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More on DVD-Audio and SACD
Spock the Baptist writes "This article at CNN covers the drive of manufacturers to get the public to convert from the CD format to two relatively new formats, DVD-Audio, and Super Audio Compact Disk. The manufacturers cite the superior audio quality, and 3-dimensionality of the new formats' reproduction as the reasons for customers to embrace these formats. The article also goes on to say: "An added bonus for record companies and retailers, who are engaged in a battle against piracy, is that the relative complexity of DVD-Audios and SACDs makes them much harder to copy. At the same time, that might turn some consumers off the format.""
One: I will not buy your "improved" format. You will not sneak this by my nose. You will probably on the other hand sneak this under the nose of everyone that does not read slashdot because I have found that everyone else is dumb.
Two: Someone will break your "copy protection" two weeks before you release it and this will not effect me any more than playing DVDs on my linux box does now.
Cheers!!
what about hardware players? do they already have them? unlike compressed and lossy formats like mp3 and ogg, these are formats people are more likely to carry around and play on hardware players, as opposed to digital copying. so...why switch when the players are expensive and the gain is minimal?
BSD is for people who love UNIX. Linux is for those who hate Microsoft.
Ogg Vorbis is will be the lossy format of choice for non 2-channel audio!
Now I'll have to buy the White Album again.
--
For the book says, "We may be through with the past, but the past ain't through with us."
I do not need new hardware, or need to buy new copies of all my music.
I would like to be able to buy compilation disks with ALL of a groups albums on it, at CD quality, though..
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
Music companies will still be releasing crap on those new formats, except this time around, the crap is more crisp and sharp.
:)
Kinda like a bad constipation
If you have a DTD capable recieve, there are several DTS encoded audio CDs that play in your DVD player and sound great!
http://www.naildrivin5.com/davec
At last, I have always needed those copy-proof CDs!
Oh, wait!
It just seems like another attempt to jack up prices by introducing a new medium. I know that it provides superior quality, blah blah blah, but really: is it worth $30 a pop? I'd rather download the movie (I'm not saying I'd pirate it, although I do sometimes) legitimatly, amd I'd pay $5, or maybe even $10 if they would just let me do it.
Depends on what you want. All of the SACDs I've seen have an extra track that's CD quality, and plays in your standard CD player. That'll be the biggest help for adoption - you can buy a bunch of these now, and when you upgrade your player, your collection is upgraded automatically at the same time.
Copying isn't a problem though - although you just get the CD quality track. I've already backed up a few, and it's fine for, say, your car if you don't want your discs ripped off. I don't really need 5.1 sound in my car anyway.
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
People aren't going to buy into another format change just yet. Especially since it'll involve buying a whole new system to get the "benefits". 16bit/44.1 audio CDs are here to stay, for at least another 10 years. I mean jeez, most people actually think mp3's and CDs burned from them sound good enough!!!
...
The only hope the labels have is to release exclusive content on SACD and artists arent gonna stand for that
the 'slide
"Corporate rock still sucks. What are you gonna do about it?"
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
It's like watching a VHS tape on your high-definition television.
Why buy new SACD's that were converted from the original stereo source?
Until the recording industry starts releasing SACD's that meant to be SACD's in the first place, it is pointless...
It just means more data gets lost when I encode at 128kbps so the songs fit on my limited memory mp3 device... it'll probably take longer if anything.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
This really is necessary for the entertainment industry. The stupid public is probably close to finding out that it costs less than a dollar to press a CD, but won't be able to figure out that there are a lot of production costs involved. Perhaps a nice campaign stating how each DVD-A or SACD is lovingly crafted over the space of 12 months somewhere in the Rocky Mountains? Until one of the formats wins out over the other one, this new technology should be considered beta, and I'm not about to beta test (at my own expense) for the entertainment industry.
This technology is complete, utter bullshit. Regular DVD audio tracks are just as capable of reproducing high fidelity music as this SACD and DVDA crap. DVD originally stood for Digital Versatile Disc. It has the needed capabilities and sound quality to function as the next generation high fidelity sound source.
These greedy bastards just want to suck an extra, uneeded device from us as well as reintroduce copy protection that ignores fair use.
I will ignore those SACDs and DVDAs until they are digitally copyable so that a scratch in my favorite record/song no longer will set me back 15 to 20 bucks.
Stop the brainwash
It's encryption. Encryption is not "complexity".
I've bought DVD-A discs and ripped them like any other DVDs. Where's the problem? Or did I just get lucky?
I was just wondering if anyone knew whether either format could encode Ambisonic surround sound.
Snarfangel
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Between the prevalence of hearing loss (~28 million Americans, to some degree) and the ambient noise present in most urban settings, who's going to notice that these new formats sound any better?
For most applications, CD-quality is good enough.
I listen to most of my music through headphones. They don't disturb other people (normally) like speakers do and they generally have a better response curve than the most expensive speakers. How is 5 channel sound going to improve my experience when headphones are limited to two channels?
Casettes broke and were non-random access. CD were vastly more reliable, and you could skip the filler tracks on most contract-bands. Oh, and they sounded better.
.... Maby when I get a third ear, I'll need the third speaker.
My point being - what non-quality reasons are there for me to move to these new formats?
I've already moved my mucic to a network: I can access all of my music anywhere there's a net connection and there are no jewel cases to lose.
Be damed if I'm going back to physical media just to gain 'headroom' or for a third channel...
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
I think that they're overestimating the number of audiophiles that are out there. There just aren't enough of them to warrant an ENTIRELY new medium. Yes, it has copy protection enabled, but we've all seen how quickly that is rendered ineffective, not to mention that's not exactly high on consumer's list of "Things Desired in a Music Format". And the "features" such as the added music videos and such that can be included, as well as the "3D" sound (which I believe is impossible, seeing as how sound has neither height, width, nor depth) would probably never be used by Joe Consumer. There is just no good reason (for the consumer) to switch to this format right now. CDs and digital media (read as: mp3, ogg, etc) are a much better way to go IMHO.
That's pretty funny. I know that the limiting factor in my "music listening experience" isn't the quality of of the CD. It's everything else. It runs on a 6 year old Aiawa shelf system. Hardly the best in the world. I bet an SACD or DVD-A would sound exactly the same on my set up.
Or a better way to phrase it: Why are they trying to sell "sound quality" to a group of people who seem perfectly content with 128kbps mp3s?
With the exception of Audio-philes, who spend countless dollars on just the right setup, who will be able to tell the difference? DVD-A in my car with the factory system? Seems like over kill.
At the level I'm listenning my music at, I can't even tell if it's mono !
Ignoring the copyright issues for a second...
It seems to me, the cost of CDs is a sore point with some (many?) consumers already. Why would anyone think think those same consumers would rush out to adopt a new technology that's likey going to be more expensive?
It is quite simple
Haiku should not be funny
Try a Senryu
I hate to break it to the makers of DVD audio and so forth but an old saying is still true:
"In the design of an audio system the quality of the sound is determined by the weakest component." (An old McIntosh training manual page).
If my CD's only encode say 20Hz to 20Khz having speakers that can produce say 10Hz to 30Khz does me no good. The inverse is also true, if my DVD-AUDIO cd has 10Hz to 30KHz and I have speakers that only do 30Hz to 10KHz WHO CARES.
Take any speaker set you buy for under $200 a speaker and I have news, you frequency response, dB response, and all that crap the audiophiles go nutz over is not going to match the sounds on the DVD-AUDIO CD.
Any component in the audio system (walkman, integrated amps, component pieces, etc..) can be the target of a bitchy old red head! "You are the weakest link, Good Bye!"
I have a client that is gaga for audio. He's gotta have more than $40k in his system. Tube amps, at $2k turn table, the works! He invited me over to listen to a fidelity test of Pink Floyd the Wall a year or to ago. We first listened to it on an all digital system with the recent release of the Wall. Sounded great, it was an all Carver system with Infinity speakers (Basically the best system that say Best Buy could put together.) We have fun shot pool and 2 hours later ate with the rest of the guests (there were like 40 of us there.) then we went upstairs to the "Fidelity Room" He had speakers that were like $2000 bucks a piece and had a self tuning equalizer setup (It was cool to see) and then we played a few select tracks off the CD. Sounded the same. Again we went and shot-the-shit so to speak for another hour as he prep his vinyl and the difference was night and day. The we listened to some tape recording of it (I think they were called DAT recordings) and that was damn good too! Both were far better than CDs. Anyways, a few days later after I had bought my home theater setup (Onkyo setup I bought while I was working at a Circuit City back in highschool, a 646 integrated amp with infinity speakers) and he brought over the Vinyl and Dat components. We listened to the CD, Record, and DAT tapes and guess what? They all sounded the same.
Plain and simple it's like a car, the ability to top out at 300 mph is usless when the speed limit is 55. DVD-AUDIO and Super CDs are worthless unless the system they are played on can keep up.
Great idea for audiophiles I am sure but to the common consumer... useless.
I have to admit the extra features would be cool, perhaps embedded album art and lyrics would be a nice touch but again I see no reson to change unless I have the equipment that can match the fidelity.
My two cents (along with at least 40 spelling errors)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
- People aren't going to buy into another format change just yet. Especially since it'll involve buying a whole new system to get the "benefits". 16bit/44.1 audio CDs are here to stay, for at least another 10 years. I mean jeez, most people actually think mp3's and CDs burned from them sound good enough!!!
Seems to me I heard the same argument about 8-track cassettes a few years ago. Actually, that was about 1985 or so, and I don't believe I've seen an 8-track cassette for sale since the late 80's. Except of course in a yard sale for a nickel.--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Not only does this format require a new drive to play, but the average joe consumer won't be able to hear the difference anyway. Right now I have a stereo and speakers that can't even take full advantage of a regular CD, let alone new "improved" formats. I'm willing to bet that most people don't have that kind of system. Unless you have an audiophile quality setup already there is absolutly no reason to upgrade other than to throw your money away.
"I've figured out what's wrong with life: It's other people." -Dilbert
DVD's are hard to copy? Nonsense.
I rented the scooby doo DVD on the weekend. Funniest movie I've seen in a long time, and the production quality of the movie is great. If you have surround sound at home, and liked scooby doo as a kid then go out and rent it.
Now I've never copied a rented movie before, because I only have one vcr, but it's a good one with Dolby Surround capabilities. So I plugged the DVD audio, and video outs into the VCR's line-ins and started to record.
The quality of the recorded video was perfect. I can't hear the difference between the DVD's Dolby Digital Sound, and the VCR's Dolby Surround.
You don't need the digital precision of ripping MP3s directly from a cd or dvd. Recording from your cd player to your sound card's line in is fine. I suspect that there is more quality loss in the compression from an uncompressed wave file to MP3, than in the transfer from cd -> analog -> uncompressed wave.
Just my $0.02
I'm relieved to hear that someone has finally come up with technology that will prevent audio piracy. I will sleep so much better at night knowing that I can no longer comit these horrible crimes against society. Thank God these new inventions are so often complicated enough that nothing short of a black magic marker can break the glorious encryption! [/sarcasm] Now, I understand these people are trying to market their goods, and stressing the fact that it's difficult to copy is probably a good strategy for them to use to sell to record companies, but jesus.. is anyone still stupid enough to believe that if a technology can be invented to "prevent" compying, that it cannot be surcomvented just as easily? I wish they'd spend this much time coming up with a real solution to the problem rather than trying to throw money at it.
-----
jonathan barket
as the article mentioned in passing, the real problem is having two formats. i'm just enough of an audiophile that i'd seriously look at buying _one_ player. i already have a 5.1 receiver, so that's no burden. but, as we've encountered multiple times before (beta/vhs, dvd/divx, etc), most people, including myself, will not buy two players. and i won't gamble on one format. (although, gambling against sony's sacd might be the right choice.)
also, does any one have experience with dvd-audio playing on _any_ dvd player? i've been looking at dvd players lately, and a few of the mid to high line ones claim to play dvd-audio (roughly $150 and up). but i have not seen any inexpensive players claim to play dvd-audio. what's the truth?
finally, i am intrigued by sacd's ability to contain a basic cd-audio compatible track. although it then makes me wonder why every sacd doesn't include it. i am not ever going to install surround sound in my little pickup cab and will stick with cds. being able to play the same disc in the living room and my truck would be an incentive to buy into the format early.
geek friendly VPS's and free API enabled DNS : zerigo.com
Here's an "audiophile to English" dictionary:
"warm" = crackly
"proven" = bigger, less convenient, less versatile
"superior" = elitist
"music" = jazz and classical
[ home ]
i really do love stereo equipment and have certainly spent huge amounts of money on both equipment and cds. but, with the increased costs of dvd audio and super cds, who is going to pay for this aside from the few peopel who buy $20,000 and up stereos. even my meager set up is nearly $5000, and i am not about to go launching into a new format. i am even considering the absolute sin of converting many of my favorite cds to mp3 for availability. sometimes convenience is more important than very high quality. this is why i switched to cd in 1983/4.
