycarbonate, jitter is reduced (eliminated) and a master tape quality CD is created.

This is attributed to the polycarbonate, btw., not to the blue laser being used.

The jitter claim is known to be unrelated, as jitter occurs in the ADC or in the DAC because of clock deviations.

And what "master tape quality" exactly is in this context eludes me, especially if we are talking about digital productions that do not use any tape. To be fair, the list of the first batch of Blu-spec CDs attached to this press release consists mostly of re-releases of older recordings, so tapes might have been involved. Still this is such a vague term that there is much you can read into it without them having said anything about audio quality. They are basically saying that they reproduce the masters faithfully on CD (which already was the initial mission of the CD), but not that the audio quality is any better than on any other kind of CD medium.

So I guess the claims on improved audio quality were actually made by us - the general public reading thing into this press release or wanting to hear stuff that is not there - and not by them.

If anyone finds more source material I would be interested in that.

 

[Rango]

Why would you say that?

I can't help but feel that you're deliberately missing the point. That's why I'm not engaging with you.

This is what you're disputing...?!...

...general consensus of opinion suggests that the companies' claims for Blu-spec and SHM-CD are not valid. That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc; which is seemingly not something that can be said of Blu-spec CD or SHM-CD, hence why these disputes persist.

 

[splinter]

you're deliberately missing the point

I can assure you I don't do it deliberately. But maybe I misread that passage.

You were saying that

with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio [...] the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc

and I took that as your opinion because you repeated it. But maybe it is not your opinion and you only wanted to reiterate a "general consensus". This is not the general consensus though, nor is it true factually, so even if it is not your opinion, you quoted it wrongly.

If I am still missing the point, please help me understand it.

 

[Rango]

and I took that as your opinion because you repeated it. But maybe it is not your opinion and you only wanted to reiterate a "general consensus". This is not the general consensus though, nor is it true factually, so even if it is not your opinion, you quoted it wrongly.

If I am still missing the point, please help me understand it.

I'm sorry, I'm not going to entertain that. The burden of proof lies with you on that one.

You're contention is that the general consensus on Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A is that it's indistinguishable from loudness war CD?!!

I'm sorry; that's not even wrong, it's just ridiculous.

 

[splinter]

You're contention is that the general consensus on Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A is that it's indistinguishable from loudness war CD?!!

No, I did not say that.

What I said is that the medium itself does not lend anything to audio quality, but the production does. If you take the contents of a "loudness war CD" and put it on DVD-A or BD Audio, it will still sound shitty. If you produce a better master though and but that on BD Audio, it will sound better. If you put the same master on an audio CD, it will sound better to the exact same degree (as proven by the study).

You are making the wrong attribution here to the medium. If you roll a blue ball downhill and a red ball uphill you can say that by your observation blue balls roll faster than red ones. But it is still not true. The same is done here by attributing perceived audio quality to different digital mediums. But it is not the medium that makes the better audio quality, as it is not the colour that makes the balls roll at different speeds.

 

[Rango]

No, I did not say that.

It seems like you did...

...general consensus of opinion suggests that the companies' claims for Blu-spec and SHM-CD are not valid. That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc; which is seemingly not something that can be said of Blu-spec CD or SHM-CD, hence why these disputes persist.

...This is not the general consensus though, nor is it true factually, so even if it is not your opinion, you quoted it wrongly.

[so...] Your contention is that the general consensus on Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A is that it's indistinguishable from loudness war CD?!!

This is why I'm not engaging with you; it's not so much your claims but your approach that's unreasonable.

No, I did not say that.

What I said is that the medium itself does not lend anything to audio quality, but the production does.

And, by the way, that was my very first sentence in this thread and I've repeated it (albeit in different forms) several times throughout...

Before we get into this: I know the basic argument is that it's all down to the mastering, and while I do believe that's true to a very great extent (I think) the question still stands...

 

[splinter]

You have to be precise in your words, because I can only read what you write, not hear what you think. If you cannot see that this

That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc;

and this

Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A is that it's indistinguishable from loudness war CD

is not at all the same, then please don't talk about being "reasonable". In the second quote, you related to production ("loudness war") being an issue. In the first quote you did not and generalized that (by "general consensus") DVD-As and Blu-ray Audio "objectively" sound better than CDs. And that is simply not true by itself.

And, by the way, that was my very first sentence in this thread...

With the second half of your first sentence weakening that assumption and then asking questions that show that you did not fully understand that. But be it as it may - I am not interested at all in who said what where, but in what is factually true and what not. If we are on the same page that production does matter, and digital medium (CD/DVD-A/SACD/Blu-ray Audio/Blu-spec CD/hard disk...) does not matter, then everything is good. I just want to make sure that that point is understood, because often enough it is not, and most of these discussion, including this one, originate from that misunderstanding. And also because this point is often navigated around and left open to some degree in these discussions, mainly with people saying something like "I cannot hear a difference, but others might". No. Others cannot. Scientifically proven.

