rigma Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 If I send the analog output from an SACD player through a digital processor with a high quality 24 Bit,48 kHz A/D & D/A converters along with 240MIPS of full 32-bit floating point DSP. Will the signal be degraded? I am mostly concerend about the 48 kHz sampling rate. Any comments will be apreciated. MB Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 Of course the sound would be degraded. Why would you want to do this? SACD uses 3 fewer steps than PCM in the first place. And down sampling sucks, especially if the "sample" cannot be divided evenly. I've done it. Too many errors. http://www.superaudio-cd.com/technology3.html Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 8, 2003 Author Share Posted July 8, 2003 Artto, I am using the processor as a crossover, time delay to tri-amp my Khorns. Just added a SACD and was wondering what effect the 48 kHz DAC would have. Isn't SACD at 192 kHz? Am I hearing all the benifits of SACD? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 SACD is a ONE bit system. No decimation filters. No Delta Sigma modulator. No Interpolation Digital Filter. No 'brick wall' filters. Sample rate is 2.822MHz (2,822,400 samples per second) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marksdad Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 yeah artto Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 8, 2003 Author Share Posted July 8, 2003 So what does all that mean? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strabo Posted July 8, 2003 Share Posted July 8, 2003 That means SACD sampling is 58.8 times greater than the 48k that your talking about. You can do it, but the sound would end up being a little better than cd. Kinda defeats the purpose of SACD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 8, 2003 Author Share Posted July 8, 2003 So essentially once the SACD player has converted the signal to analog putting it through any other DAC with a sample rate lower than 2.822MHz would be a gaint step backwards. Is that what you are saying? If so is the DAC something that can normally be upgraded in a processor such as a Crown USM-810? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gerbache Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 SACD cannot be played back on a normal DAC. It uses the new direct stream digital recording format, which is a completely different design than the older pulse code modulation (PCM) like that used with cd players and DVD-A. If you tried plugging your SACD into a DAC, even if it passes the signal (most don't pass a digital signal), it would be unable to actually understand the stream, so nothing would happen, or else it would just make noise. Either way, it wouldn't work unless someone puts out a specific DAC for SACD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 Once the SACD player has converted the signal back to analogue, putting it thru ANY DAC is a step backwards. Youll be adding back in all the things that SACD was designed to eliminate in the first place. Youll also be going thru the digital to analogue/analogue to digital conversion TWICE (as opposed to just once with ordinary CD). And you are going to wind up with an interpolated down sampled signal resulting in lower resolution (lower sampling frequency) & increased noise. You would have to modify the SACD player (not the DAC) to have its DSD output & word clock synchronized with the DAC (not even sure this would work with most DAC's). IMHO, this entirely defeats the purpose & improvements SACD provides. For what its worth, Great Northern Sound in Minnesota supposedly can modify a Sony SCD-1 to have DSD output to use with dCS DAC, which to my knowledge, is the only DAC currently available thats capable of accepting a DSD signal. (can you say $34,000?) http://www.aslgroup.com/dcs/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 gerbache & artto, I don't think you understand what I am saying, I may not be saying it right. Let me try again; I am not trying to get the SACD digital signal to a DAC. The output from my SACD is already in analog and still is at the input to the Crown prosessor. What concerns me is that the Crown has a 24 bit 48KHz A/D converter and after the signal is processed it goes to a 24 bit 48 KHz D/A converter, which as I understand it a much smaller sampling rate than SACD. So my question is would this defeat the advantage of SACD over CD and if so do you think it is possible to upgrade the chips in the Crown to a higher sampling rate. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffinator Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 ---------------- On 7/9/2003 1:15:42 PM rigma wrote: gerbache & artto, I don't think you understand what I am saying, I may not be saying it right. Let me try again; I am not trying to get the SACD digital signal to a DAC. The output from my SACD is already in analog and still is at the input to the Crown prosessor. What concerns me is that the Crown has a 24 bit 48KHz A/D converter and after the signal is processed it goes to a 24 bit 48 KHz D/A converter, which as I understand it a much smaller sampling rate than SACD. So my question is would this defeat the advantage of SACD over CD and if so do you think it is possible to upgrade the chips in the Crown to a higher sampling rate. ---------------- Dude. What is being said here is that there is absolutely no point in passing the SACD signal into your Crown, analog or digital. Go straight to your receiver/preamp with the analog signal. It would be the height of stupidity to pass it through a PCM A/D conversion and then a D/A conversion. You would defeat the entire purpose. Translation: don't put the SACD player through the Crown, send it straight to the preamp. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 Griffinator, I have to go through the Crown processor or do away with my current Tri-amp setup (see my other post in this thread) the Crown is doing the 3-Way crossover. