Oh Ye of Little Format

What kit, what cabling...?

Very hard to tell differences if not impossible. No surprise to me. 

The equipment used, short term listening and long term unfamiliarity of system sound all have bearing on result. Still, doesn't surprise me couldn't hear difference between streaming and physical disc.

This is when a group of people start writing that blind testing is not valid.  Why anyone would think that a group of people trying to reach a conclusion without knowing which item is producing which sound is not a more valid test than any other testing method where visual bias enters is beyond my logic.

The cuts were removed from the same CD using different layers.

Not sure what that means. You were not playing the original source?

The results are meaningless if the system specifics aren’t listed.  A lower end system wouldn’t have the resolving capability to hear a difference.

A lower end system wouldn’t have the resolving capability to hear a difference.

What? You mean a Radio Shack bookshelf and a Realistic receiver isn't state of the art? 

red book format was found to be sufficient enough in resolution and anything introduced to market later didn't work.

the answer is in market statistics whether it has or hasn't differences or whether it's worth the format or not.

R69-The SACD had two layers- One is SACD the other is CD.

SFsas- The gear was not mine. Speakers & other all  belonged to an engineer.

A notch above  the  "Close and Play" level. 

SNS-Comparison was not "Streaming vs CD"

cz- Yes but somethings require confirmation

It's no surprise to me either.

Don't Apple still use their own proprietary 'mastered for iTunes' for their music?

It might explain the preference.

As you say, the fun never stops when you're an audiophile.

Especially amongst like minded friends.

It's almost a definition of happiness.

How about a 21st century remake of Guys and Dolls with a bunch of fellows trying to organise an illicit hush hush sound comparison test?

R69-The SACD had two layers- One is SACD the other is CD.

I'm not an expert but I have heard of discs in the SACD format but taken from a Redbook CD data set. It lights the SACD light up but the resolution is Redbook CD quality. I don't have the technical knowledge or equipment to be able to determine that. 

I play my SACDs on a McIntosh MCD85 SACD/CD player connected by balanced cables to a McIntosh MA352 IA and I notice a definite difference between most SACDs over Amazon Music  Super HD and Apple high resolution broadcast formats.  The thing is like vinyl not all SACDs will present the just like vinyl sound.

SACD examples:

• Dire Straights, Brothers In Arms 20th Anniversary - Like vinyl
• Chicago II Original Master - Not much better than standard CD
• Elton John, Elton Jon - Like vinyl
• Diana Krall Love Scenes - Better than vinyl!
• Concord Jass Vol 2 - Like vinyl
• The Jim Hendrix Experience - Like a standard CD
• Eric Clapton Slowhand - Like vinyl

We used  Brothers in Arms. That was the only one of the five I guessed

correctly.

Sorry for confusing comparison explanation.  My comparison is based on Vinyl > SACD>High Resolution Bluetooth>Standard CDs.

My point is even some vinyl is flat and lacking of detail; assuming a good source some of my SACDs can match my good vinyl. I'm finding on my equipment some high resolution source is also really good; but not as detailed and realistic as really good vinyl and really good SACDs.

Brothers in Arms compared is SACD, 20th Anniversary Cat#9871498 vs vinyl and standard CD

I can only speak from a very limited experience on this as I only did anything like this once and it was last week. I do not use apple play so I cannot speak for that. However, I can speak for standard CD, MOFI-CD, Hi-Res (24-192) digital download, and Amazon HD music (so they claim). On my desk top I have a TMS T300MKll mini tube amp and a pair of Klipsch RP-600Ms. I used two "albums"for the comparison, Allman Brothers first album and Crosby Stills and Nash CSN as I have both of these in the formats listed above. From ABB I played It's Not My Cross To Bear, from CSN I played Run From Tears. Hands down the Hi-Res download versions were the clear winners in overall sound quality, to my years. Especially disappointing was the CSN-Mofi recording. When I get some time I will do the same comparison on my listening room set up. Rogue M-180s, Rogue RP-7, Panasonic DP-UB-9000, NAD C658 DAC, and Focal Kanta No.2s.

99 bottles of beer on the wall

99 bottles of beer

Take one down pass it around

See how it sounds

98 bottles of beer on the wall...

Interesting result.  Most importantly, sounds like a fun time listening to music with friends

I am an engineer, manufacturer and a importer. The attempts to compare formats analogue to digital in whatever forms they may take is difficult at best. You need to consider how the music was recorded, the engineer who did the work, the equipment, and the studio for the original event.

I have been fortunate enough to here some music recorded on analogue equipment from the '70's which was remanufactured with audio grade components. The recording were made in a studio where the sound stage was a separate building on the inside of another building with separate foundation piling and the studio was constructed on top of isolation platforms. Just as much attention was done on the power, cabling, mics, .... The analogue recorder was added to the recording system which is 384kz 32 bit. The recording controls in the control room are analogue. No post mix down!

