Streaming vs CD’S

[rbbert]

Totally disagree on Tumbleweed. The SACD is by far the best sounding. It’s very analog sounding. The others sound compressed by comparison.

It has been about 20 years since I compared, and my system has changed dramatically since then, so I will do some comparisons again (I do notice that the last 2 or 3 times I listened to this album's digital versions it was to the SACD; I also have an unknown gen R2R)

 

[mep]

Are you kidding me? You are trying to equate downsampling from 24/192 to 24/96 with upsampling from 16/44.1 to either of those formats??

Nope. If they claim an album was recorded at a certain bit depth and sampling rate and it was upsampled or downsampled from the native bit depth and sampling rate, than we aren't being told the truth. That's why I call it digital hocus pocus.

 

[rbbert]

You are crazy, I don't know how else to express it. Downsampling is not "digital hocus pocus"; it is throwing away some information, but a file downsampled to 24/96 still has more than 4x the information than a file upsampled from 16/44.1, to say nothing of the improved sound from doing the A>D conversion in a way that avoids the need for anti-aliasing filters and with less quantization error as well. And if you want to avoid the downsampling then listen to the highest digital resolution file; no hocus-pocus involved.

 

[rbbert]

If one can't easily hear the excess dynamic compression on the 2004 Polydor SACD of Tumbleweed Connection I despair.

 

[mep]

If one can't easily hear the excess dynamic compression on the 2004 Polydor SACD of Tumbleweed Connection I despair.

I don't have any SACDs of Tumbleweed Connection so I have no idea how it sounds. Qobuz has two versions and both are 16/44.1. One is the regular album and the other is the "Deluxe" version. Neither version held my attention, but part of that is I'm not a big Elton John fan.

 

[mep]

You are crazy, I don't know how else to express it. Downsampling is not "digital hocus pocus"; it is throwing away some information, but a file downsampled to 24/96 still has more than 4x the information than a file upsampled from 16/44.1, to say nothing of the improved sound from doing the A>D conversion in a way that avoids the need for anti-aliasing filters and with less quantization error as well. And if you want to avoid the downsampling then listen to the highest digital resolution file; no hocus-pocus involved.

Yeah. Your listening to a version that's not what it's purported to be. It's not a native 24/96 file. You are listening to a file that used to be a 24/192 file and now you want to argue about whether it's better to upsample or downsample.