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 I think this comes under the mountain / molehill category. The Crown is going to add some noise and distortion to any signal it processes. TANSTAAFL. This is (most likely) a very small amount of noise and distortion. The higher quality signal you feed it, the higher quality signal you will get out of it. If the difference between your SACD player and some other source is significant enough that you can hear it, I doubt that the small amount of degredation due to the processing of the Crown will mask those differences. The SACD will still sound, uh, more better than the other sources. As to the sampling rate question, you are comparing 24 bit word sampling 48kHz with (well, sort of) 1 bit word sampling 2.8224 MHz. This is not even apples and oranges, it's more like apples and Wild Troll Caught King Salmon. You cannot simply compare the sampling rates on a head to head basis, the technology is wildly different. How did you do the analysis to figure out the time delay parameters - empirically based on theory, or do you have some way to measure it? How do you like what it does for the speakers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 ---------------- On 7/9/2003 2:31:16 PM Ray Garrison wrote: I think this comes under the mountain / molehill category. The Crown is going to add some noise and distortion to any signal it processes. TANSTAAFL. This is (most likely) a very small amount of noise and distortion. The higher quality signal you feed it, the higher quality signal you will get out of it. If the difference between your SACD player and some other source is significant enough that you can hear it, I doubt that the small amount of degredation due to the processing of the Crown will mask those differences. The SACD will still sound, uh, more better than the other sources. As to the sampling rate question, you are comparing 24 bit word sampling 48kHz with (well, sort of) 1 bit word sampling 2.8224 MHz. This is not even apples and oranges, it's more like apples and Wild Troll Caught King Salmon. You cannot simply compare the sampling rates on a head to head basis, the technology is wildly different. How did you do the analysis to figure out the time delay parameters - empirically based on theory, or do you have some way to measure it? How do you like what it does for the speakers? ---------------- Someone on this board gave me the time delays based on actual measurments, I don't recall who. I can find that info if anyone is interested, I still have it in a file somewhere. The tri-amp experience has been very good. I am using 610 watts of Crown SS to drive each woofer with only about 3' of 10 ga cable and the bass is awesome. The real reason I am doing all of this is to keep my current bass setup and use triode amps for the midrange and tweeters, instead of my current SS. I think I understand the sampling thing a little better, maybe Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
artto Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 Rig.....if I had any idea this was going to wind up like this................ no offense. "Homey don't play dat ghame." (been there. done that) (barkin' up da wrong tree baby) I think someone is pulling your leg man. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Griffinator Posted July 9, 2003 Share Posted July 9, 2003 ---------------- On 7/9/2003 2:31:16 PM Ray Garrison wrote: I think this comes under the mountain / molehill category. The Crown is going to add some noise and distortion to any signal it processes. TANSTAAFL. This is (most likely) a very small amount of noise and distortion. The higher quality signal you feed it, the higher quality signal you will get out of it. If the difference between your SACD player and some other source is significant enough that you can hear it, I doubt that the small amount of degredation due to the processing of the Crown will mask those differences. The SACD will still sound, uh, more better than the other sources. As to the sampling rate question, you are comparing 24 bit word sampling 48kHz with (well, sort of) 1 bit word sampling 2.8224 MHz. This is not even apples and oranges, it's more like apples and Wild Troll Caught King Salmon. You cannot simply compare the sampling rates on a head to head basis, the technology is wildly different. How did you do the analysis to figure out the time delay parameters - empirically based on theory, or do you have some way to measure it? How do you like what it does for the speakers? ---------------- No, Ray, this isn't about adding or subtracting noise and distortion. This is about taking a DSD signal and converting it to PCM. Completely different animal. The SACD won't sound better than other sources, it'll sound exactly the same, because you've resampled the analog as PCM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 9, 2003 Author Share Posted July 9, 2003 ---------------- On 7/9/2003 5:58:22 PM artto wrote: Rig.....if I had any idea this was going to wind up like this................ no offense. "Homey don't play dat ghame." (been there. done that) (barkin' up da wrong tree baby) I think someone is pulling your leg man. ---------------- Come on attro you can do better "dan dat". Give me facts of your past experience with Tri-Amp/time delay. I am here to learn from others and share the same. I have been listening to Khorns for 40 years but always striving for perfection. Even Klipsch recommends in there info on their cinema page to split the amps and drivers. http://klipsch.com/media/Products/CinemaCrossovers.pdf They list the crossover freq and delay to use when tri amping. If there is a valid reason this is not a good idea I would like to hear about it in factual terms not just that it is not good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Garrison Posted July 10, 2003 Share Posted July 10, 2003 Griff - Uh, I don't think so. Though experiment. Take two signals, one poor and one very good. Say, use a CD player as one source, and a portable cassette recorder as the other. Play a tune on the CD, then the same tune as recorded and played back on the cassette recorder. Run both signals throught his setup. Will you hear any difference between the two? Of course. The CD sourced signal will be as much better (well, almost) than the cassette signal as it was prior to PCM encode / decode process. I submit that the same holds true of the analog signals produced by a CD player and the SACD player. *IF* the analog output of the SACD player is, uh, more better enough (?) that you can hear the difference between the two, then those difference should not be completely masked by converting them to PCM. The only way I can see that this would not hold true was if there were some "maximum signal quality" level that the Crown setup was capable of processing (and there probably is), and if the result of feeding two signals that were both at or above this level were to reduce them both to this level. I would think that the *ANALOG* signal produced by either CD or SACD are both within the ability of the Crown to accurately sample, and thus whatever differences may exhist between them would be entact after processing by the Crown. Also, the process of converting to PCM *WILL* add some distortion. It may not be harmonic distortion, but you will get (at least some) phase distortion (particularly high frequencies), and you will reduce the signal to noise level. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rigma Posted July 10, 2003 Author Share Posted July 10, 2003 Anybody else have any input? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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