Lacquer's were made from both the digital and the analogue. Hard to tell which lacquer was which by the ear test. Hard to tell the difference between digital, analogue tape and lacquers. The tests got the same results with all that auditioned the test material over the 3 months I was there.

On the other hand, there are plenty of recordings which were made with cheap equipment, cabling, mics, in only a so-so studio. Add questionable skill level of the person in control of the recording and you end up with not the best sound quality by the time it gets to the user. The beginning of the CD era actually made this issue worse, in my opinion. On top of this is what is the intended audience and what equipment was it likely to be played on and you end up with some music that only sounds good in a car, in my opinion.

In conclusion I would like to say this; my search is for great recordings of great music, format is optional. When given the opportunity, while helping a client. I ask them to introduce me to the music they like. Always a great experience. I also enjoy my music collection which is not the best recordings. For me, it is more about the music, when you get to the bottom line.

I’ve done the same test and we were all over the place with our answers. So many albums are poorly recorded, so it doesn’t matter what the format. “you can t make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.”

All the best.

JD

 @audio-union "In conclusion I would like to say this; my search is for great recordings of great music, format is optional."

T H A N K  Y O U ‼️ 

Blind tests are interesting. In most blind tests, people tend to look for the obvious differences first. So they tend to find the easy things. A bit more treble or bass or loudness...all the things compression can give you.

Long ago, I remember listening to Brubeck’s Take Five and chose CD over LP. The CD had more treble and the bass was jacked up. It was remastered. It was after listening to the track many times that I noticed more ’air’ and decay in the snare drum with the LP. And after some time, I began to prefer the LP.

This is not an vinyl vs digital argument. I enjoy both. This is about the various recording qualities out there regardless of format. The remastered CD was just jacked up to sound sweeter. This happens more often these days. I prefer digital recordings that are truer to the original production.

The magic is often in the middle. And that is not easy to understand in a blind listening test as I think we’re looking for the obvious.

Time for a gross generalisation interlude?

Music in the 50s was made for radiograms?

Music in the 60s was made for Dansette type record players which had a speaker built inside it's console?

Music in the 70s was made for listening to in cars.

Music in the 80s was made for walkmans?

Ditto the 90s.

Music in the 00s was made for the iPod?

Music in the 10s was made for the smartphone?

Perhaps one day we might finally see music recorded for first rate audio playback systems?

Of course the quality of a recording trumps all formats.

Relar- Thanks for sharing your comparisons.

I wonder if a high res download would sound superior to

the same hi-res ripped of a CD and stored as a file?

Sandy- Magic in the middle. I like that idea. It is funny how

the magazines, Youtubers and other Experts all eschew the

merits of blind anything. 

To me you have to be blind not to recognize the value of such tests.

cd318- Very clever! Thanks for the memories!!

Ok. About 3 years ago, I met Gus Skinas up in his Boulder Studio upstairs at the PS Audio factory. An amazing and very nice man to talk to. Did a great one hour Zoom session with our gang of six 2 years ago.

Anyways. My comment to Gus was. How in hell did I hear a clear difference between the SACD of any of the Elton John reissues that he mastered the SACD layer on and the Super Bit Mapped CD layer. My system 20 years ago was a Denon AVR-1802 Home Theater Receiver and a Pioneer DV578-A Universal Disc Player via its Analog outs to the Analog in of the AVR. The SACD easily sounded more LP like without the inner groove distortion and surface noise that I always hated on cheap LP pressings.
 

Now saying all that. In 2003, I bought both the LP & SACD of the 30th Anniversary Dark Side of the Moon. The SACD’s 5.1 is amazing but to my ears, the LP outclasses the 2.0 SACD. It’s not a night and day difference nonetheless.

As Gus told me. “It’s all in the mastering” and of course there condition of the master tapes.

I stream a lot via AmazonHD (I did a direct comparison to Qobuz - no difference in audio quality). Both companies are clearly adding some “spice” to the streams. The CD version always sounds better in most cases but not all. 
 

As for high bitrate PCM ? Great for preservation but is it better than a CD. Again, depends on how it was mastered.

The Hendrix SACD’s are the best I’ve heard.

My DAC ? PS Audio DirectStream DAC Sr. 

Sounds tedious.  I hope there was a lot of alcohol involved.

Dare I suggest that the type of music used might have had something to do with the outcome?  SACD has been kept alive mainly by Classical Music lovers, none of which was used here.  I will probably be criticized as Elitist but CM makes more demands on a system than bog standard Pop Music.  As just one example, both Shostakovich and Mahler use a lot of low level percussion that infuses even the quieter portions of their music, such as subtle toppings of the gong that fills out the bottom end.  One reason that concerts have always bested recordings is that not only can you hear it but the way it seems to infuse the sonic canvas from the ground up can be breathtaking.  This stuff gets lost in the mix on most recordings.  With vinyl it’s truly lost due to the decreased dynamic range and competition with surface noise.  However on a well recorded SACD it’s there, not only as a separate element in the mix, but one that can permeate the listening room while simultaneously being low volume