Slashdot Mirror
Super Audio CDs Rolling Your Way
donutello writes "Slate is running an article about the Rolling Stones Remastered series discs having two layers: CD and SACD. The article contains some interesting information about how Sony is sneakily distributing SACD players without the buyers noticing it. This FAQ provides some information about SACDs. Don't expect to be able to play or reproduce these on your computer anytime soon. The SACD format contains a physical watermark on the disc. SACD players will only play discs with valid watermarks. Music watermarks had two opponents: The audiophiles who didn't like their music distorted and people who didn't like the watermarks preventing copying of the music. With the physical watermarks, they have found a way to appease the former while still stopping the latter thus causing a break in the ranks of the opposition."
I've heard SACD's and personally they might not be a necessary replacement for everyone, but they do sound pretty good if you've got a higher end audio system. Once the players fall in price a bit...or maybe software comes out which will let me play back these things on my DVD-ROM (I wish.) I will start buying them. I've been looking forward to a higher end audio format for a while.
If sacd becomes widespread, undoubtedly they'll make sacd-rom. When that happens, either they won't play, or they'll play right on to "pirates'" harddrives.
/. crew will find a way around it, or cry bloody murder (or both), a la CSS. If they don't make sacdrom, *I'll* cry bloody murder, because the only optical reader I have is connected to my 2nd IDE channel (and besides, audio-out --> line-in fixes that issue no problem)
If they make drivers that prevent that, then the
Is the watermark system going to affect how people produce music? Say for example, the SACD format becomes adopted as the standard audio format. If I own a small record label, how am I supposed to distribute my bands' music? Will I have to pay some arbitrary royalty fee to someone like Sony just so people can listen to music? Will such fees and required equipment make the barrier to entry for the recording business significantly higher? This kind of thing affects many more people than just your average slashdotter with an mp3 habbit.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
Phillips, which developed the CD standard, collaborated with Sony in developing SACD. Sony appears to be trying to avoid repeating the Betamax mistake by licensing the technology.
I'm not happy about the watermarking, and won't buy them at first, but I think it has a good chance of catching on, since the transition path is virtually transparent, and costs nearly identical.
The audio quality of SACD is significantly better than traditional CDs, even on typical home audio systems.
The players still have analog outputs. I suspect mp3s ripped in real time will sound pretty decent.
Stop fair use! Innovate!.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Someone has tested the quality of CD layer on two-layer media, and noticed that it was noticeably worse than a single layer CD. Much higher error rate.
My undestanding of SACD is that it does not have a watermark but rather some encoding scheme which prevents it from being decoded. This is DVD-A which has a watermark.
Both formats may be marginally better than CD (there are mix opinions on this matter). Seems like that the properly mastered CD sounds just fine. Rolling Stones recordings certainly need new remastering, incidently I got rid of my CD Rolling Stones because coudln't stand the sound ('brittle highs'), but once again, that was not a CD limitation per se, but very bad mastering. Even so, I'm not going to jump into the SACD bandwagon because both SACD and DVD-A are mostly a gimmick and its real purpose is to introduce a built-in copy protection you can't defeat.
Phillips collaborated with Sony on this. They share the licensing rights.
They will stamp both CD and SACD on the Rolling Stones CDs, since they play on both types of players. IF the format catches on, expect future releases to work on on SACD.
this point has been brought up 20,000 times so i'll try not to rant too much... if you can play it, and listen to it, you can record it.
sure you can't go digital to digital, but a couple good 24/96 digital to analog converters will make your copy sound nearly exact (if not completely exact)... if *1* person has the technology to copy the sound professionally (with no loss) into a digital medium, then everyone might as well have it, because the second that 1 person distributes the file, it is out there for everyone. (this includes they guy that works at the cd press shop and has access to the masters)
YOU CAN'T COPY-PROTECT MUSIC.
YOU CAN'T COPY-PROTECT VIDEO.
YOU CAN'T COPY-PROTECT CowboyNeal
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
The idea of buying something to listen to on your iPod, or in your car, or on your computer that is SACD makes no sense. You're going to have hardware that is holding you back far more than the qualify of the medium. Unless you're listening on a computer with a really nice DAC and some Grado RS1 headphones, you can probably stick to CD audio or mp3's and notice not much difference. However, if you are listening on a real stereo with decent speakers, then listening to a well made SACD compared to a CD will blow you away.
