Another day, another format, another standard

[Pim]

In addition to being a long standing music lover I have been making audio recordings, on an amateur level, since the early 1960s.
I started with a mono valve reel-to-reel recorder, and have used Ferrograph and Revox stereo reel to reel, Aiwa and Nakamichi cassette, StellaDAT and Pioneer DAT recorders and Metric Halo MIO2 and LIO8 ADC/DACs.
My original recorder did not have separate record and playback heads but every recorder I have used since have had the possibility to compare the raw mike feed with the output of the recorder following the input electronics/tape/output electronics.
With a considerable effort on tape alignment and setting levels it is possible to get a very nice sounding recording from tape but one is never in any doubt when switching over which is the raw mike feed and which is off-tape. Luckily the additions/subtractions inevitable with analogue tape are euphonic, and I am never surprised when people like the recording and many prefer this altered sound to the unadulterated mike feed. Analogue recorders soften the treble a bit and most have a bass hump and they all add quite a bit of wideband noise. It is easy to demonstrate that this noise gives the impression of a more airy/bigger stereo image.
The Nakamichi CR7E is the best cassette machine I have used but the recording is evidently not the same as the mike feed.
Using my StellaDAT was the first time I had to struggle to hear the difference between input and output.
With the Metric Halo LIO8 at 24/96 I can not hear any difference between input and output on the sort of music I listen to.
I have not done extensive tests with many different sound types but I am satisfied that properly engineered 24/96 is sufficiently aurally transparent for me.

So from my perspective all these other recording strategies make either no difference or one so tiny as to be swamped by small differences in mike position, for example.
IMO they are just bits of persuasive marketing to re-sell more copies of recordings, and all a vendor needs to do is release a slightly different mix in the different format to produce a sound difference to convince buyers.

The Meridian system has the (sole?) benefit of reducing the size of higher bit rate files.

I have heard differences between formats on recordings I have not done myself.
DSD LP rips which sounded better than PCM rips, SACDs which sounded better than CDs, but in these cases I was not comparing input with output, rather two different outputs, if you see what I mean, and that isn't good enough to judge format IMHO.

PS a 128 DSF file is almost 20x bigger than a 16/44.1 FLAC...

Very interesting! Thanks for sharing and shedding some light

Frank, I'm with you.

Devialet themselves say to use 24/96 conversion for analog input over 24/192. There's a lot to be read on the net about why 24/96 PCM is possibly the most likely to satisfy any audiophile for SQ. Any higher and second and third harmonics can throw your system off and make things worse. It's time that people start concentrating on microphone setup and getting the master recording right. Once that's done the SQ will be good enough to satisfy anyone no matter how high or low the bit rate is.

So to all you men out there; It's not the size of the file...it's what you do with it that matters