These new formats are ploys to sell new hardware and foist copy-protection on us, at higher prices. Do us all a favor and don't buy into this crap.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
While I probably just stated the obvious above, all I can say is that the sound improvement of DVDA (or whatever) over CD is no where near as "noticable" as that of CD over Record/Tape, thus as long as they are more expensive than CD's, they wont be adopted by Joe Consumer
I doubt they will even be adopted by the high end of the market, since their more into something else (is it digital tapes? I cant remember)
Computers these days can, and do, give out better-than-CD quality if hooked up to the right equipment and the pro's will probably use that any day in preference
IMO, I dont see that this format has much of a chance of success
DVD-audio is a reasonably mature format, and many existing DVD players can read it. It contains some huge advantages over audio CD -- 24bit samples at 48kHz vs. audio CD's 16bit x 44.1kHz; support for 5.1 as well as stereo, 6.1, 7.1, 10.2, etc; better integration of multimedia extras; etc. I expect handheld players (the DVDiscman?) to become available in the next three years as soon as DVD reader assemblies become cheaper, and I expect these DVDiscmen to become cheap within five or six years.
Also I wouldn't count out a hack of both audio-CD and DVD-audio data on the same disc, using different wavelength lasers. This would totally solve the backward compatibility problem, as well as make it easier than regular DVD-audio to rip.
Can't say much for the other up-and-coming format mentioned, as I know nothing about it.
But what do I know. I'm just looking for anonymous gay sex.
OH, yes, please give me a format that I can't play on anything, that is more expensive, and doesn't sound better unless you are one of those freaky "audiophiles" that buy equipment based on what breed of dog can hear the extra frequencies it handles. CD is, truly, "good enough". 99.9% of the people in the world don't have a "listening environment", and probably couldn't tell the difference between a tape, FM radio, and a CD anyway.
not true. DVD-A goes as high as 24 bit, 96 KHz per channel.
Quote: "Educating the public is a key issue here for these formats to become more successful," Iverson says, "and I don't really see people making a big effort in this regard."
I saw this in the dead-tree news yesterday -- so it's not so much news. But anyway, I have to wonder. Much as a there is a bowl shaped curve for $$/Gb in hard drives, there is a bowl shaped curve for audio performance. Playing really old recordings is expensive for preservation reasons, playing the newest SACD is expensive for technology reasons, CD's are cheap and provide "good enough" sound that people are willing to incur lossy compression to fit music in an IPOD. Seems to me that if they want to move people toward SACD, then they better follow the HD industries lead. For hard drives the average schmuck wanders out once a month and asks the question, "So what does $250+/-10 get me this month?" The analog is "How much quality of music can I get for $15 this month (including overhead on my audio equipment)"
There's always a niche market. People asking "Money's not a major issue for me so when can I get those 320Gb drives?" and
"Money's not a mjor issue for me, what's the best possible sound quality?"
The latter group are the same people still listening to vinyl on swanky turntables. So the real question may be, "Is SACD better than good vinyl?"
haiku
/haiku
So goes the CD...
I had a great cassingle
collection once - poof!
Seriously though... the phase out is gonna happen. I think the days of a physical format will be gone soon. There's too many IPods and Rios to say it won't.
Of course, the player of the future might not allow you to play your own stuff, but digitial is where its all going, baby.
PS: What the hell did happen to cassingles, anyway? You have a hard time finding CD-5's anymore, too. Singles are the same way.
This space for rent.
of how SACD works here
Anyway, what I was going to say ...
Anything they can put on an optical disk and sell in a store, we can copy and put on network hard drives. Mp3 stereo units are creaping into existance, and network players are going strong (My AudioTron rocks). I don't really see people buying new stereo units that play more optical media.
These new formats aren't going to be good for portable use, or for people who don't own high end audio/video receivers and hundreds of dollars worth of speakers. They will be good for nice media rooms, or people with high end car audio. But these people, I'm sure, would rather buy hard drive solutions and store all their music on them. No one likes to load/unload disks - heck, that's why we have 100+ disk changers.
Honda has even included an Mp3 player in the dash of the new Accord. It only plays mp3 cds though - no hard drive.
~LoudMusic
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
At what point does all this technology hit the land of diminishing returns? Sure you can go out and buy a whole new system to capture this great "3-dimensional" sound, but it only works if you are in the center of the speakers (according to the article). So what's the point?
When you spent the same rough amount to upgrade from vinyl to cassette you obtained a record function that was previously missing. When you upgraded from tape to CD you got better clarity and sound along with a format that was durable for years. Each of these is a sizable step. This however doesn't offer all that much of an improvement for the cost of upgrade.
This is more of a general statement, but it seems as if technology in its current manifestation is offering less for the same amount of monetary commitment. In flying this is called the area of diminishing returns, you double the throttle and increase your speed a few percentage points.
At what point can you actually expect consumers to invest in upgrading to something that gives minimal benefit for the same investment of resources?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
i saw this link on fark recently. as was so perfectly stated at that time, i can't believe anyone decided that DVDA (DVD-Audio) would be a good acronym for... well for anything at all. sorry, that acronym is tained for all time.
1. Your company produces media that is "harder" to copy, thus restricts fair use.
2. You wish to sell your protective media to technologically informed persons, who represent the greatest market share in the digital arena.
3. Technologically informed persons tend to digitally copy audio more than non-technological persons, thus consume more digital media.
4. Those that copy digitally tend to be pro-fair-use.
5. Those that are pro-fair-use tend to use media that does not restrict fair use, such as CDs, not DVDs.
Why do I think the makers of this format are in for a shock?
I have the Metallica DVD-Audio disc and it is amazing. The great thing about it is that I don't have a DVD-A player but the disc also has Dolby 5.1 encoded on the disc. There are so many sounds I can hear on the remastered disc that I didn't even catch on the CD.
However, I think in the long run the SACD will win out because SACD's have the ability of being a hybrid between the SACD format and just regular CD format. If publishers are smart, every SACD disc released right now should have a CD layer on the disc for people that don't have a SACD player. But, when time goes on and the format grows and the price goes down, the user can utilize the same disc for SACD sound.
John Trickett, chairman of the 5.1 Entertainment Group, which has produced almost 100 DVD-Audio titles. "If you compare it to the launch of the CD ... It's actually following the same pattern, but actually a lot faster."
I would actually enjoy replacing my CD collection, but actually not at all.
Did I miss something on that quote there?
g
You mean I can buy the media, but I can't listen to the music on it? Yeah, I'd say that is a slight turn-off.
There's a big difference between video (analogue VHS tapes which wear out and get chewed by vidoe players versus digital DVD) and one digital format versus another - especially if only a music fanatic with a top of the range system could tell the difference in the quality. My prediction is that unless they add value in some way (i.e. have more than just the music on them), they'll go the the way of all the previous attempts to replace the CD.
Really DVDA hmm. Maybe someone else will get this reference but when I saw the acronym in a few posts below I almost fell out of my chair. Anyone ever seen Orgazmo!.. If DVDA really is the format that catches on those South Park guys will have field day with that.
"Once you get a certain age in this business the only way you'll get any work in this business is if you do DVDA" -- quoted from a character in Orgazmo.
Who makes you Sig?
You mention "audio piracy" and I'm assuming that's the "problem" you say the industry is supposed to solve, but then spend the rest of the post trivializing it.
Do you really think that audio piracy is a problem that you believe the music industry should solve? Or are you just trolling for karma?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
I'm assuming the advantage of DVDA is higher resolution or less compression but I've not seen anyone compare the quality of those two formats. It always seems to be DVDA vs. CD.
Since the DTS CD's play just fine in 5.1 without extra equipment and they are becoming more available, what's the delta that makes DVDA a better option?
I own several DVD Audio discs, and so far I am quite happy with all of them. The real benefit of DVD-A isn't the higher sampling rate... as many have derisively commented so far, as people we can't really notice the difference in sound quality, our ears are simply not up to it.
The big benefit comes from being able to listen to music in something better than stereo. Regardless of quality, a good 5.1 surround mix is more pleasing to the ear because it lends new dimension to the music. If this format becomes widespread, I think we'll see more musicians taking advantage of the sourround sound effects to provide better experience. Many of the DVD-A discs I own also provide additional video content as well, and information about the artist that a lot of people might find interesting.
You don't have to be a crazy audiophile to get this, either (although I am). Most places sell all-in-one kits that are more than high enough quality for the average person, and can be purchased for under 400$, or even 300$ in some cases. They generally come with a DVD player, and some sort of 5.1-capable receiver. That's all you need.
No, dumbasses at the RIAA et al, people want portability and freedom. Why don't they get this yet? How many songs are downloaded/ripped to a LOWER quality format (128kbit) for the sake of convenience?
This just proves that they either just don't get it, or they are fearing that they are losing that sweet sweet control that they have had for so long. Or both.
OK, here it is. You want to get the music fans back? Take the incredibly massive archives of music that you "own", digitize them, and offer the files at a reasonable price. How many Ratt CDs have you sold over the past 10 years? But you know what - if I could get all those songs at $0.15 per song I would do it. That was my high-school years. Offer ridiculous compilation albums in MP3 format. "Top 100 songs of the 80s" for $20. Customize, you pick 100 songs for $20. I am not talking the latest releases, how about anything older than 5 years old. Those songs are just sitting there. Generate some interest in music instead of bitching and moaning that nobody is interested in the drivel that you put out. Hell, offer a CD full of old MP3s with every new CD that you buy. Something! Anything! Just stop trying to control your customers with force.
How come I can think up several plausible solutions off the top of my head, but they are blind to the fact that digital file formats for music are here to stay?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
We're going to be able to copy SACDs and DVD-A's just like we're able to copy DVDs now -- it's simply not possible to make a player that outputs a digital bitstream to a D/A converter without being able to copy the bitstream. I agree that I'm miffed because it won't be convenient -- I think region encoding is horrid...but seeing as I don't copy my DVDs and CDs that much anyways, it's not a problem for me. I buy a CD or DVD, I keep it in excellent condition, and I play it when I want to! It's been that way since I was buying vinyl, with the exception of region encoding.
I for one, am hoping that SACDs catch on and that artists start producing multi-channel, super hi-fi albums on a regular basis (Peter Gabriel is reportedly experimenting with multi channel music). And no, DVD-A doesn't count as super hi-fi in my book (it's still PCM encoded albeit with an expanded dynamic range).
Only thing that would make me think twice is if they made region encoding any more of a nuisance than it already is.
Wait a second I think I can answer that... OOOOO it's "better" AND more expensive - can you double my credit limit so I can buy one at 21% interest?
Really though, their improvements aren't going to be noticeable as far as audio quality. Already CD's are amazingly clean - and usually fill only a small portion of a disc capable of holding 650 or so MB of info. What they really want is an excuse to waste more disc space, jack the prices up (since they're finally getting caught for fixing CD prices), and make us buy multiple copies just because we want a copy in both our house AND car. But the typical consumer will fall for it - though a few might figure it out when they have to buy 3 copies of Brittney's latest just to have one in the living room, one in their car and one at work after suddenly realizing they can't make a functional copy any more.
All these companies come out with surround sound systems that exist only on a single plane. Why, then, is it referred to as three dimensional? For added flare? Why else? The only way it would be three dimensional is if there was at least one speaker above or below you that actually had an effect on the audio (by effect I mean adding that 3D element). There is nothing I can't stand more than people who don't understand math. It's so flippin easy!
incripshin
Uhhh huuuuh.. And standard DVDs don't support that? Check your sources, kid.
Besides, above about 20 bits / 90khz, there is no real difference that is perceptible.
