SACD-CD Hybrids -- A Way Out For Us Both?

net_shaman writes: "As reported in Stereophile Magazine online -- There appear to be some serious moves afoot by the recording industry to move en-mass to another compact audio disc format. No doubt frustrated with the utter failure of every attempt to copy protect Compact Discs. But this could be an opportunity for both better sound, strong copyright security and reasonable fair-use rights. The Hybrid Super Audio Compact Disc contains two layers of encoded information; one for standard 'Red Book' Compact Disc, and another for high resolution audio recordings (SACD). Here is a description."

"An interesting feature of the SACD layer is plenty of room for strong digital rights management code.

Here's my proposal: it should should allow artists to get paid, and the citizens to have archived and portable copies of the recording they have purchased. The record companies should produce a superior audio product and get to protect it from serial copying. The CD layer should be freely available for personal copying such as to a computer or portable digital player. These 2 basic concepts are a model that can be applied in the future, when better formats become available. It may also serve as a model for digital visual recordings. Perhaps we can get the artists, publishing companies, electronics manufacturers and the federal trade commision to all agree on this compromise: 1.The high quality recording allows only one copy of itself to be made for archival purposes. 2.The lower quality recordings are available for personal copying.

Personal digital technology has brought a tremendous change to the realtionship between media publishers & consumers. It's time for a new paridigm that will re-define that relationship for modern times."

Comments

Oh man...

[EdmondDantes]

I just realized that I couldn't care less!

How about this?

[NitsujTPU]

The industry shouldn't treat its customers like criminals in the first place... They should produce the BEST product available rather than downgrade what they COULD produce in favor of making sure that their will destroy their computers if they try to listen to the cd they bought. Rather than pushing users into a new format, merely so they can be charged AGAIN, they should offer a new format that has an advantage for the customer.

haha

[GigsVT]

1.The high quality recording allows only one copy of itself to be made for archival purposes.

This is a great move. That way the only pirated copies will be crappy third generation digital copies or worse.

That's okay...

[L. VeGas]

Sharpie is simultaneously developing their Fine Point SACD Permanent Marker.

No help for copy protection woes...

[vkg]

Repeat after me: there are no technical fixes for social problems, there are no technical fixes for social problems, there are no technical fixes for social problems.

I don't care what code you put on the SACD, or what rights management comes with the software: until we get a consistency of governance, with the same clear law implemented uniformly, protecting both fair use, individual rights, and copyright law (what's left of it after Eldred Vs. Ashcroft all of this is just screwing around: people will hack around it, of course, and it'll be DeCSS all over again.

That's not progress, or a solution.

I have SACD

[jeffy210]

I have an SACD player, and it wouldn't be that hard to copy it, given you have the right tools. Currently, you must use the analog outs on the player (sorry, no digital outs...yet), but all you would really have to do is run it either to a 6-channel input on an audio card (they make some good 8-channel ones for mixing) or switch the SACD to 2-channel mode (it allows you to do that), and record the file to a WAV on your PC. If you wanted the surround version, just run it through a DTS encoder (check out SurCode DTS) and play it on most any DVD player / Reciever that can decode DTS. The quailty won't be *as great* as SACD, but it will be damn good.

Just as an FYI, a CD's sampling rate is 44.1Khz (44,100 samples per second), SACD by comparison is 1.2Mhz (1,200,000 samples per second) talk about some serious data, this thing looks almost exactly like an analog wave!

Re:uh

[TRACK-YOUR-POSITION]

But wouldn't recording the super resolution sound from your speakers be a waste? Some downgrade in signal will occur, and you wouldn't want to use lossy compression, because then why bother with high resolution?

This makes a lot of sense to me--except why have copy protection at all? No one's going to try to get the gigabyte sized lossless high resolution songfile from P2P networks--just sell the high resolution copy to audiophiles, use advertizing to brainwash everyone into thinking they're an audiophile and need the high resolution copy, bang, boom, money made, fair use rights retained, internet freedoms protected, everyone wins except the lawyers.

There is no such thing as reasonable UHT.

[Hobbex]

(I use UHT == "User Hostile Technology" instead of "DRM" because I refuse to buy into the doublespeak.)

I get troubled when I read stuff like this from well meaning people who talk about the possibility of reasonable UHT because it implies an acceptance of something that, if wish to remain free, we can never ever accept: that our hardware and software should be telling us what we can and cannot do.

UHT is evil even when you agree with what it does, and even when it serves a clear utilitarian service. Good UHT is as much contradiction in terms as good dictatorship and just like with dictatorship the intention does not matter.

