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Plastic discs and wastes of gas, but your DSD test didn't work because: (and how moore's law is against SACD)

DSD is a completely different kind of digital encoding. It needs a special kind of DAC.

Sony, by refusing to open SACD, have kept DSD DACs few and far between, but they exist. They just aren't like PCM DACs that you can find anywhere. This brings me to my point: Tests have shown that DSD on SACD and 24/96 PCM, both sound very good, and both have areas where they perform better. When you are dealing with splitting hairs like this, it makes you wonder why we didn't just settle on 24/96. At the time, it was because DSD didn't need as many bits to actually create a high resolution signal, but that isn't really an issue anymore. We have essentially moved past the need to keep the filesize down to that which can only fit on a CD.

DSD is good tech, like a lot of things, it would have been just as good as what is used now, and in some ways, better, but we have leaped over the need to keep the bitrate down, and because PCM has been the de-facto standard, we now have so many good DACs and other hardware, that it just would have made sense to move into 24/96 on DVD as the "plastic disc" standard, and, as you already know, FLAC for downloading.

The funny thing is, if it wasn't for filesharing, the music industry would be all but dead. The 'pirates' drive the digital download technologies, and push them further than what would have happened had it been left up to the big labels. They essentially forced the hands of musicians and labels to begin offering quality downloads to be competitive with the sharers, and with that, they are now competing with themselves in an ever increasing list of genres and subgenres. Artists will never stop producing art, regardless if the big labels can't sell their "product". Musicians are creating wonderful music and taking bigger risks, somewhat like music in the 60s, and 70s, and the early 80s, after payola laws were past, and before the industry began to break them without consequence.

There is a great wiki on DSD here:



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  • Plastic discs and wastes of gas, but your DSD test didn't work because: (and how moore's law is against SACD) - Yashu 06/9/0808:51:46 06/9/08 (1)

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