Stop the brainwash
Actually humans can 'SENSE' fequencies beyond the 20-20 range. Dolby labs had an article in Hometheater magazine a few years back discussing the need for sub-and hyper sonic data to aid in dimensional perception. While it is unlikely that you can 'hear' a 30Khz sound you brain may still process it in some fashion. I think it was in 1999 around spring that they ran the article. Just because you can't hear it doesn't mean you should discard it. For instance if you encode low freqencies say around 10Hz you may not hear that but you can Feel it. You are absolutily correct that 100Khz is over kill, anyways where does 100Khz sit on the electromagentic list? You have to be getting close to infra-red! (Doh could you imagine being cooked by your music! ACK!!!)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Some observations:
Cheap, multiformat DVD players now abound. These are replacing VCD players.
Most new (especially low end) DVD players support MP3, so people are getting used to one disk = 10 hours of music.
The logical next step is DVD audio, with 10 hours of high-quality music.
We're not talking about any revolution here, it is a series of gradual steps.
I'd be happy to buy new material on DVD audio. Yes, give me a 10-hour trance session. Or Wagner, which simply does not work on CD.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
SACD and DVD-A players are both readily available. DVD-A can be found on middle-range DVD players from JVC and Panasonic, and on low-end players from Apex. SACD, AFAIK, is Sony-only, but many SACD players are also DVD-capable, so it's entirely possible that if you've bought a player in the last six months or so (I've had DVD-A for 18 months now), you got it without even noticing.
Audio quality from either source is a vast improvement over CD, particularly for those with 5.1 setups. Stereo quality is also noticeably better, particularly on SACDs.
SACD is a "ghost" format, in that it can be put on the same disc with crappy PCM audio. Cost can be about the same as normal CDs (I just saw a couple of Sony Classical CDs with SACD labels at Borders for $15), or substantially more. Usually there are "expensive" SACD discs next to the demo units in large stores. Almost every large electronics store seems to have an SACD demo unit and a few disks; it's a more attainable format.
SACD seems to have fewer multichannel discs, but more really great recordings (Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" etc) than DVD-A. Sony's music library really strong argument for the format.
DVD-A is really, really impressive. When people who don't like my music mention how utterly phenomenal a recording is, I've got to think it's a difference that is noticeable.
The down side to DVD-A is that it is universally more expensive than CD, with prices in line with DVD movies; Best Buy sells most of its DVD-A titles (racked with DVDs, not music) for $18 - $22, which is simply insane. Amazon.com does better, with prices more in line with normal CDs. Best Buy is the only retail chain I've been in with any selection of DVD-A titles, and the selection seems in general to be smaller than that of SACDs.
A friend of mine with a recording-studio background has explained that it's very easy to make an SACD from a multitrack analog master tape, 20 or 30 year old recording, so those will likely be the mainstay of SACD releases for some time.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
Few of the SACDs I've seen have been hybrid. In fact, I haven't even honestly seen all that many 5.1 SACDs. Adding insult to injury, they've all been selling for about $25. So the two major reasons to upgrade, backwards-compatible hybrid layers and surround sound, are the exception rather than the rule. If I weren't a poor college student right now, I'd honestly consider paying a small premium (but not $25) on an SACD if it worked NOW, in my CD player, and then later once I can afford a nicer set of speakers and an SACD player. That way I could avoid paying for it twice.
If Copy Protection turns some consumers off the format. If the RIAA have the "Cookie Cutter Boy & Girl Bands" only on the new format, then it WILL take off for sure because most "all?" of the teens would purchase it. Thus, we would have no choice in a few years but to purchase music in the new Format.
SACDs and DVD-Audios, when coupled with the right speakers, sound superior to regular CDs.
"if you're working around the house, then it (the enhanced sound) doesn't really matter."
In order to get the benefit, you have to be sitting right in the middle of the stereo (or surround) field of your new $600 Klipsch speakers, with a new $500 deck, $550 reciever, and maybe a nice preamp. Also, the difference in dynamic range between 16 bits (CD) and 24 (DVD-Audio), while nice, isn't even going to be noticed on any piece of music destined for the radio, because they compress it into oblivion before it gets anywhere near the station, let alone your reciever.
(Pop in any rock album from the last 10 years. Watch the levels -- they won't vary more than about 10dB. Do the same with a Beethoven Piano Sonata. The levels are all over the place.)
You've also got to care. The only people who are interested in this are classical music fans (so we can hear the difference between the 300-year-old Stradivarius and the 275-year-old Stradivarius), and the muscians, producers, and engineers who think that everyone's an audiophile too.
I'm not even sure that I'd want to hear Britney on SACD. It would probably rupture my eardrums.
That seems unlikely, but let's say they released DVD-As/SACDs for $12, and left CDs at $15-20. DVDs were deliberately priced low to make the format attractive, and that seems to have contributed to its success.
Now, It seems unlikely to me that the labels would do such a thing. If they were that smart, they would already have their own pay-napster and be making $10/month off from millions of people. But if they did, they just might get to that "critical mass" needed to make one of those new formats the next CD.
Why can I not get a DVD with a few hundred, maybe thousand, songs on it?
Besides Royalties?
I'm sure there are a lot of unsigned artists who would give their work for *almost free* (think limited copyright) just to be heard.
It could indexed by almost any field and then given a nice DVD menu. Possibly with several default tracks, just incase the opperator does not have a screen to navigate through.
True to form, like failing governments all over the planet, when it's hard being a monopoly (government hates competition and illegal practicies when they're not the ones behind such actions), nothing works better than re-issuing currency and changing exchange rates, disenfranchising people who have large amounts of the older currency. Sometimes making the private holding of such currency illegal in order to encourage the quick and equitable change. Retailers will be asking for lube and a laywer...
Every new form of media has it's own Requirimento
...I purchased a SACD of a Joe Satriani CD I didn't have to check it out.
Only to discover that SACD doesn't use the Optical Out of my DVD player and my nice and expensive pre-amplifier doesn't have the seperate inputs I need, so I need to buy two sets of 3-pair cables, another 'analog bypass' device, and hook that all up.
Any one want an unused Joe Satriani SACD?
Seriously though, I'll probably get around to doing it all, but to spend $500 to check out a format gets me on the 'wife will kill you' page of things.
I'd rather buy another distributed.net compute node.
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
DVD-A will not make most music sound better.
Which does *NOT* mean that it *cannot* make most music sound better.
Even with standard audio CDs, they (meaning the braindead sound engineers who optimize for radio play rather than home audio) only use roughly 25% of the dynamic range of a CD. Threshold-minus-16db to jet engine, yet vocals and drums have roughly the same level. So what will we get with DVD audio? A wider range, with better granularity, and drums will *STILL* share the mix with vocals.
No real incentive exists to use this format, unless the RIAA manages to force the public, via legislation or simply eliminating all other choices. None. Or, if sound engineers start doing their "real" job rather than pandering to the PR pimps (which I can't blame them for, really - I too, and I suppose most people, have had to make choices between "do it wrong or look for a new job").
Note that I do not mean to say that DVD-A doesn't *crush* standard 16-bit 44.1khz PCM audio, as POTENTIAL quality goes. But it will get used just as poorly as its predecessor.
And if these things don't sell, the RIAA will blame it on piracy... nevermind that they are supposedly un-copyable.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
In time, hopefully, all of the above will converge into one cheap chip. There are players no that do DVD Audio and SACD, but they are $1000+
While higher fidelity would be nice, it is not that necessary. Most stereos and speakers are not that high of quality, and most listening areas are not sonically friendly. For example cars, airplanes, offices, living rooms, etc have significant background noise.
What we need is intelligent speakers, with DSP's in them. Then you plug a microphone in to it, and place it at your preferred listening spot. Then the speaker could analyse itself, and your listening area allowing it to compensate for any weaknesses in your setup.
This has the advantage of making all music sources, stereos, and listening rooms sound better WITHOUT having to fork out more cash for new media.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
In the Best Buy store by my house, there is a small collection of DVD-Audio CDs, most of which are either older titles or works by artists that are more contemporary. I would comment on the need for more recent artists or more ground-breaking work, but I'm sure that some other poster will discuss that soon enough.
Anyway, my roommate purchased a copy of Sting's "Brand New Day" and we took it home to give it a listen in my DVD player. Now we know it was recognized as 5.1 since it showed up in my receiver that way. However, the actual "total listening experience" of it was not as impressive as that of a CD. Yes, everything was separated into it's own channels. However, it seemed more like a bunch of guys in corners of my room rather than a well put-together mix.
Now, maybe it's just me, but I like having the suttle things....well, suttle. I mean, I don't want to hear every single note played by every single musician in the mix. The whole point of a recorded song is to mix everything together to make one enjoyable thing, not a bunch of parts that indiviually may not sound as good as the original.
Of course, this is just my opinion. It may be for some, but not for me.
Slashdot - Come for the creative thought, stay for the lesbians!
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I know that CD's have 16 bit audio. I heard that when you have 24 and 32 bit audio it sounds better...is this really true? I am skeptical.
Well, if these new formats mean that the MP3 files available on Kazaa sound better with the usual, crappy encoding, then I'm all for it.
But unless a new format means that my normal routine of Kazaa'ing files will be enhanced, then I see no purpose of a new format.
Even if artists decide -- either by themselves or by pressure from their management -- that they'll release their new albums on these new formats, then I'll just wait for the MP3s to appear on Kazaa.
The RIAA is dead. Move along. No one will admit -- and you get the do-gooders accusing us of being thieves -- but it's true. It's time people just admit: physical media is dead. Filesharing is where it's at.
What I'd like to know is what Jefferson might have thought about filesharing. I'd bet they'd see it as a way to enrich the public domain instead of the fat punks at the RIAA.
That's right. *Fat punks*. That needs to be said, too. The RIAA is a bunch of fat, fucking punks. We don't like these people. No one likes these people. They're too lame to embrace the edge and figure out what needs to be done. But what needs to be done involves looking forward, not protecting the moola stash in the compost bin like Tony Soprano.
Me, Winky, Drummer Todd put our stuff up on MP3.com. (Look for the band called 'Pink Eye' on account Drummer Todd had pink eye not long ago and we needed a name for the band. In fact, we've been working on a song called 'Jack Valenti.' And, yes, we know Maddog Jack is MPAA not RIAA, but he's got a cooler name than Hilary Rosen. Plus, the thought of Hilary reminds me of that psycho in the Stephen King movie who decides she needs to hobble James Caan to get him to write a new installment of his book. That's some sick shit, but I do believe a metaphoric parallel can be drawn between the hobbling of James Caan and the hobbling of the on-line music industry. It's a pretty common trope, I'd wager, and I'd bet even good ol' Professor Harold Bloom could find some more parallels in his beloved Kaballah if he looked hard enough or in some esoteric Gnostic doctrine that only Bloom could figure out. If you don't know Harold Bloom, he's a Falstaff-like tragic figure who teaches poetry, literature, and criticism at Yale. He's one wacky thinker, but as Drummer Todd and Winky always say [in unison when we're all smoking our Russian 'Dneiper Robusto' cigarettes that Frederico imports from a girl he knows in Moscow] everybody needs a healthy dose of Plotinus/neo-Platonic mysticism now and then.]
Certainly Valenti and Rosen.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
From the article:
That would make it worth upgrading from CDs, if RIAA was smart enough to offer the DVD version, with video and karaoke tracks, for the same price as the CD...
>;k
"The manufacturers cite the superior audio quality, and 3-dimensionality of the new formats' reproduction as the reasons for customers to embrace these formats."
They've got to be kidding right? Anybody who has ever used the Internet *know* that 99% of the "consumers" are happy with crappy 128 kbit MP3s encoded in Xing. Most of them can't even hear the difference between those MP3s and audio CDs.
Consumers don't care about quality. Manufacturers have to come up with something truly revolutionary, or most people will stick to CDs like how people stick to MP3 and refuse to use Vorbis.
WTF, it's TLA overdose here.
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Actually, it's only improved if you sit quietly in the middle of 5 speakers. If you're wandering around the house, then the articles says that most people would likely not notice any difference.
But I won't buy until there's one clear winner. No more competing formats for me!
>You will probably on the other hand sneak this under the nose of everyone that does not read slashdot because I have found that everyone else is dumb.
I read the article on CNN yesterday, as I'm sure many people did. ^_^ CNN has a rather larger readership than /.
>Two: Someone will break your "copy protection" two weeks before you release it and this will not effect me any more than playing DVDs on my linux box does now.
