[crwilli]

Originally Posted by Puma Cat

Hey Craig,

Yep, fully acknowledge that these are just my opinions. But, being the empirically-minded scientist that I am, my opinons are also founded on my direct experiences, too.

Just for sake of accuracy, I never said that Alan Yoshida mastered every recording, I was only relating a point about the Audio Wave XRCD24 Blue Note series that was made on Elusive Disc.

I'm sure SHM mastering of the Dire Straits is superb, as you say. And, I've got a number of SACDs, particularly classical content, that are also excellent. And, I'm also not saying that aren't other superb mastering engineers, e.g. Steve Hoffman, Bob Ludwig, Bernie Grundman, etc, or the guys at Linn, for example. Of course there are. But I would posit the hypothesis is the reason the Dire Straits album sounds as good as it does is primarily because of the quality of the recording and mastering more so than because its on SACD as a format, per se.

My main point is that in "Audiophile-La-La-Land" there tends to be more concern over "techology" than other factors that, in my experience, have proven to be more important. Sometimes considerably more important. I've seen a lot of audiophiles get caught up in "technology for the sake of technology", with the assumption that the "tech" is all that matters. For example, guys putting huge amounts of money upgrading from the Schntiznit Reference pre to the Schiznit Signature Reference Platinum pre rather than doin' stuff like...fixing the room. Or implementing clean power.

10 years ago everyone was all worked up about DSD, now some are worked up in the same way about MQA.

And this gets back to my the point I was trying to make; in my experience, one can't unequivocally state that Redbook 16/44 is inherently inferior to MQA or even an LP; the quality of the recording and mastering is, in my experience, a larger factor than the specific format.

Cheers and thanks for weighing in for a great discussion.

Hi Stephen,

I was referring to the sentence - paraphrasing - if Alan Yoshida had mastered all CDs, there wouldn’t have been any need for other formats.

Perhaps but no or very few CDs I own come close to the fidelity of the SHM SACDS.

Absolutely no argument that the recording/mastering makes the music. Not the format. I suspect SACDs sound better in general to my ears than most CDs because they are remastered and there was more care out into the process but maybe not.

MQA is not anywhere on my radar since ceasing my Tidal subscription. ‘It’s dead to me’.

I appreciate this thread as well. Lots of good information and observations.