If I want to make a backup copy of my music, I can buy a copy on CD since I'm not going to be able to make a copy of a SACD myself anytime soon. To me, the compromise of incredibly high quality sound, that does beat the high end vinyl I've listened to, and having copy protection that doesn't interfere with that sound quality is a tradeoff I'm alright with. If you're mad over not being able to rip them for mp3's, then you should just buy the CD.
You missed a word. IF the format catches on, expect future releases to work on an SACD ONLY.
No, they have not been approved, this is a Sony "standard". DVD-A (DVD-Audio) is a real standard, and more labels than just Sony's are producing material in this format.
There are players than support both SACD and DVD-A, I guess those are okay, not that I'd touch a SACD. Sony does make SACD only players.
Here are some facts about Sony's SACD players. They don't have a digital output. So that $1500+ DAC that you have is going to do no good. Sony wants only analog coming out of their box. Sony says this will get you better quality, cause most recievers won't be able to decode the 96kHz/24-bit audio as well as their built in decoder. I think they are wrong. Just about anyone who is adopting the better than CD formats at this point will surely have a better quality DAC than what they put in the box.
I'm not sure about the region coding on SACDs, but I know for a fact that DVD-A don't have any sort of region coding on their audio only portion. They are like regular CDs. If they include a standard DVD session it can contain all the usual DVD codes, including regions, but the ones I've seen have been region free. Also the DVD-A players I've seen have had TOS-link and/or S/PDIF outs.
I have a full Sony setup at my house, but I'm not going to buy any more Sony gear. They are restricting content more and more, while other companies are freeing up more (see the majority of DVD players with region hacks, except Sony's). You can't trust a content provider to produce content players that let you use the content as you want.
Give it a few years, some manufacturer in china will release a combo DVD/DIVX/WMA/OGG/SACD/CD player with digital out.
Oops! Another brilliant copy protection scheme bypassed.
You are in a twisty maze of processor lines, all alike.
There is a lot of hype here.
how it works here
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
I'm screaming for something better. I listen to classical music and dammit, an orchestra is awesome in as many channels as possible, unlike, say, bass-heavy pop music.
Sony has a low-end SACD 5-disc changer for something like $150, if you don't need an on-board decoder (i.e., you have a receiver that has 5.1 inputs).
DVD-A has the supreme advantage of sounding better than CD even if you don't have a DVD-A player. Every DVD-A I've bought will play (if not the full 96kHz/192kHz tracks) in a regular DVD-ROM device.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
People here (and elsewhere) attack Microsoft for very good reasons: Microsoft is evil incorporate and puts its own interests far ahead of its users' needs (whether it be privacy, security, stability, etc) in a very heavy-handed and public way which makes for easy bashing. Many people also tend to be unfairly nasty towards them. Microsoft BOB, for example, got a very unjustified bad rap, as did the paper clip in Office and the jumping "search dog" in XP.
Is Sony any better or worse than MS? I don't know; I don't own any Sony stuff and I don't keep up on their practices. The new CD format thing sure does seem to suck, though, and judging from the ~50 comments I've read many people here agree it's a bad idea. They also appear to think that Sony aims to prevent fair use by adopting it. That sentiment would seem to be in opposition to your assessment of the Slashdot readers. So why all the harsh words?
You've come to the wrong place for unbiased opinions. You'd do better to complain about the weather.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
The FAQ says that "the sound of SACD [tick] is often compared to that [tick] of vinyl."
But just wait until next year, when they unleash UACD (Ultra Audio CD). The rich [tick] emotional [tick] impact of [tick] THIS format [tick] is often [tick] compared to [tick] a 78-RPM [tick] shellac pressing [tick] shellac pressing [tick] shellac pressing [tick] shellac pressing [tick] shellac pressing.
However, even the 78 is subject to electronic processes which distort the sound.
The best process of all would be one in which the actual soundwaves create the recording through direct action, without the intermediary of any transducers of electronics whatsoever.
So I wouldn't buy UACD.
No sir, I'm wait for the MACD (Mega Audio CD) that's waiting in the wings, with sound that's often compared to an acoustically recorded Edison Amberol cylinder.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
1. SACDs don't store data using 96KHz/24bit PCM. They use 2.82/1 bit Direct Stream Digital. (PCM records a 24 bit volume sample, 96000 times a second. A Direct Stream Digital recording simply indicates whether the sound should be louder or softer than before. DSD is also (generically) known as pulse width modulation.
