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PWK Tape Reissues available later this month


Alex L

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I think the scanning rate is 88.2K. I enjoy SACDs because of the surround (especially if it is 5.1 or 5.0) but I'm not positive the sound quality is any better, on the average, than straight CDs at 44.1K (I think). Should a mere doubling from 44.1 to 88.2 make an audible difference?

Theoretially, for dogs and other animals with superior high frequency hearing yes. For people, probably not.

When I test my hearing, about the time I got Khorns at 23, I was good up to 17.5 Khz.. 35 years later, I can't hear past 12 Khz.

When I got the very first CD player on the market in 1983, it had to be Sony, because Philips (the inventors) hadn't come out with theirs yet. Sony used some steep analog filters which had some anomalies as you approached 20 Khz. Now with cheap and sophisticated digital oversampling and filtering techniques, good Digital to Analog conversions are child's play for modern integrated circuits.

Also, many of the early CD's were made from analog tapes that had a 12 Khz. boost to compensate for some of the inadequacies of vinyl. Instead of going backwards up the chain towards the original master tapes, many of the record companies merely took the same tape as the LP and threw it onto the CD. Bad move for bad sound. So the ultra flat, ultra low noise, ultra dynamic MEDIUM took the blame for the bad sound, when in fact it totally exposed all the flaws in the recording and production chain.

Today's digital stuff is 1,000 times better. But I still listen to my 1983 CD by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan fame as one of the best studio recordings ever and it's digital throughout.

So it doesn't sound good, don't blame the medium, blame the producers.

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So it doesn't sound good, don't blame the medium, blame the producers.

It is my sincere hope that whatever digital medium is chosen for PWK's master tapes, that it will contain the purest rendition of the original possible at a reasonable selling price.

I would vote for Blue Ray with uncompressed DTS Master codec.

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Dr. Who is correct in that there is "no quality difference between DSD and PCM".

In fact PCM is in reality also a "one bit" system ~ it's just that it uses these bits as "words", and the word lengths are "16 bit", "24 bit", etc. DSD is basiclly a one bit word system. In a PCM system the instantaneous amplitude is represented by the density of the pulses called Pulse Density Modulation (PDM). The PDM stream is chopped up into these "digital words" by a decimation filter which needs to be undone upon replay. The PDM stream is encoded at a rate which is 64 times the usual CD sample rate. It is no coincidence that the DSD sample rate is 2,822,400/sec which is 64 times 44,100.

The real issue is whether it is possible to eliminate distortion in a 1-bit Sigma-Delta conversion. The jury is still out on this. And yes, as Mike also pointed outthere is "no direct way to employ DSP algorithms effectively to a raw DSD encoding" ~ yet. But this is mostly a numbers processing issue and will most likely be solved in the future with faster and better computational power. And there is also another alternative. The keywords are "no direct way". But there are "indirect ways".

http://www.ambisonic.net/pdf/hiresaudio.pdf

http://www.essex.ac.uk/csee/research/audio_lab/malcolmspubdocs/J53%20Ultra%20Hi-Rez%20audio.pdf

http://www.sonicstudio.com/pdf/papers/SoundBarrier.pdf

Yes, there are certain amplifiers/recievers that can process the DSD signal directly from the source with nothing more than a decent analog low-pass filter to recover the analog signal and drive the speakers. Sony's STR-A5700ES is one such product utilizing what they call their H.A.T.S system. Pioneer has their own version. And I'm sure there are others. These all require the latest version 1.3 HDMI inputs/outputs in the source player and reciever. Hopefully at some point this will become more standardized (maybe it already is?) so that truely digital amplifiers like TacT will accept the DSD output from say, a Sony SCD-XA5400ES which can output the unaltered DSD directly, but only through the HDMI output (S/PDIF, coaxial or TOSLINK won't do it).

But my initial point still stands. DSD is most likely the most elegant way of archiving digital recordings in their purest form for future use regardless of the format used. The point being that unaltered preservation is key and after format conversion you can do as you like with DSP or whatever. At some future point this probably won't be an issue.

And just for the record, the only reason High Definition Tape Transfers, the company releasing the Klipsch tapes (I was told they should be out this weekend _ can't wait [:D] ) hasn't made them available in DSD files or SACD is simply a demand issue, "as we feel the market isn't big enough at this moment". They also said that the ADC they use, a Digital Audio Denmark DAD AX24 can be implemented with DSD when they decide it's feasible to go that route.

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Thanks for the info, Artto.

And just for the record, the only reason High Definition Tape Transfers, the company releasing the Klipsch tapes (I was told they should be out this weekend _ can't wait Big Smile ) hasn't made them available in DSD files or SACD is simply a demand issue, "as we feel the market isn't big enough at this moment". They also said that the ADC they use, a Digital Audio Denmark DAD AX24 can be implemented with DSD when they decide it's feasible to go that route.

I think the widespread view that SACD is not very marketable was once true, but no longer is, if they would just run a few ads. The reason the market has great potential now is that many Blu-ray players are now universal players and will play SACD through HDMI in the glorious surround people with Blu-ray are probably already set up for. Now the corproations need to get off the dime and advertise this.

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Great news!

Since I'm a little light on format lingo, please rank order the following from the highest to the lowest audio quality: 24/96 DVD, HQCD, and SACD. I'm set up for SACD, CD, DVD, and BD on an OPPO BDP-93 player. Will it play 24/96 DVDs?

Hopefully, the notes will tell us what microphones, etc. PWK used in making each recording.

I heard a few of PWK's master tapes in his home (2 Khorns in false corners, 1 mono Belle). I asked him about his miking technique........2 spaced omni mikes, not sure the spacing, but I think about 20 feet is what he said.

I remember asking PWK about the Blumlein miking technique (do-incident stereo mikes). He said they had too strong of a mono component. I didn't think of it until much later, but having a center channel LaScala (Belle in PWK's case in his home), fed by a PWK designed resistor box CREATES a mono component between two flanks. But different is not the same, eh?

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...

Volume 2 is available in DSD128 and DSD96 for download for $20 and $18. 

 

I still haven't gotten volume 1 or 2.   :(   Time to pull the plug soon.  Budget CD and DVD-A are $7.99 and $9.99.  

 

DVD-A is available in Audio and Video formats.  Whats the difference if I go that route?  I would think I'd want audio format but what do I know?  

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Yup! :)

 

I made a new post for the tapes' official release: http://community.klipsch.com/forums/p/163877/1747702.aspx#1747702

Alex,

 

I get an error when I try this link!?!

 

500 - Internal server error. There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed.

 

 

I've fixed his link... it's: https://community.klipsch.com/index.php?/topic/137011-klipsch-reissues-pwks-early-stereo-recordings/

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