 

[Rango]

Well, this is interesting, because I was thinking that we'd address that exact topic in the next post...

...my background is writing, but not just writing, the philosophy of writing and of reason and I've done quite a deep dive on the psychological origins of written and spoken word...

...where and how thought becomes language and the psychological underpinnings of those choices.

You say you can't hear what I think, but I'm expressing it as clearly and as succinctly as I'm able. Counter to that, trying to engage with you would, for me at least, be like trying to climb into your head and play some weird psychological logic game of 1's and 0's, which I'm not willing to do...

...your suggestion that I need to accommodate your shortcomings in helping you to attack me is a special pleading, and an unreasonable one at that. You seem to want me to help you attack me and to help you win in that attack...

...that's (in my opinion) a perverse kind of interaction and one that I'm not willing to enter into with you.

I'm just going to post this again to help illustrate this...

...general consensus of opinion suggests that the companies' claims for Blu-spec and SHM-CD are not valid. That's not an issue we have with DVD-A or Blu-ray Audio because the difference in quality is objectively noticeable as soon as you play the disc; which is seemingly not something that can be said of Blu-spec CD or SHM-CD, hence why these disputes persist.

...This is not the general consensus though, nor is it true factually, so even if it is not your opinion, you quoted it wrongly.

[so...] Your contention is that the general consensus on Blu-Ray Audio and DVD-A is that it's indistinguishable from loudness war CD?!!

Another trick you seem to be employing is an informal logical fallacy commonly known as moving the goalposts where you're just very slightly altering your argument so that you can come back at me with another attack....for example...

You say that you didn't mean that Blu-ray and DVD-A were indistinguishable from loudness war CD's and that I should be charitable in helping you to attack my argument, so maybe we can simplify things:

I stated that the general consensus is that the higher quality of Blu-ray Audio and DVD-A is objectively noticeable. Your response was:

...This is not the general consensus though, nor is it true factually, so even if it is not your opinion, you quoted it wrongly.

Would you care to offer some kind of evidence to support your claim that the general consensus is not that the higher quality of Blu-ray Audio and DVD-A is objectively noticeable, because we could probably poll the forum for that information...the self-selection bias would suggest that people here would be more capable than most in making that assessment.

 

[Horbus]

I don't have any, I just asked questions that remain unanswered and try to find out why unsubstantiated claims are still being repeated, the latter being the main reason for why people still think there is something to it.

Not sure why you make it personal now.

BTW., I tried to get to the source of it and find out what the manufacturers (in case of Blu-spec CD: Sony Music Japan) really claimed. Nothing anymore it seems, because they removed relevant contents from their home page. But at the time of the release of the product, there was a press release PDF about it published by them. You can still find it via archive.org:
https://web.archive.org/web/20090206025731/http://www.sme.co.jp/pressrelease/images/20081105.pdf

There is not much about audio quality in there, but what they are saying is (I used Google translate):


This is attributed to the polycarbonate, btw., not to the blue laser being used.

The jitter claim is known to be unrelated, as jitter occurs in the ADC or in the DAC because of clock deviations.

And what "master tape quality" exactly is in this context eludes me, especially if we are talking about digital productions that do not use any tape. To be fair, the list of the first batch of Blu-spec CDs attached to this press release consists mostly of re-releases of older recordings, so tapes might have been involved. Still this is such a vague term that there is much you can read into it without them having said anything about audio quality. They are basically saying that they reproduce the masters faithfully on CD (which already was the initial mission of the CD), but not that the audio quality is any better than on any other kind of CD medium.

So I guess the claims on improved audio quality were actually made by us - the general public reading thing into this press release or wanting to hear stuff that is not there - and not by them.

If anyone finds more source material I would be interested in that.

Sorry but you didn't ask questions and waiting for answers you were demanding them. You are making something up out of a harmless discussion where no one stated that whatever format or derivative of it is superior to the other. Believe me on this forum most of the people are old enough to distinguish between marketing and facts and really don't need your protection no matter how nice it would have been meant.

 

[splinter]

Sorry but you didn't ask questions and waiting for answers you were demanding them.

I am not sure I understand what you are saying, especially as my questions remain unanswered and instead their reasoning or tone or I personally was attacked instead. But please accept my apology if my tone offended you. English is not my first language.

most of the people are old enough to distinguish between marketing and facts

Why are we having this thread at all then? The initial question related to a marketing gag being interpreted as a technical fact, and I thought we were discussing if this fact and related claims are true. What are we actually discussing?

 

[Rango]

Sorry but you didn't ask questions and waiting for answers you were demanding them. You are making something up out of a harmless discussion where no one stated that whatever format or derivative of it is superior to the other. Believe me on this forum most of the people are old enough to distinguish between marketing and facts and really don't need your protection no matter how nice it would have been meant.

I don't mean to laugh, but I can't help but feel that you brought that upon yourself? (splinter's response I mean).

Splinter just picks another angle and comes back with another attack; he won't stop; the best thing to do is just not engage.