...
Think of sending directions to a plotting device. One method (PCM) should say (0,0),(pi/2, 1), (pi, 0), (3pi/2, -1), (2pi, 0). The DSD way says up,down,down,up
There are a number of supposed benefits to recording using Direct Stream Digital, but it's difficult to edit without converting first to PCM.
Many DVD-Audio players limit the resolution of the S/PDIF output to 48 KHz.
The Sharp DX -SX1 SACD player has digital output (admttedly its proprietary, but so what? Most DACS can't decode PWM)...
Computers, and electronic devices in general, are increasingly an important way in which we interact with the world around us. They are increasingly our eyes, ears, and voice in this digital age, and they should work for us, their owners, not an amoral corporation determined to milk our culture for profit.
This is not to say that I disagree with people, or groups of people, working for profit, but I do disagree with the government tipping the balance in their favor at the expense of those who they are supposed to represent.
You wouldn't tolerate a Cop sitting in your home guarding, not you, not even the rest of society, but some faceless corporation who doesn't care about anything but their own profit - so why tolerate a Cop in your computer or CD player?
The music industry is an oligopoly. A handful of players control the market. I'm not really concerned about Sony's offering, per se. But if AOL/TimeWarner, et. al. start using the same technology, there isn't really much chance that "some other" company will come along and seize the opportunity, because there are no other companies.
Plus, if an artist is under Sony distribution, the only alternative means of distribution is P2P, which is under increasing attack both legal and technological, from the RIAA.
This ain't a free market, boyo.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
...copy protect cowboy neal, at least by natural methods.
Cut his balls off.
This would be analogous to a "digital" copy protection scheme, as if they cloned him, with the current state of biotech, they'd end up with an inferior, short-lived copy, AFTER 80 failed attempts to get anything to live in the first place.
Of course, his +5 Geekfield probably also has a side effect of repelling all nubile females, so you probably don't have to worry anyway. Though Cmd Taco overcame this limitation...
(No ill will truly meant towards Cowboy Neal, it was a joke that had to be made.)
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
Anyone here who owns an IBM desktop or laptop wonder why they can not get linux to boot on it?
Well according to the July edition of CPU magazine,(sorry its not online) IBM secretly implemented palidome drm chips implementating Microsoft/intel's trustworthy computing called tcpa in almost every desktop sold! Andhere are the crippled laptops, and here are the crippled servers. Infact the system is so locked down with each component trusting one another that if you replace the floppy drive for example the system will not run! Remember the motherboard and the eide card both trust the floppy drive with the right encyption sequence in it. Readit and weep.
Oh and yes I submited this to Rob and he did not post it here. Grrr. I encourage everyone reading this to submit it as a story because this is x100 times as worse as what sony is doing.
http://saveie6.com/
I came up with one for Sony's SACD:
"It felt like I had crawled into a warm and inviting sonic womb, where my fair use rights were gone."
It already happens. At the local film-fests, there's usually one or two really interesting things only distributed on VHS (or BetaMax, or some variation thereof), because that's the best quality format people can duplicate and send around the world without being a major studio. Once you could only get tapes or the odd 45 of small, interesting bands.
What's changed over the years is that people have been able to cheaply and easily produce in higher quality formats. Instead of accepting my friend's band will only ever release on tape, I know they'll be able to cut CDs to demo, and produce a whole album, probably with a better recording studio than was available 20 years ago (for any money - and that studio can now be built cheap, apart from the physical environment) at a price so cheap they can sell CDs at their gigs for NZD$10 a pop.
That's very empowering for the artists, just as the existence of cheaps CGI has allowed small moviemakers to make an indie film (like The Irrefutable Truth About Demons) that isn't another Go Fish or Clerks.
Combine that with a ability to easily and cheaply distribute high quality information (compared to traditional distribution mechanisms) and you've got a real threat to the existing regime - because the likes of Sony Entertainment and 20th Century Fox are big because they have distribution networks stitched up, and get a slice of every pie. Even if you're independent, if you want your art to be available to anyone other than a small slice of the potenetial audience, you'll have to deal with the distribution arm and fork over your money.
Forget piracy - what scares MPAA and RIAA members is that their cosy little oligopily is threatened by the potential for the re-emergence of the old small-to-medium studios like Elektra who could eat their lunch. And that, incidentally is why all the laws this mob lobby for specify minimum damages for IP theft - if I (or they) steal the IP of a small indie, you can't claim squat. If I steal a copy of crap bands or the Season 7 Buffy, I get hammered.