This is sort of the crux of the matter. Artists and distributers need a fair profit to stay in business. Most of the public wants to be able to make copies for their own use. P2P was, IMHO, a mistake, one that alienated the two sides completly.
What we need is a copy scheme that lets the consumer make a few copies and still assures a reasonable return on investment for the artists and distrubuters. How to do this technically, I'm not sure.
CD's (and their cases) take up a LOT of room - I just packed up two double-stacked crates of CDs to get 'em out of the way (they're all ripped anyway and the iPod takes care of the portability). I'd love a cd that can be played on a standard CD player (well, a tray or spindle one anyway) that's half the size of a normal disc and holds the same amount of audio. I don't think there's anything wrong with the FORMAT, just the BULK of it. The last thing I need is more big shiny disks. I buy 'em, rip 'em and store 'em. Smaller is ideal. :)
Triv
...there is an entirely new form factor.
8track->cassette->CD
Super8->VHS->DVD
LP's are in there somewhere, along with all the lost formats (DAT, ElCassette, Minidisc, etc)
With each new toy, there was a real form factor change along with a fidelity change.
A 5" round thing that looks like a CD, plays in what looks like a CD player, plays only music, plays music at no real discernable quality gain, yet costs significantly more, and carries the potential of no copying...
That's dead before it leaves the gate.
At least come up with some new player and format. Maybe a solid state chip or something. Not just another "CD".
I agree that multi-channel is nice for classical and jazz and other music that is supposed to sound "live". But the vast majority of music sold is mixed to an arbitrary standard of "sounding good" through headphones or reference speakers. If you're doing that anyway, and you want to throw in some spatial effects-- which, remember, will be as arbitrary as any other effect added in the studio--just use the appropriate and well-known digital filters that give a 3-d impression. It's all the same when it goes in your ears.
So the RIAA was lying to us all those years when all CDs used to claim that "this compact disc offers the best possible sound reproduction on a small convienient disc". Granted, most of us realized this was a load of crap but now it seems that they are admitting to this as well.
My trusty old CD player died about a year ago, so I surveyed with an open mind. I got a Sony SACD mostly because it was a good CD player. I've only bought 3 SACDs compared to a collection of about 300 CDs.
/. SACD debate way back. You're much more likely to get better recording levels that don't saturate the medium, just because they're not targetting kids with their $50 boom boxes.
Is the SACD format better? Rarely and barely. Maybe it's a little smoother in the upper midrange. If you're just listening to pop/rock, I wouldn't bother. This would probably appeal to the classically obsessed. I didn't see any difference between to $700 player and the $5000 player.
But there is one thing someone pointed out in a
Now if you have more than two speakers, which I don't, you might like the 5.1 mode. I'd rather take the money for 6 speakers and use it on 2 superior speakers.
I still haven't seen anything that can make a choral work like Mozart's Requiem sound like a live performance. I had thought it might be the sampling rate, but now I really don't know.
What we need is intelligent speakers, with DSP's in them. Then you plug a microphone in to it
Then how does it compensate for the transfer function of the microphone?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Just as a reminder or idea, Next time we hack the RIAA website be sure to remember the following things:
- Post DeCSS Source
- Post DeCSS Binaries
- Post a Dramatic Reading of DeCSS
Just a friendly reminder
the total combined sales of SACD's and DVD-A's, multiplied by 10, equals current sales of vinyl.
Can a DJ spin SACD and DVDA live yet?
Will I retire or break 10K?
So now I have to replace my perfectly good stereo equipment with something else?
Geez. I don't know why I even bother.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
So many of us have listened to too much loud music, we'd never notice "better-than-CD quality".
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Nowadays, the original source would be 24-bit, 96kHz at least. It's only downmixed to 16-bit @ 44.1kHz for the initial CD press.
If 16-bit, 44.1kHz is all the human auditory system can perceive (16-bit is 90 dB SNR with 110 dB dynamic range after dithering; 44.1 kHz can accurately represent frequencies up to 22 kHz), then why go higher?
Will I retire or break 10K?
While *most* humans can't hear more than *about* 44.1 kHz, the interference induced by waves *above* that frequency can and *do* have AUDIBLE effect on sounds below that frequency.
For example, if you were to play a simply sine wave with a given amplitude (A), at 18,000 Hz (F), out of a speaker -- you'd be able to hear that, correct?
Now, if you generated another sine wave 180 degrees out of phase, with the same amplitude (A) at double the frequency, 2F (=36,000 Hz), you would *definitely* hear the influence of the extra sine wave on the sound.
If either of your speakers (or audio format) cannot reproduce that 36kHz signal (whether or not you saw the tree fall in the woods, it still fell), then you will not hear that oscillation in the volume of the 18kHz sine wave.
Frequencies above 20,000Hz, even on crappy speakers, can and do produce audible foldback effects on things like drum transients, fret noise, air, etc. at the top of the audible spectrum.
that doens't even reach the low end of the AM radio band. your average microwave oven is around 2.4 GHz , about 24,000 x the frequency.
It's likely the new format disks should cost about the same to produce (after the initial investments in the fabs).
Wouldn't recording, mixing, and mastering in high-frequency, high-bit-depth formats be more expensive as well because it takes more skill to keep noise from creeping into the process?
With the SACD format, there is a CD audio layer on the thing already so the disks will be indistinguishable from a regular CD for your existing equipment.
That is, unless the labels start doing shady things like dithering the CD audio layer to 8-bit to make the SACD layer sound better by comparison.
Will I retire or break 10K?
"music" = jazz and classical and Euro metal
The implied complaint in many comments thus far can be summed up as follows:
Will a compatible computer media drive, with no "rights" restrictions, be available for either format?
IMO, it's highly doubtful this would occur in the current climate. Ironically, the audio industry could probably greatly assist the success of one or both formats if it were to enable computer drives compatible with DVD-A and/or SACD.
One of these guys?
Best Slashdot Co
I mean literraly there are only so many chords and note combinations possible. Unless something radical comes along I think that we will only have new instruments to rely upon.
Heck not even new instruments. If you use the same melody as a previously published song, you're likely to face legal action. Four notes are enough to infringe, and there are fewer than 50,000 possible combinations.
The theoretical limit on the number of distinct works is the subject of a short story called "Melancholy Elephants" by Spider Robinson. Read it and weep.
Will I retire or break 10K?
CDs are 44.1 KHz. That means frequencies up to 22050 Hz can be represented.
No human can hear above 20000 Hz.
So a higher sample rate is superfluous.
And a 16 bit quantization is essentially perfect for all music except that with an extreme dynamic range, and even then, only if you are anal.
The 96 KHz sample rate on DVD audio is insane. And as for 5:1 surround sound, please note humans only have 2 ears...
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
The word you're searching for is Dynamics, as in dynamic range of volume from very soft to very loud.
Pop music is shit, and most rock goes for balls-to-the-wall loud guitar, but plenty of other modern music does still make use of dynamic shifts to great dramatic effect. It's not solely a tool of the classical composers as some would have you believe.
"So on one hand, honey is an amazingly sophisticated and efficient food source. On the other hand it's bee backwash."
..to simply make DVD discs with regular-CD (or 24bit) quality, WITH the music videos aswell. The subtitle tracks could be the lyrics, and any "special material" (which is bullshit IMHO) could be embedded like on movie-DVDs.
This would demand near-to-none upgrades for normal consumers; "most people" have a DVD player these days..
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
I'm surprised how uninformed people are about this technology, given that is isn't exactly new.
I can appreciate the improved resolution of DVDA and SACD. The argument about the 22khz limit is quite subtle and lots of people miss the point. If a digital filter operating at 22khz isn't designed perfectly (which isn't easy), it does artifact the music in the audible range. What the 96khz and 192khz resolutions bring is the ability for even the cheapest audio system with substandard filters to escape the artifacts because they are shifted way up beyond normal hearing range, instead of being smack bang in the middle of the program material.
You won't be ripping SACD or DVDA anytime soon, or even playing them on PC's. Neither has a PC based player today to my knowledge. DVD-A uses Meridian Lossless Packing codec, and the only way to get an MLP codec on a PC today is to spend $$$ on DVD-A authoring software. I'm not even sure if that is encode/decode or encode only. I have also read that the DVD-A disk format is not compatible with the DVD-V format per se i.e. a DVD-ROM cannot read the DVD-A tracks.
Anyone ripping a DVD-A today is simply ripping the DVD-V compatible Dolby 5.1 track included on some DVD-A's.
The Sony SACD technology is based on DSD and operates at incredibly high frequencies. You couldn't design a system to be more unfriendly to digital audio (or pirates). At the recent AES show Sony were showing off OEM modules to people for encoding and decoding SACD. The reason is that off the shelf chips just don't work with their design. It's a major pain in recording studios as well, since nothing is designed to work with their standard, and only Sony can author SACD's today to my knowledge. About the only good thing SACD has (apart from the sound) is the backwards compatibility with dual layer discs in ordinary CD players.
None of this gets around the fact that in the current economic environment (1) consumers are happy with MP3's and CD's and their existing systems (2) studio's aren't going to ditch their existing 24 bit 48 khz limited equipment, especially Pro Tools rigs and (3) much of the catalog of SACD and DVD-A is boring old music for stereophiles!
yes, and no. a sample rate of 44khz will pick up and reproduce this a lot better than you imply, although there will be some distortion.
You know, I was almost buying your post until you started talking about 100Khz audio being close to infared. That's like saying if a person runs fast enough twoards Toledo, they might approach a speed where they turn into an apple pie. Sound is compressed particles going through a medium (usually air) in a wave. It has nothing to do with the EM spectrum (unless it's hooked to a Winamp visualizer :)
I read the internet for the articles.
I'm going to have to by the White Album all over again.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
There is a bit of FUD in that article and some of the posts here. Here are some details that I know of for each format.
SACD:
1. Each SACD MUST include at least a Stereo SACD section. The multichannel and CD (Redbook) parts are optional.
2. An SACD with a CD layer is completely backwards compatible.
3. Not all current SACD's include the CD layer. The reasons for this are most likely due to manufacturing capacity. Sony currently has two pressing plants in Japan that just came online with Hybrid SACD pressing capability, so expect this to change.
4. Nothing prevents you from recording off of the analog outputs or ripping the CD layer (if it exists).
5. More manufacturers than Sony are producing SACD equipment. There are many new universal players (DVD, DVD-A, SACD, CD, VCD, etc) from the likes of Onkyo, Pioneer, Apex, and Yamaha either on the market now or in the works.
6. SACD uses whats called "Direct Stream Digital" (DSD) as it's recording process. DSD is a 1bit system with a sampling rate of over 2 million samples a second.
7. No TV is required to access the disk, track access is provided in a CD like fashion.
8. All SACD's include text titles on the disc for track, artist, and album information.
DVD-Audio:
1. DVD-Audio is backwards compatible with DVD players. However, the backwards compatibility is achieved by putting a lower resolution Dolby Digital and/or DTS version in the VIDEO_TS part of the DVD.
2. The actualy DVD-A material resides in a separate directory on a DVD called AUDIO_TS
3. DVD-Audio does not have to include a stereo track. IMHO this is a bad thing.
4. Linear PCM is the technology behind DVD-Audio. Max sample rates are 24bit/96khz for 5.1 and 24bit/192khz for stereo.
5. LPCM is compressed and encrypted with MLP (Meridian Lossless Packaging). The compression is obviously lossless.
6. Dolby Digital and DTS are lossy encoding methods akin to the beloved MP3.
7. Some labels are including a "Macrovision Like" copy protection scheme on the DVD-A tracks.
8. You can rip the DD or DTS side, but you cannot rip the MLP LPCM audio (yet). You may not even be able to record the analog audio if watermarking is included.
9. The interface for a DVD-Audio disk may require a TV to navigate. There is no set structure allowing you to have easy access in a "CD Track" like nature. This is entirely up to the producer of the disk.
Each format is a bit more expensive than current CD prices. Heck current CD prices are higher than they should be, but a new format should be expected to have higher prices initially.
Personally I prefer the features of SACD, and I would love to see hybrid discs become the norm for all new releases as long as the price is equivalent.
-tj
----------------- Who is Jesus?
44.1 kHz samples ~44000 samples per second. If you had a sound at the upper end of healthy human hearing: 18kHz - you would have fewer than 3 samples for each wavelength. Not enough to accurately describe the waveform.
