noodles wrote:
well, from what i heard they were calling them digital replicas of the master. i might've been hearing it wrong though.
They aren't right. SACD's do what CD's do, but better. They still aren't perfect because the sample rate would be astronomical to be anywhere near what a studio quality master is. I've never read anything that suggests they have an identical sample rate.
On that note, no format is perfect. They all have to dither the audio to fit on a media and deal with its limitations. All formats have standards that have to be met to work. Digital masters and Analog master tapes have no such requirements. Making a direct copy of the stereo mix is the only way your gonna get identical quality.
As far as Analog tape goes. You would have to create a new Digital master from the Analog tape, something that I'm not aware of them doing for SACD. The best system i've heard was the Sony Mastersound system of Analog to Digital conversion. Boston's debut was recorded on mostly over-oxidated master tape and the master sound version is still the best sounding CD I own.
The only way I see them replicating master tapes is by very slowly recording the original masters (when I say "original, I mean the 8th generation copy they have because the original only survives around 5 years before being put in the oven, baked, and re-recorded to new tape) then speeding it up with an incredible sample rate to make it on pitch. To my knowledge this was how mastersound worked. It just recorded the analog tape slower and in 20 bits instead of 16. We could easily record it at 32 bits and at less than 1/16th speed. Once we have that Digital copy, it would be easily to turn them into a lossless Stereo format. Even if they were turned into Wave forms and then MP3's they would be far far higher quality than anything we're used to.