>Everyone with any knowledge of audio will agree that CDs are
>a poor format. Crappy error-correction, only 16-bit precision
>(20 is optimal), and a relatively low sampling rate are all
>problems. Guess why audiophiles mostly listen to vinyl.
Amazing how much you can get wrong in three little sentences. CDs are a fantastic audio delivery format when compared to their predecessors. CD error protection is fairly bulletproof - witness the ability of most quality (and many cheap) players to track even severely scratched discs, while inaudibly correcting for any read errors the optics can't get past. Try doing that with a scratched analog LP or jammed tape. CD's 44.1 kHz sampling rate meanwhile is adequate to reproduce the full 20 Hz - 20 kHz range of human hearing, and then some (this article explains how the oddball 44.1 kHz became the standard).
As for "audiophiles", I don't know how you'd possibly go about defining an audiophile these days, now that many low end consumer multichannel receivers and surround speaker systems boast specs that demolish those possessed by high-end, $1000+ pieces of equipment just a decade ago. I do know there are plenty of self-identified audiophiles out there who won't touch vinyl with a 10 foot pole. Given the format's numerous limitations, I can't say I blame them:
* Loud tics and pops caused by stray dust and wear, resulting in a *negative* signal to noise ratio - i.e. the noise can become louder than the music! (with N'Stynk, I suppose this would be a blessing in disguise . . . or simply redundant.)
* Rumbling caused by the turntable's motor and the friction of the stylus as it passes through the groove
* Wow and flutter, caused by speed irregularities in the turntable's drive system and by any imperfections in the geometry of the disc
* Phase irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization and the subsequent need for the preamp to de-equalize the signal
* Frequency response irregularities caused by the RIAA equalization / de-equalization process
* The inability to reproduce loud bass accurately (the cutter making the wax master would pop out of its groove if it tried to reproduce the kind of bass CDs can handle effortlessly)
* The tendency for the turntable, platter and even the disc to function as microphones, picking up room reverberations and - particularly - the sound being produced by the speakers, smearing and distorting the audio in numerous ways
* Cartridge / tonearm misalignments, causing inaccurate stylus pickup, accelerated record wear, or both.
30dB of stereo separation, vs. CD's 70+dB of separation
* A theoretical maximum of 60dB of dynamic range for virgin vinyl of the highest quality (and only at certain frequencies - obviously, not in the low bass) vs. around 90dB of dynamic range from even the cheapest CD players, across the entire spectrum
* In practice, roughly 40dB of usable dynamic range across the majority of the spectrum
* A relatively flat frequency response from only around 60 Hz to 15 kHz, with severe rolloffs beyond those limits
* The need for mastering engineers to severely compress and re-equalize the signal in order to steer clear of the format's limitations relative to CD, which requires no such distortion-educing compensation
* Pitch and frequency errors caused by the speed difference between the cutter used to produce the wax master and your turntable
* The tendency of the media itself to wear out as its played, and to be damaged during routine handling with audible results
CDs are based on 25 year old technology now. Newer formats - such as DVD Audio - offer even more impressive specifications (and multichannel audio capabilities), but the difference between them and the Compact Disc is nothing like the quantum leap in fidelity the CD represents vs. the vinyl LP. Vinyl was obsolete for at least a decade before the CD rolled along, and it was probably only confusion in the marketplace regarding the various tape formats (the 8-track, Philips' compact cassette, open reel) that allowed it to survive as long as it did.
I think if we just pronounce it "sacked" we'll pretty much have the whole concept down.
Now, this is not to say that TCPA does not have some unsettling implications. For now, TCPA-enabled machines can boot "trusted" or "untrusted" OSes. What worries me is what might happens years in the future, when TCPA or its moral equivalent is in just about every machine and "trusted" OSes are the exception, not the rule, on mainstream users' PCs (should that ever come to pass). At that point, I'll start getting worried about the possibility that manufacturers might turn off the ability to boot an untrusted OS.
OK, so it's all very well that you can now use SACD with more accurate signal reproduction, or even DVD-A (isn't that a term used in porn movies? So I've heard) if you want better quality.