As we move further into the information age, we will grow more and more dependent on our computers as part of our lives, and as part of ourselves. We use them to communicate, to speak, and to be heard, and in many ways they must be seen as extentions of ourselves into cyberspace. In that context, we must recognize the immense power that the programs we run exercise over ourselves, and the incredible danger that is posed if those programs ultimately serve not to enable us but to control us.

Just like your lawyer cannot turn you in for the good of society, and your doctor cannot kill you to save two others, programmers and programs must act primarily in the interest of you, the user, and not society. Nobody should ever be compelled to run a program that acts against them, be it "reasonable" or not!

Re:uh

[EllisDees]

'Audiophiles' are hilarious. A regular old cd already produces more sound than the human ear can detect, so let's all go out and buy a new format that can produce *twice* as many sounds than the human ear can detect. Ooh!

Why this won't work...

[killmenow]

Here's my proposal: it should should allow artists to get paid,

1. RIAA doesn't care if the artists get paid...RIAA only cares that the production companies get paid...how the musicians fare is their problem.

and the citizens to have archived and portable copies of the recording they have purchased.

2. RIAA doesn't believe you have this right. If you want the music on more than one machine or in more than one format, buy it again.

The record companies should produce a superior audio product

3. Less than 10% of the music buying population want or care about higher quality audio...you can't tell the difference over the road noise anyway...

and get to protect it from serial copying.

4. If it can be read, it can be copied...plain and simple. Copy CONTROL (protection is a prophylactic) does not work. Music will continue to be pirated by the same percentage of listeners who pirate it today.

The CD layer should be freely available for personal copying such as to a computer or portable digital player.

5. So music production companies will actually LOWER the sound quality of this layer to something worse than cassette tapes, effectively eliminating its use.

These 2 basic concepts are a model that can be applied in the future, when better formats become available. It may also serve as a model for digital visual recordings. Perhaps we can get the artists, publishing companies, electronics manufacturers and the federal trade commision to all agree on this compromise:

6. Chances of getting all of those groups to agree is somewhere around .3%

1.The high quality recording allows only one copy of itself to be made for archival purposes.

7. So this copy will be ripped to MP3, thereby making the whole point moot. Pirates will just have MP3s of the better quality layer.

2.The lower quality recordings are available for personal copying.

8. I reiterate, RIAA does not believe in fair use. I don't think they'll ever agree to any scheme in which you can copy decent quality audio even once.

And #9, the main reason it won't work: MP3 is the new format. All the other attempts at introducing new formats are pointless. People like MP3s, MP3s are the new way. Audio players now support MP3s, car sterios are already supporting MP3s. The music industry, or RIAA, cannot change this. If they want to jump on the bandwagon, fine. If they want to push it over and knock everyone else off, they are too late.

But, as Dennis Miller might say: "That's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

Here's the fundamental problem

[melquiades]

There's a white rhinoceros in this whole debate. Copyright law -- fair use in particular -- is too subtle and too contextual to implement in software. It is impossible to create rights management software which implements the law; such software will always err in favor of the consumer or the copyright holder (or both).

Let me repeat that: It is IMPOSSIBLE to implement copyright law in software.

Period.

Re:uh

[Bearpaw]

You have a new business model that would equal their current revenue streams?

Not having an alternate suggestion doesn't mean that one has to pretend that the current model isn't seriously flawed. Just because I don't know how to build a warp drive doesn't mean that it's not worth pointing out that somebody's scheme to do it by strapping JATOs to an old 57 Chevy probably won't do the trick.

Coming up with a workable business model is their business -- or should be, if they want to continue making money. The universe doesn't owe them any revenue stream, equal to their current one or not.

And these companies are not making the art. They're just delivering it.

Personal Experiences With SACD

[cporter]

I have a Sony SACD player and a fairly good system to listen to it on - but much less than the "$10,000" mentioned by a poster above. I have some 30 discs that i've paid $12.99 - $22.99 for. The sound is phenomenal. Anyone who has sat for a listen agrees. It is better than CD, even though the recording and mastering of CDs has gotten much, much better over the last few years.

The great truth of recorded music is: The life and death of any format is in the software, not the players, not the technology, not the marketing. How much music is there? The biggest problem SACD has is that there's less than, oh about 400 discs available, mostly classical and jazz, and mostly older recordings, at that. One great advantage for SACD is that Sony has begun all mastering in DSD, the one-bit technology behind SACD. That recently-released CD you bought from a Sony label was probably recorded using DSD and downsampled for the CD master.

