[ CD's, DAT, DVD, etc. ] >Umm, actually I'd heard nearly the exact opposite opinion voiced on more >than one occasion, namely, that higher-sample rates are basically an >audio industry ploy to sucker rich yuppies wth $5000 USD power [ ... ]
i'm with dgm on this one (even if i was once a rich yuppie with $5000 USD buying power :) i'd also like to propose that anyone claiming that SACD, or 48kHz, or 96kHz or 192kHz or anything else "sounds better" do so only when they can present the results of a double blind test. scientific literature is full of ample documentation of how non-double blind testing is essentially worthless, in domain after domain after domain. how arrogant can the audio world be to imagine that its any different? if you think that a particular audio technology is better than another, then test it using double blind techniques. if you can reliably detect the improvement, you'll have done more to convince us than just about anyone else to date. these tests have not been done in Mix, they have not been done by any "audiophile" publication i have heard of ... it appears that they have not been done. i wrote to Mix to complain about their review of the new ProTools HD system. it was full of references to the much wonderfully improved quality of the 192kHz sampling rate, yet they didn't even do blind testing, let alone double blind. "Ok, now this is ProTools at 192kHz, how does that compare to that last one we just heard". They said, basically, "yeah, but we didn't have time for that, and we don't ever have time for that." i don't care what the theoretical arguments are for any technology: if you can't demonstrate that the improvement can be reliably heard by a majority of humans in double blind testing, i'm not interested. --p