Whose ears are actually good enough to listen to 24-bit audio and tell the difference between that and 16-bit anyway? I have often heard it said that analogue transmission of audio is far worse than digital. I don't entirely agree with that, but supposing it's true - surely the cables between SACD player and amplifier, amplifier and speakers are going to withdraw a lot of the benefits of the more accurate signal?
Yes, we can only hear about 20-bit accuracy. The point of the additional accuracy is, therefore, questionable. The difference in quality it will make is miniscule. The LSB on 16-bit audio represents a variation of 0.0015% in the output signal. The LSB on 24-bit audio represents a variation of 0.000006% of the output signal. Can you hear that final bit? Does it make all the difference? Er, no.
Those who say that the MP3 format is too lossy for them might be interested to know that audiophiles can't actually hear the difference between 256kbps MP3 and the original CD recording. Those who think they need still more quality should perhaps check out the MAD plugin which has the ability to decode mp3s to 24-bit, recreating bits that weren't even there in order to improve quality.
As regards introducing watermarks as a kind of copy protection - well, that's just reducing the quality of the audio, which defeats the point of what you were trying to achieve in the first place.
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
"Anti-counterfeiting Amendments of 2002 - Amends the Federal criminal code to prohibit trafficking in an "illicit authentication feature." Defines that term to mean an authentication feature that: (1) without the authorization of the respective copyright owner, has been tampered with or altered so as to facilitate the reproduction or distribution of a phono-record, a copy of a computer program, a copy of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, or documentation or packaging, in violation of the rights of the copyright owner; (2) is genuine, but has been distributed, or is intended for distribution, without the authorization of the respective copyright owner; or (3) appears to be genuine but is not."
That is a piece of crap legislation but it does NOT prevent anyone from independently producing information in any format they desire and and distributing it by any method they wish. Noone has even attempted to suggest that this could be prevented because it would be such a clear and undeniable violation of the First Amendment. Okay, Some will say yeah, but they'll use this to make non-protected formats illegal. Not according to the language of that bill: They still can't make Ogg, say, illegal: just tools designed to strip DRM-processed files to open formats, or distributing copyrighted files that have been stripped of their DRM information.
And this is the other side of the coin. Just as any artist has the right to release their information any way they want (due to free speech and their copyrights on original works), the publishing giants have the right to release their garbage in any screwed up format they want - and the idea that the constitution in any way shape or form gives you some "fair use" right to do anything you want with that information may be the way it "should" be but it ain't the way it IS. If you read the fair use provisions in copyright law (I wonder how many
By all means, fight the power, yeah yeah yeah - watch how you vote, write a letter to your reps. You might even consider unclenching that "omigod if I don't vote for corporate-sponsored candidate X the horror of candidate Y, that ultraliberal tax-n-spend gun-hating tree-hugging/super-conservative religious right corporate-pandering gun-crazy wacko (choose one) in office" knee jerk reaction. You might even ask yourself how likely it is that their are only two possible approaches to solving the world's problems - and that the "side" you have picked of the two options you've been given is the one right, true, correct side, and all them other dips is just crazy stupid deluded fools with no sense. You might wonder what would happen if a whole lot of us started voting for people who don't get their political positions by constantly begging corporations and wealthy individuals for support.
But remember their is another (not mutually exclusive) alternative, which is simply to not support the publishing industry's products and to instead seek out artists that do not artificially impair the versatility of their product or encumber it with information and costly extra production steps that have no other purpose than to remind you that they think of you as a thief first, a customer second.
Think about it.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Sony and Phillips already get fees for every CD sold. Does that stop you from making CDs of your garage band music? Of course not.
Sure, right now the SACD recording process is probably pretty expensive, and there are only 2 machines in the world that can stamp out the hybrid SACD/CD discs, but it won't stay that way. Sony and Phillips must make it cheap to produce SACDs or else it will go the way of mini-disks.
Frankly, I think this is the "right" way for Sony to try and improve security on the music. Its not a law. Its not a digital water mark or cactus crap that reduces the music fidelity. The format offers something extra, but doesn't allow you to copy it. I don't see any difference between this and DVD-pre-deCSS. All the people who buy DVDs but don't copy them will see this as pretty much the same kind of thing. Yes, we won't have the technological means to make a our fair use backup, but I can't backup my LP's either.
If the artists get together and quit the record labels, cutting out the middle men, and start selling ogg vorbis tracks, well that would be really cool, but if the record companies are going to control music distribution, then they might as well give us better sound. I don't see technological measures to stop fair use as being more morally wrong than file sharing.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.