Well I'm willing to open up a can of worms here.

I now have a dedicated DVD-A player, and a Dedicated SACD player, and I'm wondering if those of you out there who can do a side by side have any input concerning the sound quality.

To me, the MLP (or DVD-A) sounds more realistic then the DSD (SACD). The DSD seems more...removed than the MLP. The dynamics seem better, the headroom seems greater, and the performances seem more lifelike to me.

Again, I'm not saying one is definatly better then the other, I'm just courious as to other peoples opinions regarding the two formats.

Jason

This can has been open for quite a while. I would want to listen to the same piece recorded in both formats in order to make what I would consider a fair comparison of the two formats. So far, I don't know of anything that was recorded simultaineously in both formats so that comparison could be made. It may be you just like the available dvd-a music better than what is available in sacd. Or, it might be you really like dvd-a better- which is ok, too! Me- I think both of them have a lot to offer in comparison to redbook cd. Having said that, you can still buy a crappy recording done in either format. By the way, are you comparing 2 channel, multi-channel or both?

I think it's the sound in general. Granted I dont have the same recording on both sources, however the DVD-A sounds fuller to me.

Now I realize that this may not be a fair compairasent, given that my DVD-A player (Denon DVM 4800) costs a whole lot more then my SACD player (Sony CE775), but even with a JVC DVD-A that I used before the upgrade, the sound was noticibly more realistic to me then the SACD.

I think what is making me scratch my head is that I own a DVD-A that was recorded in DSD (1812 Ovature-Telarc label) which to me sounds realy constrained when compaired to my other DVD-A's (Blue Man Group, Koyanaskyssi, The Beethovin Symphonies conducted by Baremboim).

That's why I wanted to pos this, just to see what other opinions were out there concerning MLP and DSD.

Jason

It may also be that the quality of the recording is better on one over the other. With the new higher resolution formats, that becomes much more important than it was with the CD format.

Things such as the quality of the original master, the expertise of the mixing engineer, the equipment used, etc. can make a big difference.

You'd have to hold all of these constant to get a good comparison, and I don't know of a way to do that.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

FYI....That 1812 overture on Telarc is available in BOTH formats for comparison.

Isn't 'MLP' really PCM encoding? I thought MLP was just a lossless compression format that was carrying PCM data around?

I think you are basically right Charlie. By the way, that Telarc 1812 Overture may be available in both formats, but I believe it was remastered using DSD and then convereted to PCM- so unless both recording formats were used at the same time, I'm not sure if this would make for a fair comparison. I notice even the DVD/DVD-A version says "A DSD Recording" on the cover!

It wasn't remastered, but re-recorded new. However, I believe that yes, it was mastered in DSD, which means the DVD-A includes a DSD-to-PCM conversion.

I was under the impression that a DSD to PCM conversion was just a mathematical formula anyway; that the two formats were basically interchangeable.

And yes, MLP is lossless compression. I believe it gives about a 2:1 compression ratio (far better than anything you'd get with LZW or a similar data-based lossless algorithm) which is just enough to squeeze 96/24/6 into DVD's bits-per-second limit.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Not all data is equally compressable. I wonder how they handle that case, or just trust that no music will ever be incompressable.