The Higher End
David W. Robinson

By the time you read this, Ye Olde Editor will have received Sony’s new SACD player, and will have been listening to it most carefully in Positive Feedback’s new listening room. Quite a number of our readers (and writers!) want to know if I’ve gone off the deep end on the subject of DSD and SACD. "Can it really be that good, David?! Are you sure that you want to go out quite that far on a limb??"

Well, as a matter of fact, I feel pretty comfortable about my responses to the several sessions that I’ve had, listening to the new technology under various conditions. These have ranged from typical show conditions (the usual) to exceptional opportunities to listen under the very finest of circumstances. In every case, both my immediate and lasting impressions were quite strong, and strongly favorable. I don’t know if I can remember being so moved by an audio experience...especially in the world of things digital. Being a powerful analog lover from way back, it would take quite an extraordinary event to make me react as I have since last September — but DSD and SACD have done precisely that.

This has galvanized me to action. Wanting to know more, and to check my impressions against the sensibilities of others whose ears I respect, I have spent months on the phone, talking with a number of friends and contacts in high-end audio/engineering. Mike Pappas has been my right-hand man, and has done yeoman’s work in helping me to come to grips with DSD/SACD technology and its implications... many thanks, good friend!

Indeed, Mike has had the invaluable experience of actually doing recordings for KUVO in Boulder and National Public Radio using the new standard, thanks to the considerable help of people like David Kawakami and company at Sony. Mike is one of the few people in the industry — and certainly one of the very few people in high-end audio journalism — who has had very extensive hands-on exposure to the new system. He, like me, has been in extended contact with well-respected high-end engineers — people like Joe Harley, Tim deParavicini, Ed Meitner, Shawn Britton, Kavi Alexander — who are very excited and impressed with DSD/SACD. Others, like Tom Jung of DMP, as well as the folks over at Telarc, have already jumped aboard. They are convinced that this could very well be the technology that delivers music without all of the terrible compromises that 44.1kHz/16-bit has entailed over the years.

I hope that Mike will eventually put some of what he’s learned into an article for Positive Feedback. I think that all of you would find his enthusiastic comments to be exciting and educational.

And where am I in my thinking right now?

Well, one thing is very clear to me now. We’re ALL going to have to start over in our listening rooms.

Completely. From scratch.

Should SACD be able to deliver the titles that we crave in this marvelous new format, we’re all going to have to ditch 15 or so years worth of calibration to the 44.1kHz/16-bit standard, and get used to real music again.

Those of us who have stubbornly hung onto our LPs, because we could hear what was — and wasn’t — there, probably have less of a stretch to make on this one. There’s nothing like the goodness of analog to re-groove your hearing when you’ve been listening to a bit too much of the 44.1kHz/16-bit beasties. It helps when you’re setting up a listening room, adjusting, tuning and tweaking, to have the ease of analog as a reference point, and a guiding hand.

With the advent of DSD/SACD, a new way will arrive in our listening rooms, and it is going to change us, and them.

You may remember my aphorism in our last issue: "SACD: Mic feeds and master tapes for the masses!" This is a literal truth, and no exaggeration. It has been confirmed to me time and again by audiophile engineers, who are astonished by the fact that their play back of live recordings using DSD sounds like their mic feeds; their play back of DSD re-mastered master tapes sounds like the original master tapes. And their SACD discs are NOT losing the sound of the DSD master in the pressing process!

This is why things are going to change radically in our listening rooms. We are about to get something there that has never been there before: mic feeds and master tapes, reliably on disc!

Believe it: once you get SACD, you’ll have to take out ALL of your room treatments...ALL of your tuning devices...you’ll have to re-think ALL of your cabling and interconnects...and completely re-evaluate ALL of your synergies. A total re-voicing of your listening room; a complete reconsideration of your wayward sensibilities....

You won’t have any choice, I think.

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