You're missing the point. The SACD layer of some were sourced from upsampled Redbook masters.
I, Robot was recorded analog in 1977. Patricia Barber's
Nightclub was recorded in 2000 prior to the introduction of SACD! Surely you understand that DSOTM was recorded nearly
forty-five years ago. Speaking of which, the engineer who produced the SACD remix is an
avid promoter of high resolution recordings, including 192/24.
Of course, upsampled Redbook would not qualify as high res. But you name one. How many were there? Patricia Barber's Nightclub would have been recorded in High Res PCM and converted to DSD and so counts as a high res in my book. And I think it was very smart to include SACD releases of earlier analogue recordings since many at the time, and some still today, claimed that DSD was closer to analogue than PCM and gave a more faithful representation. That is why so many early analogue recordings were re-released in SACD. So yeah, I agree that should have been included.
Ever seen a spectrum analysis of recorded content? You can clearly see when they are bandwidth limited.
Yes, I probably see a spectrum analyzer several times a week. But my question was based on a misunderstanding regarding what you meant by, "They didn't even bother to verify that the chosen disks were actually of higher than Redbook resolution". You said there were many. Can you tell me how many? Because the numbers based on over 500 listening tests don't look good for your position.
Read the description again:
"I do not currently have a detailed equipment list for this venue, but the speakers were very large and capable high-end monitors, approximately 7 feet tall, and the power amps were sufficient to drive the speakers to very high levels without audible distortion."
Perhaps that impresses you...
I saw the description. I just don't presuppose that the Boston Audio Society are a bunch of incompetents as you do. I was involved in recording projects when I lived in Boston and took a couple of my own to mastering studios and I know that the level of the mastering studios in Boston is very high - Soundmirror is one example. There are a ton of recording studios out there run by very competent recording engineers that would be laughed at if they called themselves a "mastering studio". I highly doubt that the Boston Audio Society took their study to some hole in the wall studio and then claimed they took it to a mastering studio in the Boston area. For Boston Audio to call a place a "mastering studio" of classical music means it has, as a basic requirement, an unbelievably stellar audio system suitable for classical mastering.
In case you want more proof, here is the studio at sound mirror that has speakers that meet the description,
http://www.soundmirror.com/studio/
When I read the description of the speakers I immediately thought of Soundmirror - one the the top mastering studios in the country - maybe the world. I've heard their systems I can verify that...they will blow you away.
That makes no sense whatsoever. Crappy gear won't reveal what better gear can.
Disagree. It is harder to design a 44/16 DAC and many cheap ones, and older units, have crappy filters.
But keep in mind, this thread is really about sampling rates even higher than 96k. Both Lavry and Benchmark claim that converters do not function as well in those extremely high samples rates. Why bother with them?