The Super Audio CD Format - Problems with 1-bit audio representation

Dr. Thomas D. Kite
Audio Precision, Inc.
Beaverton, OR

Friday, October 27th, 3:00 PM, ENS 302

Abstract

The new Super Audio CD (SACD) promoted by Sony and Philips is a CD-size optical disc containing a 1-bit digital audio bitstream, a format known as Direct Stream Digital (DSD). DSD is the bitstream produced by a 1-bit 5th-order sigma-delta converter operating at 2.8224 MHz. Although low-bit converters have become standard in the industry, the insoluble problems with 1-bit converters have slowed or eliminated their use in professional applications. These problems include distortion, noise modulation, and high out-of-band noise power. The choice of a 1-bit format for SACD would therefore appear to be a mistake.

This talk will explain dither, oversampled conversion, and noise shaping, before discussing the specific example of DSD. Simulations will be presented.

Biography

Thomas Kite received a BA in physics from Oxford University in 1991, and Master's and Ph.D. degrees in EE from UT in 1993 and 1998, respectively. He currently works as a DSP engineer at Audio Precision. He has given many talks at UT, including the attendance-record-breaking "The Evolution of Film Sound: From Silent Movies to Dolby Stereo Digital" acoustics seminar in 1995.

Also: Thomas Kite will be giving the acoustics seminar at 4pm after this talk. That seminar is titled "Simultaneous impulse response and distortion measurement with swept sine chirps". It will be in ETC 4.120. For more information, see http://www.me.utexas.edu/~acoustic/seminars/listings.html.

A list of Telecommunications and Signal Processing Seminars is available at from the ECE department Web pages under "Seminars". The Web address for the Telecommunications and Signal Processing Seminars is http://signal.ece.utexas.edu/seminars