You're using linear interpolation, which introduces loads of aliasing artifacts into the sound. Instead, use higher-order (cubic or better) interpolation that fits a curve to a set of adjacent points. Follow it with a good analog filter, and you get great results, even at the high end of the spectrum. Look up Nyquist while you're at it.
Will I retire or break 10K?
CDs won out over casettes for several reasons, listed in order of what I think was most important:
(1) The skip function - don't have to fast forward through the whole tape.
(2) Higher sound quality, noticable to most everyone.
(3) Your player won't eat your music.
(4) They don't degrade just by playing them repeatedly.
I don't think any of the new formats have any new features that are nearly as compelling for consumers.
-Uberhund
Poor sap. Until you use all 5 ears and a good 5.1 system, you will never appreciate music the way it is meant to be heard.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
I was looking other day to see if any CD's I wanted had been released on DVD-audio and I found this site. Looks like the releases are quite limited but in the near future the numbers should increase. But only one Mozart release and no more in the works? That's a big mistake. I'd buy a recording of Requiem fast
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
They may play in dolby digital but unless you have a DVD-Audio player you are NOT getting what you paid for. There are multiple audio tracks encoded on the disc, you are only playing the dolby digital 5.1 track. While this sounds better than CD, its still not DVD-Audio
A DVD-Video player will not recognize and play the ultra-high fidelity PCM and MLP encoded audio tracks on a DVD-Audio disc. To play these tracks, a DVD player is required that meets the DVD-Audio specification. These players can be identified by the DVD-Audio logo.
This seems to be an extremely common misconception, one that is even perpetuated by Best Buy employees. Ironically, they sell DVD-Audio discs but not the players!!
info found on www.digitalaudioguide.com
I've seen plenty of worthy comments here pointing out that the quality of the audio you hear is determined by the weakest link in the system. Not exactly correct technically speaking (it's a sume of squares thing) but let's go with it.
I'd like to point out that in identifying your weakest link, in addition to the recording and reproduction equipment, you have to consider the recording environment, artistic decisions and listening environment.
The demonstrations of DVD-A and SACD I've expereinced have been quite impressive. I believe the reason for this is that more care is put into production of these disks and the demo playback equipment is top shelf. People expect them to sound better. I believe almost the same expereince is possible with conventional CD.
Most of you bozos listen to music primarily in your car or as background party music or maybe at work with the HVAC rumbling overhead. The listening environment is the limiting factor for anyone not sitting upright in their acoustically treated livingroom somewhere out in the quiet boonies.
And finally, to make music get attention on the radio, much of it is keyed up and deliberately distorted in the mixing and mastering process. I suppose you could say, "I want to hear the music exactly as intended by the artist." Well, I've got news for you, most artitsts listen to music in their cars just like you do.
Anything above CD's 16 bits/44.1 kHz is imperceptible unless you're a dog, a bat, or a child with unusual ears. Hearing loss increases with age, and with the advent of rock concerts, the problem is worse than in previous generations.
- AlanH
Not universally available. Can't play on portable player. Can't play on CD-Rom drive. Some SACDs are double layer media (have both SACD and Red Book format), but on double layer Red Book format (that is, 'classical CD format' has a higher than usual error rate. This is not just a hearsay. This has been repeatedly observed and measured.
Built-in encryption. You cannot duplicate SACD, period. Encryption is the integrated part of SACD format. At least it doesn't affect its sound quality. With DVD-A situation is even worse. Encryption comes as an afterthought, in a form of watermarks, which does interfere with quality and defeats the original purpose of having the higher quality audio in a first place.
Improvement in quality due to format is mostly marginal. A Red Book format is 16-bit format. it has been shown that a human hearing can distinguish dynamic levels which can be encoded with at most 18-bit format. With a properly applied dithering, you can make 16-bit encoding sufficiently close. So we really don't need 20 or 24 bit based encoding. It is true that many new releases on SACD or DVD-A sound better that the old Red Book releases, but this is primarily because of better remastering of the original analog tapes. Using the same remastered tape for Red Book format would produce roughly the same level of improvement.
Many alternative and independent artists release their own CDs and do not contemplate moving to neither SACD or DVD-A media.
Probably can think of few more, but that's already enough.However, there ARE people who can hear the difference. Why make fun of them wanting something that sounds better?
All you people making fun of them...what kind of computer to you have? After all, most people would not notice the difference between a ~1 GHz Celeron with a GeForce2 MX, and the latest Athlon or P4 and a GeForce 4 Ti4600. Anyone who has spent more than $1000 on their computer setup needs to shut up about the audiophiles.
The dynamic range of 24 bits is much better than 16 bits and human ears can easily hear the difference in dynamic range.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
'nuf said
Yeah, frequencies over the limit of hearing can cause nausea. (doesn't sound cool to me)
;)
Then again, so can normal frequencies when listening to Brittney Spears.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Been following this. It's a vast simplification of the recording of music--elegant to the extreme. The fact that it's mired in both patents and copy protection is the desecration of something great.
As one of the people unsatisfied with CD quality sound, I am heartened that the industry is (finally!) stepping up to the bar and trying to produce genuinely musical sound. Even if you think you have lead ears (i.e., noone can tell the difference between CD players, CD is good enough, etc.), I think many would be surprised to hear the difference when presented to them. The article mentions how even musicians think they're hearing complete sound, until they hear what's possible. Sound perception in humans is far from perfect and sound memory and recognition less so, but our hearing is still more acute than CD's allow.
Given all that, the two competing formats are interesting especially from an engineering perspective (as I understand it). I'm definitely not expert on the formats, but here's my (half-baked) take on the current situation.
DVD-A seems like an obvious winner for more multimedia capability and the appearance of backwards compatibility (its DVD after all, right?). Cool. However, DVD-A requires lots of electronics to process the signal including sophisticated D-to-A converters (a la the CD medium where they've been trying to perfect this D-to-A process for many years). This is the 16-bit... 18-bit... 20-bit progression you've probably heard of re: CD players. It's doable, but its kind of brute force from a pure engineering perspective, and from an audio perspective, it's less than ideal because the format guarantees a reasonably long signal path through all these converters and electronics.
Enter Sony's SACD. SACD takes a radically simpler approach which puts the quality of the sound as the primary driver in the format. As I understand it, SACD format is based on an ongoing stream of bits (no words to chunk and convert). There's still work to be done, but the signal path is much shorter since the electronics are much simpler (vanilla compared to DVD sound processing). Some (many?) studios use SACD in the studio record and process music before down-converting it to CD format. So, SACD is about the music.
Given those two issues, SACD could lead to phenomenally better sound even in cheaper units SACD players (than roughly equivalent DVD-A players) if (once?) volume sales and production arrive. Simpler, cheaper, and higher quality than CD (or DVD-A for the most part). So, I'm kind of taken with the SACD approach for the new audio standard. Perhaps DVD's themselves can upgrade (higher capacities for higher resolution movies) without worrying about DVD-A so much. Good sound for movies is nice, but at least get better than 640x480 resolution for the movies!
So, here's one vote for a next generation audio format. And there are my (random, not entirely informed) two cents on the competing formats.
There are a few DVDA discs I want. Most of them aren't available yet. THat's MY biggest problem with it.
The new format doesn't really bother me. The DVD player I just bought (the seemingly outstanding Panasonic RP-82) does DVD-A, so why worry? It'll be hooked up to my 5.1 setup, so no need to move.
But yes, I want Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" and "Passion Play" on DVDA for the 5.1. I want Greig's "Peer Gynt Suite" on DVDA. A few others.
I won't be replacing my entire CD collection since I do most of my listening in the car, but there arew a few things that I'm willing to buy for the extra tracks.
Flame away! I can take it. I've already been backstabbed today.
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
1) would love to read about a test where an IDENTICAL signal source was recorded in CD and SACD and compared, BLIND, by ordinary consumers. Is the difference really audible?
2) More to the point, is there any way to STOP CD publishers from deliberately introducing degradation into the CD track in order to make the SACD sound better by comparison? Not that they would ever do such a thing, of course... but I'd like to see at least a truth-in-advertising disclosure if they did.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
What we need is intelligent speakers, with DSP's in them. Then you plug a microphone in to it, and place it at your preferred listening spot. Then the speaker could analyse itself, and your listening area allowing it to compensate for any weaknesses in your setup
You've almost got it. But you don't put that logic in the speakers - you put it in the receiver/pre-amp.
Which is exactly what several high-end models do. Plug in the supplied microphone (thus alleviating the transfer issue brought up), place it at the listening position, and the receiver will automagically calibrate the speakers appropriately. It won't make up for abundantly bad room response, but it will at least calibrate levels and delays correctly.
Sigh... brands? I don't recall and I don't have my back issues of Stereophile Guide to Home Theater here for reference. But there's at least 3 or 4 different brands in the mid to high price range doing this now. Expect to see the same feature on commodity electronics in 2-3 years.
This has the advantage of making all music sources, stereos, and listening rooms sound better WITHOUT having to fork out more cash for new media
It does not solve the multi-channel issue. And guestimating 4 or 5 channels out of two channels is dicey at best. In general "Live" CDs will sound ok this way. Everything else will sound like crap.
I just bought "Beggars Banquet", new re-release, and inside the cover they said that the CD had two formats: regular CD and this SACD format. I'd like to hear the SACD format, but to tell you the truth, the remastered normal CD sounded "kick ass" to these old ears.
You correct, I went out and checked a few sites on the ability of sound to move into the EM spectrum and it went into tons of crap about photon emissions and E-MC2 stuff. Me no physicst.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
The dynamic range of 24 bits is much better than 16 bits and human ears can easily hear the difference in dynamic range.
In the average noisy household, automotive, or office environment?
If not, then I imagine that this product will have limited appeal unless the labels begin to intentionally cripple the mastering of Compact Disc Digital Audio releases. As others have pointed out in this discussion, the biggest reason for the move from vinyl to CDs in the consumer market wasn't improved clarity but rather improved clarity, a complete of pops and clicks (except when used as a deliberate effect), a lack of wow and flutter (again, except when used as a deliberate effect), and triple the playing time per side (no getting up to flip the disc).
Other than greater playing time, I don't see a significant advantage in DVD-No-Video, DVD-Audio, or SACD over plain old CD-DA among typical non-audiophile consumers (e.g. adolescents who buy Eminem or Britney Spears).
Will I retire or break 10K?
Wow, there are a lot of people angry at the music industry here. I see a lot of posts that claim that DVD-A and SACD are no better to the human ear than CDs. This is utter hogwash. Both formats are a significant advancement. People have consistently picked these formats over CD in double blind listening tests. I currently own a DVD-A player and love it. Not only is the sound better, but it is 5.1. Much more enveloping than 2 channel CD. I am looking at purchasing a universal DVD/DVD-A/SACD player right now.
I understand perfectly well that these formats are not for the average consumer. You do need a resonably nice audio system to take advantage of them. But don't blow these formats off as a meaningless attempt to make more money. They absolutly are an improvement over CD technology for mid to high end systems.
Clearly, SACD, and DVD is not offtopic. Would the moderator please stand up, and reveal why this is modded as "offtopic" and not "Troll". There are distinctions. Use them morron.
E.g. as regards CD audio vs. 96/24 audio, it's easier to design the DAC's brickwall filters for 96/24.
This is a solved problem. Use interpolation in the digital time domain to bring 44.1 kHz audio up to 88.2 kHz, which gives you more room to make an analog brickwall filter. Many DACs already do this; it's called "oversampling".
Will I retire or break 10K?
All of your storage media's are but a fad...
With the cost per gigabyte going down steadily, now its cheaper to store a DVD encoded movie on a hard drive than it is to buy one from the store. And with a good quality TV Output card, everything can integrate right into the stereo and TV..
What else do you need?
No I didnt spell check this post...
I don't care about higher samplerates or bitdepths... what i want is simple and way more effective than 2416537.1 dolby schmolby stereoXPRLTZ whatever. Binaural for me and a pair of cans.
Looking for people to chat about multicopters, coding, music. skype: gtsiros
i thnk what it really stands for is:
SUCK A CORPORATE DICK
He said that CDs would play in DVD-A players. He wasn't talking about the other way around.
I've already purchased a license for the music on my CDs (since, according to the RIAA, I don't really "own" anything). Shouldn't I get to trade them in for the new format for the cost of the raw media plus, say, 15% for overhead and profit?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Haven't they realized how annoying CDs are?