MP3 and other compressed formats have lots of software available.

One other note: I have a two channel system (i.e., Stereo) but SACD supports a 5.1 channel layer, too. So a fully-loaded hybrid SACD has a 2-channel Red book CD layer, a 2 channel SACD layer, and a 5.1 channel SACD layer. Only the 2 channel SACD is required.

I don't like it. The problem is...

[einhverfr]

This looks to me like a transition strategy. The basic idea is that CDs are a format that the music industry does not like for the reason that they have no control over the content (but Disney did not like the VCR initially for the same reason). Their solution to dealing with the opposition is as follows, suspect:

1: Release a hybrid CD-SACD

2: Push SACD hardware, with built in DRM.

3: Eventually drop the CD format as obsolete.

I say this does present a way out-- these hybrids will be initially costly, but as long as the demand exists for redbook hardware, the plan cannot succeed.

The way to win here is to ensure that the demand remain high for redbook only hardware and hardware without DRM.

Simple, Unbreakable Copy Protection

[KelsoLundeen]

The solution for copy protection is simple: if content creators are worried about illegal copies, then don't release anything you don't want copied.

They could say, "Well, we've got some great new CDs ready to go. But you won't hear them. Trust us, though, they're great."

This would drastically cut down on the crap that inundates the marketplace,

BTW. It would be a win-win solution for everyone: the RIAA wouldn't have to worry about a CD being copied, consumers would be saved from having to listen to crap, and there'd be less choices that pop up when I search on KazaaLite.

This is pointless . . .

[npsimons]

. . . and here's why:

Trying to make bits uncopyable is like trying to make water not wet. The sooner people accept this, and build business models that take this into account, the sooner people will start making money again.
-- Bruce Schneier

I have SACD, too.

[HardCase]

sorry, but unless they have mixers, microphones, and other equipment that is before the encoder (and the encoder it's self) that will pick up and handle above 44Khz (Note: they DON'T) it's worthless. Let alone the fact that your speakers CANT reproduce anything above 30Khz equals abilities that mean nothing and offer nothing...

Anyone can polish a turd... and SACD is a turd polisher.

I'm not sure what you mean by "above 44Khz". The absolute limit of CD audio is 22KHz as shown by the sampling theorem that basically states that the sampling rate must be a minimum of twice the maximum frequency sampled. Besides, the goal of high fidelity audio is the faithful reproduction of the original sound. In the frequency domain, that translates into flat response between 20Hz and 20KHz with a smooth rolloff above and below. CD audio does not do that.

A huge problem that plagues CD audio (from the audiophile point of view) is the "brick wall" filter that is employed at 20KHz. This low pass filter is so sharp that it can cause some pretty nasty artifacts if it's implemented improperly (for which you should read "cheaply").

Your point about "mixers, microphones, and other equipment" would be well taken except that Sony's Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording system doesn't allow for post-recording mixing at all. So, what you record is what you get. Obviously, then, the quality of the recording stream should be correspondingly high. I think that you'd be quite surprised at just how high the standards for DSD recording equipment are.

A significant advantage of SACD over CD is that because of the 1 bit sampling and the dithering that follows, quantization noise is moved way up in the spectrum, well beyond the range of audibility. Further, the noise floor of SACD is substantially lower than that of 16 bit CD. The frustrating part of CD audio is that although it should provide a theoretical 16 bit dynamic range, due to quantization and other digital artifacts, even the best players are limited to perhaps 12 or 13 bits. Sure, you might dismiss that as a mere detail, but it is quite audible.

I've got a Sony SACD player. I've also got a nice Rega turntable and a Musical Fidelity CD player. A well cared for LP certainly outperforms a CD and is on a par with the SACD player. Obviously it's difficult to keep an LP in excellent condition over time, which is why I have a very large CD collection. But, quite frankly, the 30 or so SACDs that I have most definitely sound better than the CDs that they replaced...and I'm no golden-eared audiophile.

I'll certainly agree that my speakers won't reproduce anything above 30KHz, but that's not the point of SACD. The point is that the dynamic range is substantially greater and the digital artifacts that are the domain of multibit sampling (and relatively low sampling rates) are essentially eliminated. Frequency response is not the issue here.

I suppose that the case of SACD being a "turd polisher" could be made if you wanted to stick one in your average boom box and claim superior sound. But then again, I guess you could say that in that regard, CD is just a turd polisher compared to cassettes.

-h-