Home Digital Drive

Upsamplers, DACs, jitter, shakes and analogue withdrawals, this is it.

RE: Loudness - SACD versus CD

If the loudness levels affects conclusions, it's because the people reaching these conclusions are incompetent.

It is impossible to compare sound quality of two formats or presentations without precisely matched levels. This can be very difficult to accomplish with systems that have a single volume control. If the volume control is stepped, there may be no pair of settings that provides equal levels. If the volume control is continues it will have to be adjusted on each switching and repeatability will be an issue. (There may ways to work around this problem and reach reasonably accurate conclusions, but these are tedious and error prone.)

Keep in mind that needed level adjustments depend on the particular mastering involved. Because the technical limitations of PCM and DSD differ the mastering engineer(s) involved may make different decisions on gain used. In some cases gain differences may simply be a function of their workflow and equipment.


Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


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