Everyone is right, the quality is FINE! People went from LPs to cassets for ease of use. We then went to CDs because of their ease of use. Why the hell would we switch to a different CD that poses the same problems like scratching, skipping, and storage room? People are not only switching to DVDs because of the video quality, they are doing it also for its compact size, dependability and EASE OF USE. They have seen the memory stick, compact flash, smart media card and the freakin INTERNET. Lets stop this mechanical crap and release a quality, full function, hi-fi solid state media system. Yea I could break a memory stick, but if it falls on the floor, it probably would survive a hell of a lot better than a CD.
Lets get away with CDs, tapes, and anything else that requires motion to work. Skipping, clutterd desks, and dependability would increase significantly. Sounds more practical to me.
Plus, who can tell the difference with this high quality music when your roomates, parents, or spouse keeps telling you to lower the damn stereo....
With digital, you have the problem of aliasing. With vinyl, a 15khz square wave will sound different than a sawtooth or sine wave. With a CD quality 44ksps digital file, there are only 3 graph points to the curve. All three sounds will graph (and sound) the same.
However, digital has zero media noise and a virtually unlimited dynamic range, although the more you extend the range, the more aliasing you will encounter.
As to the phase shift distortion, I wasn't aware that there was any. There shouldn't be, as the circuts should be able to shift the signals back into phase. However, I don't doubt that some people could hear a phase shift distortion if it were there. I wish I had the ears and money to be an audiophile!
Here's a phase shifting tiip for your stereo you WILL hear. Reverse the polarity on the leads to one speaker. If it sounds more bassy, leave it that way as the speakers were wired out of phase. You should especially do this in a home wired car stereo, because the phase adjustment is uch more pronounced in a car for some reason I've never understood.
Hey, it's Beta vs. VHS again, only in the digital realm this time.
Let's see if the better quality medium can hold it's own against the medium of the masses. Of course, you will only be able to tell the difference if you have a sound setup of sufficent quality, which I would feel safe in assuming the vast majority of consumers do not.
It may cost more, but hey, it's better right? Not that I could tell the difference. I don't sit around to listen to music, so this 3D music is of no benifit to me. It's either headphones, or playing in one room while I'm in and out doing other things. No thanks, I'll pass.
I like listening to good music. I also haven't ever had a real stereo or set of speakers. SO I decided to take the plunge and set up a good Music/Movie system. It will cost plenty (about 5000$) but the end result is a 7.1 system with quality components that I can listen to anything in my collection on (except my 3 LPs).
I am looking at the new Pioneer Combo Players. These babies will play both SACD and DVD-A and have an imprssive video feature set as well.
For those who say "blah blah.. I have my mp3s". I do too. I have ripped all my CDs and don't plan on having to swap discs out unless I want to listen to the high quality DVD-A or SACD stuff. TO accomodate this I will have a digital feed from my computer into the back of my receiver. I can play whatever I cue up in my playlist!
I may be different in that I don't have a lot invested in old technology, but it seems that these formats have a lot of multichannel love to offer in the near term for me. I'm not an audiophile.
You can only be young once, but you can be immature forever.
Example: the recent release of Panic Room
The only VHS versions are priced/intended for rental places.
Don't think I'll be seeing a VHS copy at that price on the shelfs of my local WalMart.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
You're right about low frequencies being felt more than heard, that's because those sounds are very large compressions and rarefactions of air molecules. It literally is a tangible sensation. Perhaps you didn't understand this, because there's also no way you could be cooked by your music. Music isn't on the "electromagnetic list". It's an entirely different phenomena (namely, sound, rather than light.)
I've never heard of a scientific study that showed our eardrums are actually sensitive higher than 20kHz (and it's usually a lot lower.)
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
... is CPPM, cousin of CPRM. It is interesting in the way that it has revocation of hacked devices built in. A quick overview is here, but there is much more info available on the net.
Is this all the article says? I can't find anything else...
How come you don't mention the fact that SACD allows for dual layers: one CD-player-readable (in good ole 16/22k), the other SACD-player-readable only (in 24/96, as I remember). SOme remastered titles coming out soon will show up in the regular CD bin and sell for less than $20. And if/when you upgrade to SACD, that same disc will play in the better audio quality.
As for differences not being audible, well, let's just say that for you silly bastards listening to Britney, YOU don't need any more audio quality (hell do you even need the audio?). For those of us whose ears aren't made out of crap (and who actually LISTEN to our music), the difference in sound quality is amazing and greatly desired (CD SUCKS compared to new vinyl on a good analog turntable).
You can't hear any occasional click on heavy metal anyway because it's so damned distorted. That was the guy's point. And second, most of that increased fidelity is psychosomatic - if you listen hard enough, you will hear that crap from CD's. Finally, any increase in fidelity on vinyl is for the first play - after that, it deteriorates pretty quick, and I don't care how good your needles are.
I would like to see some of these audiophiles take the Pepsi challenge on a piece of musoic they haven't heard, and see if they can tell the difference to a 95% confidence interval. And recognizing the one with the nasty analog hiss doesn't count.
Luddites.
-Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat
I picked up a Sony DVD player that happens to do SACD as well (my old player died.)
I have several Mobile Fidelity CDs in my collection, which typically cost me $5-7 more than regular CDs. The use of gold in the discs was more gimic than useful, but the care they took in doing the A/D conversion to avoid clipping led to a tremendous improvement in sound quality.
I have yet to buy even one SACD, despite having the equipment to make use of the format (and hear the difference.) Clearly it isn't the price difference, or I wouldn't have paid extra for MFSL CDs when they were in business.
Could it be the complete and utter lack of material that I want to hear? Nothing but classical, jazz, and modern "artists" who have been so over-processed that any sense of realism isn't on the master in the first place! Not one decent transfer of single-miked blues, rock, live performances, etc.
Billy Idol "VH1 Storytellers", Days of the New first album, Blondie's recent "No Exit", Eric Clapton "Unplugged" -- any of these albums would probably be worth upgrading to SACD, if they were available.
As usual, it is the record companies themselves that are killing improved technology by their own blatant stupidity. How many years did it take for their boneheaded audio engineers to realize that pushing A/D converters to the point of clipping sounded like crap compared to the soft-clipping that occured with analogue media? Even now I still hear a lot of CDs that were obviously mastered by people who just don't understand the importance of avoiding digital clipping.
Most self-proclaimed "audiophiles" who buy crap like DiscWasher or played with the green magic markers are actually mid-fi enthusiasts who think that multi-channel amps are "audiophile" equipment. True audiophile equipment is just basic, clean designs manufactured in small quantities with extra high quality components.
To try to make a reasonable analogy, let me try comparing "beef products." Sony, Pioneer, JVC, are the McDonalds/Burger King of audio, with Carver, Polk, Infinity, et. al. being comparable to Wendy's (i.e. the latter is a little better, but still mass market fast food.) Real audiophile equipment from Conrad-Johnson, Sonic Frontiers, et. al. are prime steak at a 4-5 star restaurant in comparison, with a corresponding increase in price and service.
If all you want is "something to eat" (listen to), don't care about ambience (soundstage, depth, air, detail), or dump ketchup all over everything (failure to properly position speakers, seating, use quality cabling, etc) you're not going to be impressed with a $30 steak compared to a $5 burger.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I poked around and found a few articles on psycho-acoustics that talk about 20Khz+ sounds being percieved. All I know is that sounds higher than 20Khz tend to piss myt dogs off. :)
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
If I just listened to music in my living room, a format change might not be that big of a deal. I bought a DVD-A to try, and the multichannel sound was really nice...but now I have two copies of the CD. One I can listen to in my living room only; the other I can play in my desktop, laptop, car, and portable digital mp3 player.
I don't have the funds at the moment to buy a new audio player even if I wanted SACD for my living room, much less for my car and computer if they chose to make them available.
I'm happy with my "poor quality" CDs, especially since I haven't bought a new one since the RIAA and the music industry as a whole worked to make MP3.com's my.mp3.com service not nearly as convenient or useful. I would gladly pay for a service like that, but it's gone with no indication from the music industry that they will offer something similar - or better. They haven't made significant progress in offering a digital solution that isn't bound to a physical media.
I want to be able to play my music in my living room, on my digital MP3 player, on my computers and in my car without buying essentially the same thing 4 different times. As far as I see it, "regular" CDs are the only thing that fits the criteria.
Music is a luxury item, and I can certainly live without it until I'm offered something with significant value to me, which is not just quality (which I most likely won't be sensitive enough to notice anyway) and multichannel surround sound.
I love audio. I have noticed a lot of negative posts bashing SACD and DVD-a. Belive me, I know what I am talking about. DVD-a and SACD do sound better, much much better than cd. Yes, I have heard them both. No, the audio track on an sacd or dvd-a is not the same quality as a DVD movie, it is much better. Did you know that 3 minutes worth of Dolby Digital audio on a DVD movie only takes about 15 megs? I know, I rip dvds all the time. To me, a CD sounds flat, and don't even get me started on MP3. Don't bash the two formats becuase you think they are just trying to get you to buy copy protection, the DO sound much better.
What signature defines me as a person?
Just the title for this had me laughing. People in my office are staring at me. Been a while since a /. post did that. Thanks =)
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
As one of the people unsatisfied with CD quality sound, I am heartened that the industry is (finally!) stepping up to the bar and trying to produce genuinely musical sound.
:)
Great for you! For the rest of us who only have two non-superhuman ears that can only hear 20Hz-20KHz, CDs are good enough.
When I say that, I mean a DVD-A title that didn't start from previously recorded material. It was a Bobby Short DVD-A titled "Piano". And here's what I learned while working on that project.
First - you don't have to worry about either SACD or DVD-A. Until most consumers are into their 3rd generation of DVD player, chances are, they won't buy a unit that plays DVD-As. The only reason they WOULD buy one is because they bought a universal player, which plays CDs, DVD-V and DVD-A formats (along with mp3s more than likely).
Next - consumers really don't want better sound. I had this argument a lot with various people involved in the project. Most people are content to listen to 128kbps mp3s... so the demand for a 5.1 or a 10.2 96k/24 bit surround sound mix is pretty friggin' low. People don't listen to music like they watch movies - meaning they don't sit in the sweet spot of the room for the course of the song/album - so DVD-A is largely wasted. It's true that DVD-As sound phenomenal... but really... are there enough people that care to made the switch inevitable?
Here's the biggest reason: royalties. One thing we found while making our DVD-A is that everytime we used a song on the DVD-A... the publisher wanted money. This means they want $0.08 when we used the song as a music track, $0.08 when we used it in the background of some video footage, $0.08 when we included the sheet music and $0.08 when Bobby played a portion of the song as a demonstration on the video portion of the disc. So now, a song that should have cost $0.08 has now cost $0.32. How many times can this be done before it becomes cost prohibitive?
The legal issues with regard to liscensing have yet to work themselves through to the point to where any reasonable producer would want to navigate them. (Our solution was to only use stuff multiple times that was in the public domain.)
There's more... but I'll stop there. Everybody who thinks this is a RIAA ploy can put the keyboards down. It's not. I've often wondered why Record Companies haven't already switched to DVD-V... where there is CSS which is already backed up by the DMCA (for better or worse). It would cover their ass better for pirated material AND make the music have better fidelity in the process. Plus, they could get over dumbass enhanced CDs and put the material on a disc that could be viewed on a TV, or at least with really good clarity on a computer monitor. But RC's don't think that way. Truthfully, the mere thought that somebody is download their songs *right now* has kept them in a state of suspended animation ever since Napster became a household word. To think that copy protection is even a secondary consideration behind the move to DVD-A (I can't speak for SACD) would be to give the companies behind the push too much credit.
Let's see, with 5.1 we have forward-backward and left-right... that is... 2 Dimensions!
If you want 3-D sound, try out binaural recordings.
Does anyone remember quadraphonic sound? The 8-track? Show me that we have made a big leap up this mountain of diminishing marginal returns.
"All that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Not very, that is. This arrangement is the worst possible, since you will have 100% phase cancellation (in theory). In reality, your bass-to-low/midrange will fade out, and you will have no imaging or soundstage. This effect will vary greatly due to diffraction, leading to large changes in sound depending on where your head is.
The reason headphones work is that all of the sound is going into your ears: no possibility for cancellation. Personally, I much prefer loudspeakers for "thre dimentionality."
take a disc that has both on it and switch between the two on a capable system. i hate audiophiles yet i could tell the difference. i wouldn't buy anything without dts capability these days since it should not cost any more. my dts capable pioneer dsx-509s receiver was around $250 at costco 18-24 months ago. (i don't have my rear speakers attached either)
Just how many DVDs have *you* ever seen that use PCM instead of AC3?
I have directly compared CD, SACD, DVD-A and LP. IMHO, LPs are, on the whole, shiny and black while the others are not.
--- What?
If you had a bat's extended hearing range, and you listened to a sampling of music from everywhere & everytime...... ....would the music sound better, or worse? Would great symphonies sound like garbage once additional freqs. get thrown in? Or would they be even more amazing than before?
Yeah, I'm a stoner....
Remember Quad back in the 70's? (oh yeah, nobody here is over 35 ;->) They said it would do for music what color did for TV. When is the last time you listened to a quadraphonic sound system?
When CD came out the average stereo fidelity was sufficiently lousy that people flocked to it. Not any more. IMO people have other things to spend their money on.
As soon as I buy a Betamax VCR, a laserdisc player, a DAT player, a MiniDisc player, a digital television, and all those other formats that have "better reproduction quality" while also charging me 2x-3x as much and limiting my options in purchasing media and/or recording.
"An added bonus for record companies and retailers, who are engaged in a battle against piracy, is that the relative complexity of DVD-Audios and SACDs makes them much harder to copy. At the same time, that might turn some consumers off the format."
This from "the no-shit-Sherlock dept."
Until you have an outstanding listening environment (think about the high-end listening room at a good electronics store), there is no reason to invest in audiophile-grade reproduction equipment. Without that equipment, the added quality on the new formats will be wasted. VERY few people have the location or the equipment to make use of anything beyond CD quality.
Oh, and you listen with your ears. Independant of any abuse (rock concerts, jet engines, heavy equipment, shooting, etc.) that your ears may suffer as time goes along, you lose the ability to hear high frequencies as you age (starting around age 20). The rule used to be that by the time you could afford a real stereo, you didn't need one any more.
These new formats are really solutions in search of a problem.
There are two kinds of societies: sustainable and doomed.
Ya gotta be kidding me! They're still talking about moving sound on little plastic things??
Have any of you done the math? WAR-driving + PTP + digital sound = connectionless music transfers!
The house tranceives with the headset, the car, the neighbors.
Other pithy remarks:
"6 channels? dude, i can't afford to get more ears."
"BUY NOW! Better quality format of the same bad radio fodder!"
CD's gave several compelling reasons to change format from vinyl. The sound was better, true, but I thing that at the heart of it, most people were interested in the medium because it was A) less fragile than vinyl (scratches), B) more durable than tapes (S T R E T C H), and C) let you skip easily from track to track. The fact that you wouldn't wear out your recordings, and therefore wouldn't have to buy the same album more than once, was a major inducement. With almost no care, a CD sounds as good the thousandth listening as it does the first. Not so with tapes or vinyl. Recordability is a more recent perk that pretty much completed the package. I don't see people making expensive changes in format for incremental improvements (in a subjective experience.)
Since I have a decent DD5.1 setup with some nice B&W speakers, I'm going to buy a DVD-A disc to test out.
I can't tell the difference between the a CD and a compressed MP3, nor can I distinquish an OGG from an MP3, but I bet I'll hear a big difference from 2 Channel Stereo to 5.1 Channel DD.
It all boils down to what you've got. If you've got the DVD player and a decent DD setup, what have you got to lose? $20?
I'm not gonna run out to the store and by a newfangled DVD player, DD receiver and speakers just because Sony and others have this new technology... I already have all that.
:wq!
Oh, great. So for the 99% of the population that doesn't listen to Pat Metheny, we get pop-rock at "better quality".
"Oh, I'll just pop this SACD into my bookshelf boombox and whisk off to music nirvana!"
Dude, remember that for most of us, our headphones primary material is tape.
He must work for toshiba.
If any of you heard the difference of a well sampled DVD-Audio or SACD track you would probably understand that this isn't all about copy-protection. Go to a local home theater shop and take a listen and you'll understand where the hype about multichannel music is coming from.
Yes its true that CD quality audio is great and is more than enough for some but wasn't there at time when the same was said about previous media?? These formats are not just about replacing the CD, its not a minidisc, its not DAT. Its not just a different media its a whole new process all the way back to how the original recording is mastered.
Yes, eventually the protection schemes will be broken but this isn't much of a benefit in my head... its not just about ripping music, everything will have to be layed in a way the player can decode the info and give true multichannel music which is one of the major purposes of the new formats. Furthermore, at least SACD discs can contain the normal CD layer, making it also playable in regualr CD players that exist today.
Is it for everybody, NO, will it eventually be? Only time will tell. HDTV isn't a neccesity but its a damn good thing to have if you can afford it!
I don't know why there's this abundance of bashing, just because people might not be able to steal music as easily. Hey I download MP3's just like the next guy but I can't blame the recording industry for introducing technology that makes it harder for me to do so... as long as it doesn't degrade the audio data (ie watermarking). If they can get past the format war between the two, I am all for better sound!
I'm not an audiophile (once I became a working musician I gave up on "money no object" sound), and I'm not in a hurry to replace the 400+ LP collection I have. But, I'm not as annoyed with this change as I was with the LP-to-CD one.
First, the hardware is already out and affordable. The Sony receiver I just bought is plugged into the CD player with an optical cable, and already understands CD and SACD. This is off-the-shelf stuff from Best Buy, not some stereo nerd store. So, I can listed to new and old formats on the same machine.
Second, Sony and someone else already are producing CD and SACD encoding on the same physical platter (didn't I read about this on Slashdot a few weeks ago?). So I get the new experience at home, and when I stick the disk in my car with the older player, it will play the CD format.
Seems to be that this will be a nice smooth transition, with media slowly being converted to dual use and I don't have to buy another copy of any of the CDs I already bought.
Unless that DVD version is what everyone goes to. Then I'm screwed again.
Sleep is for the Weak
You can play 4 notes a thousand different ways. Rhythm (alone is a huge variety), pitch, tempo, chorus, etc. I don't buy it. I guarrentee if you took a 4-note progression, you could make it into a techno song, a classical song, a vocal song, and a rock song that all sound completely different and most people wouldn't identify it as the same melody.
Just once, I'd like my in-dash audio doo-dad to last as long as the dash!
I'm a little confused as to how they can claim higher quality if these are going to be watermarked. Unless this is no longer the watermarking that is designed to still be detectable after MP3 compression?
Good constipation = I still have enough energy to read a newspaper or anything off the back of shampoo bottles
...if you run WinXP and have a (just released) Creative Audigy2.
Yes, creative is the first company to provide software to play NATIVE DVD-A (native as in MLP and no the DVD-V compatibility mode).
The down-side is that the DVD-A player will disable digital output, will only output to the Audigy2 card and is part of the whole DRM/trusted driver/junk from MS.
I give it a couple of months until it is cracked wider than a Xing! and we can all listen to DVD-A on our own sound-cards. Or make multi-channel Ogg files from it...
The Panasonic system is more than a receiver, fortunately. It came with all necessary speakers to do 5.1, save the dedicated sub. The main front speakers have built-in subs, though (obviously not as good as a dedicated, but they put out decent, warm bass). It also has a 5-disc CD changer that plays CD-R/RW discs as well. Two digital audio inputs (coax & fiber), two analog audio inputs, tape deck, radio tuner, etc. Puts out somewhere in the range of 320W total power (don't know if that's RMS or not) to all the speakers. As I said before, I don't have the rears hooked up, but the power to the fronts is decent - more than loud enough to bother the neighbors and quite crisp in a carpeted room.
:)
If it were just about a receiver, I'd have gotten something w/ DTS capability, since my DVD player has that capability as well. But, given that I was replacing the whole bit with an all-in-one system, I thought $250 for a Dolby Digital system wasn't too bad. Better than the $500-$600 Sony system
It's even better than that. If you record in high quality digital right now (like many studios do, at 24-bit/96kHz) then you're already recording SACD converted to PCM, because most A/Ds now are delta-sigma at that resolution anyway.
So, even if you're not using SACD, per se, your converter already is in a sense. Wouldn't it make more sense to just store and process it that way? That's how SACD was born.
I have a decent DD5.1 setup with some nice B&W speakers,
I can't tell the difference between the a CD and a compressed MP3,
Either you have a hearing problem, or you haven't played your MP3's on your B&W system. The loss of fidelity is VERY obvious on any system with a reasonable frequency response.
I'm not gonna run out to the store and by a newfangled DVD player, DD receiver and speakers
Yes, I can see the investment to show off DVD-A running into good money. You probably will want two additional speakers, a player, and a reciever with 6 channel audio in. Fortunately for me, my HT system has everything except the player.
Just how many DVDs have *you* ever seen that use PCM instead of AC3?
All of them. Of course, they usually have both.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I also found an interesting discussion of DVD-V and it's use for audio. It can master at 24-bit/96KHz using desktop pc hardware which is the apparent limit of the human ear and nearly the limit at which thermal noise caps the precision of the electronics (see the above link). Could this be an "open" alternative to these audiophile formats?
Maybe you will get consumers to listen to DVD-A at home in their audio system. CD's have some very real quality limitations and the times I've heard DVD-A on newly mastered material it sounded better than CDs. I do question what advantage DVD is going to have with, say "Abbey Road".
The big problem to me is going to be handling the ORIGINAL DVD-A in the car, boat, portable player, DVD drive at work, laptop etc.
Until I can make a copy of the DVD I bought, and use it in the ubiquitous fashion I use CD's now, I AIN'T INTERESTED.
Well,
A third, fourth, fifth, and sub channel do wonders for music reproduction. For a case in point, try watching the movie "Amadeus" and listen to the opera music shift to the back channels as the movie cuts from rehearsal to performance. You are treated to the soundscape of a hall, and the resulting is enveloping and breathtaking.
This is simply 5.1 channel music. It sounds better.
So many of you are whining and complaining about new formats, but have any of you actually listed to DVD-Audio? Two years ago, my favorite album, Brain Salad Surgery by Emmerson, Lake, and Palmer was released on DVD-Audio. Most DVD-Audio discs have a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on them so that they'll play in a regular DVD-Player, so I decided to try it on my roommate's mammoth 5.1 Dolby Digital system.
So far, DVD-Audio has done nothing but impress me. While I don't think the average music customer isn't going to rush out and buy it, the technology will eventually become cheap, like CDs, and thus ubiquous. It is copyable with DECSS, but only a lossy version. Read on for an account of my personal DVD-Audio experience.
At the time I was expecting the same CD-quality sound with some gimmicky surround effects, but I was wrong! I thought I knew the recording, but notes that were hidden in the stereo mixed opened up and sang out when played on 5.1. I later went back and listened to my old stereo copy, and the notes were there, but just hidden in the mix.
When my DVD-player went, I decided that I was going to pay the extra $100 for true DVD-Audio. (24bit/96khz discrete instead of 20bit/48khz/lossy.) It was worth it. The difference was that I could actually hear cymbals in Core by Stone Temple Pilots, or the virbrato in the guitars of the Greatful Dead.
Do I think the format is for everyone? Certainly not. The only people who will notice are those who sit and listen to their music instead of putting it in the background. Do I think it's doomed to failure? Well, it's very easy for a DVD player to support it by upgrading the DACs and software, thus manufacturers will probably add it just to give their players one more feature over the competition. Also, as DVD drives get cheaper, it'll probably enter low-end players in 10 years.
Can you copy it? Most (90% or more) have a DVD-Video compatible version with a dolby-digital compressed audio track. It can probably be extracted with DECSS, and it uses about half of the bitrate of conventional CD.
Is it worth replacing our vinyl and CDs? I think it's worth replacing my favorite recordings, but I'll keep using my old CDs and records forever.
99% of the titles released now on regular CD could be of better quality too. I have found some very good quality CD's from Telarc and a few others. The rest are far below par. Lack of dynamic range being the most overlooked, background noise not much better. IMHO, simply adding more channels is not going to automatically improve the sound. Quality controls need to be used if better sound is the goal.
I have a mid range Yamaha reciever with Dolby Pro Logic 2 and some other 5 channel modes. It is possible to get decent multichannel sound out of a regular audio cd with the optical input and if the source material is good quality. A bad quality disc is still bad in multichannel. Not a good apples to apples comparison because it was not indented to be multichannel.
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Most of the music recorded more than 20 years ago was recorded using techniques significantly sub-par to even CD quality. Much of the music since then (garage, punk, indie, etc.) is recorded by amateur engineers also on sub-par equipment. Still this music can be as engaging as any Ultra-Dolby-THX-whatever recording.
Clearly sound quality has almost no effect on the emotional and intellectual content of a great song, in the same way as print quality has little effect on a great book.
CDs are convenient, fast, reliable - this is what the average consumer cares about, that's why I think they were so successful. These new formats do nothing to improve this (and are probably more fragile to boot!)
Either you have a hearing problem, or you haven't played your MP3's on your B&W system. The loss of fidelity is VERY obvious on any system with a reasonable frequency response.
Actually, I have an overclocked Athlon XP 1700 with 3 case fans and no headphones... Even with a nice set of headphones (Closed On-Ear) I wouldn't be able to drown out 3, 5400RPM 3" muffin fans.
:wq!
I agree. I am one of many who never really embraced the sound of CDs. And believe me I am no audiofile snob. Unfortunately unless you are under the age of 35 you may have never owned a vinyl LP. Yes, the record industry put out some really crapping cheap vinyl records in the early eighties due to high oil prices. The vinyl was brittle, scratched really easy and collected dust quickly due to static increasing the needle distortion and sound loss. However, I know some will think I am crazy but distortion aside, I always felt that LP's offered a noticably richer sound even on "MID-FI" equipment than CDs. Honestly, try concentrating on the sound of the bass on most CDs, can you really pick it out as a separate instrument? When the CD format first debuted back in the mid-eighties, The New Republic ran a great in depth cover article predicting the potential impact of the CD. If anyone can find a reprint of the article it would make a great post. The article's opinion was that CD was a highly compromised format rushed into the market place due in part to the the massive losses Sony was taking on the Beta-Max, forcing them to pressure their partner Phillips to roll out the format before it was truely perfected. Because the CD format carried far less Audio information than any analog LP, what was produced was a cleaner yet less rich, less realistic/interesting sound due to sampling. This was true for Jazz, Classical or any complex Rock/Pop recording. There was political oppostion at the time to the CD at the time. Complaints that the Record & Electronics Industry was forcing a new format on the public. The recording industry countered that the CD format was going to be a better product for the masses, in part because over time the CDs were going to be cheaper to produce than vinyl resulting in better prices for the public. Yeah, what a joke. Overnight, the Recording industry rushed the CD into the market. Does anyone remember how bad some early CD's sounded becaused they were not remixed to compensate for the reduced digital sampling rate of CDs? Years ago here in Chicago, WXRT would play some of really poorly mastered CD's and compare them to their LPs. It was pathetic to hear how bad a job the record industry did transfering the sound to CDs. But the record industry did not care because years later they would pony up the money and have a Jimmy Page or George Martin remaster the sound for CDs and make another fortune. Face it if you are under 30 have you ever heard any Classic Rock/Pop on anything other than CD or MP3???? Likewise I bet much SACD/DVD audio will not sound any better initially unless the music is once again remastered for the new format. So watch out for the Record industry to pull the same hustle. The New Republic article predicted that Jazz and Classical fans would never really embrace the CD format. That was simply because there was vastly more musical information per second then what could be fitted on to a 700 megabyte CD. Likewise, they predicted that Rock/Pop would increasingly be dominated by digitally sampled sounds and the would become a lot less interesting. Sure enough out went rock/pop recording that featured great musicians and singers in came Puff Daddy and Britney. If the SACD format works I would buy it if it is priced at or below current CD prices. And Congress should demand this because the Record industry is going the make another fortune reharvesting their back catalogs. Also, since Record industry was just found guilty of price fixing and is now mostly a Horzontal/Vertical monoply (Think SONY). Congress needs to be really tough this time. Congress should protect both fair use rights and file sharing so one can make copies to be play on legacy audio & portable equipment. The introduction of SACD/DVD Audio should be an oportunity for reaching of a compromise to the benefit of all. Now the theory that the true music fan is the one who downloads samples and is only trying out an inferior version of the music they love would be surely true because they now for the first time they would have the option of buying the clearly superior SACD version. The fair weather fan who was happy with a crappy MP3 probably was not going to buy the SACD version anyway. Since it would be years before anyone has the bandwidth or disk space to download the gigs of data to approximate true SACD quality, peer to peer should not be an issue again for years to come. Better, yet by actually incouraging file sharing Congress could get Broadband Industry jump started again which would really help the economy. I agree with much that is said here in oppostion to the RIAA. It would be tragic if the RIAA was able to kill off Peer to Peer file sharing now. Because RIAA realizes the potential of the Internet for marketing their product they want to control distribution of Music Samples (MP3, Ogg Vorbis or whatever) and turn it into their own big business monoploy. The RIAA and Clear Channel have already killed Local/Internet Radio now they want to control what could be their biggest competitor. As always Slashdot is the place the learn/discuss about these issues.
16 vs. 24 bits becomes very important when dealing with recordings with a wide dynamic range. CD's 16 bit resolution can become a very audible limitation during quiet passages in (mostly jazz/classical) recordings, even without super-high-end speakers/amps. Turn the stereo up really loud on a very quiet part of a recording some time and check out the grainy/unclear quality. With 24 bits, you can get CD quality using only the bottom 1/256'th of the available dynamic range.
44.1kHz vs. 48/96/192kHz is more questionable. The only real advantage over 44.1 is that cheaper analog to digital converters can be used. It is neccessary to place a filter on audio at 1/2 the sampling frequency before it is converted to digital (to prevent aliasing distortion.)
At 44.1, this filter needs to be very steep (get rid of almost all information above 22.05k, but leave the theoretically audible 20k alone.) Good sounding, very steep "brick wall" filters are not cheap/easily designed. At 96k, the filter can be very smooth (cheaper) and have no trouble getting rid of 48k and up, while leaving 20k completely unblemished.
... also, I can kill you with my brain.
Let's see:
- Philips introduces the audio cassette in 1963.
- 1963+17=1980.
- CD-audio format introduced in 1982. Philips and Sony are the major companies involved.
- 1982+17=1999
- DVD format introduced in 1995 (Philips/Sony, Toshiba & Warner), with US launch in 1997 and DVD-audio(1.0) by 1999.
Of course, having something new, doesn't make it commercially successful. But add the hype I remember in Nov/Dec 1998, and you have a popular new format.It seems that if patents expired in 40 years instead of 17, we'd only now be introduced to CD-audio format.
This is not my sig.
You can play 4 notes a thousand different ways. Rhythm (alone is a huge variety)
I've already taken rhythm into account in my model.
pitch
The hook of "Hallelujah Chorus" is still the hook of "Hallelujah Chorus" no matter what key you transpose it to.
tempo, chorus, etc.
Inconsequential. The legal standard for copying is whether two melodies are "substantially similar", not whether their performances match exactly.
I guarrentee if you took a 4-note progression, you could make it into a techno song, a classical song, a vocal song, and a rock song that all sound completely different and most people wouldn't identify it as the same melody.
Oh really? Tell that to George Harrison.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I have a modest home theater system, and I just bought a low-end Sony DVD player. Turned out it had SACD playback, so I bought a copy of the Dave Brubeck SACD mentioned in the article. It really sounded alot smoother and more detailed than a CD did. I listened to that album three more times that night. I couldn't get enough of the sound.
While it's not good enough for me to run out and replace my CD collection, it's good enough that most of my new music purchases will be SACD.
True, but you're talking about genres. Genres can be finite, too.
Remember, the story is just a concept.
Not only that, but 80 years from now, the RIAA could have made bought their definition of copyright to suit them. Who knows... 4 notes in that order, no matter what the genre, could fit their definition.
Of course, they could also copyright the letter's "R", "I", "A"...
so that we'd h_ve to wr_te l_ke th_s.
While I don't doubt that you believe you can hear a difference, it is highly unlikely that what you perceive is something that you can attribute to real physical phenomina. There have yet to be any published studies which show a difference between 96kHz/24 bit and a downsampled 44.1kHz/16 bit double-blind, level-matched presentation of the same source material.
If you'd like to conduct some experiments on yourself to see how good your hearing really is, I highly recommend going to PCABX.com and going through some of the materials there.
As an aside, even comparing the "CD-Compatible" layer on many SACDs isn't necessarily a fair comparison. Some record companies modify the equalization settings between the different pressings and even down-sampled versions are perceived as different.
Heck, even a 0.5 dB change in level is small enough that most people don't perceive it as a level difference, but large enough that they perceive it as being "more airy" or "detailed" or whatever.
While high-resolution formats might have advantages on the production/mixing side, and certainly on the DRM side, they have yet to be demonstrated that they show any real advantage to the consumers.
- AlanH
well you could get that deaf and dumb blind kid...but he's out playing pinball.
There is a lot of fun to be had with 5.1 - it's a good gimic for SciFi flicks and the such. With popcorn in a bowl and some friends over - 5.1 with a cool subwoffer can't be beat.
For pure audio, with the lights dimmed and all distractions removed - I just prefer my audio to come out of a good amp with two excelent speakers - or better yet - excelent headphones.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
Well, I suppose you're suggesting that we can differentiate only left and right. Then please explain how we can differentiate front and back as well (without moving our heads)? Maybe sound reproduction is a bit more complex than you realize. Maybe you don't know what you're talking about?
I for one could hear distinct differences between CD's and vinyl on superb classical recordings. However, you are right about me being anal....
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
I have yet to hear a classical recording where the microphone preamp hiss and ambient noise (air conditioning, etc) doesn't significantly exceed the quantizing noise floor of 16-bit PCM.
As for designing steep filters, that's quite easy to do digitally with oversampled A/D converters. That's why this technique is so popular.
after introducing gestapo-DRM, the SA-CD was inevitable...
A Song of Reproduction:
High Fidelity
Hi-Fi's the thing for me
With an LP disc and an FM set
And a corner reflex cabinet
High frequency range
Complete with auto-change
All the highest notes neither sharp nor flat
The ear can't hear as high as that
Still I ought to please any passing bat
With my High Fidelity
[...]
High decibel gain
Is easy to obtain
With the tone control at a single touch
Bel canto sounds like double Dutch
But I never did care for music much,
It's the high fidelity.
IMO, the gloat factor that drives people to buy such things is not really there, as they're all buying HDTV sets and Home Theater speaker systems instead, and buying DVDs instead of CDs.
Well I don't know what weird ass kind of DVDs you get, but all the ones I've ever seen only had AC3 audio. They may have had 3 or 4 different audio tracks, but they were all AC3. Just what titles do you have that have PCM on them?
This may be the point at which I learn to play the guitar and start a band. Unless of course musical instruments get hw encrypted, to keep people from playing music they -GASP- "heard".
The RIAA labels can either dump the DRM and push CDROM-DVDROM drive vendors into carrying compatible computer drives or wait for the replacement market to slowly build up a SACD/DVD-audio userbase before they can resell us our record collections again as they did after the transition to vinyl... their choice.
I doubt they can afford to wait another 10 years before they can do this, but that's going to be the problem of whoever their replacements will be who will be buying their content for 5 cents on the dollar as they take their new Internet-optimized business models online.
For those who don't believe that a profitable digital model for content distribution is possible (i.e. any employees of RIAA labels reading this post), it took me longer to type out a description of a workable model than it did to come up with one... and I believe that mine isn't the only workable one in the solution space. Go back through my posts if you want to read what I came up with.
The RIAA labels are past the "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" point.
They now are a joke. Unfortunately, they're taking such a tediously long time about dying, and like the dinosaurs, you don't want to be under any as they fall... i.e. P2P users beware.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I've got several concert DVD's and video collections that have 48/16 PCM, and one DVD Video (Sara K) that has 96/24 PCM.
Some of my older (and cheaper) Simitar DVD's also use PCM, probably because they were too cheap to pay for AC-3 encoding.
It's not terribly common, but it's not that rare.
Go pick up one of the new Rolling Stones CD's that's been remastered and has a CD Audio as well as an SACD layer. Find an SACD player in a store somewhere you can listen to (preferably that isn't in the middle of a loud showroom). Virtually every player should let you switch between the SACD and CD layers, though you'll have to stop the disc to do so. Listen to a track like "Gimme Shelter" in CD, then in SACD, and you should instantly hear a difference. They're using the same masters for both of them, so they aren't degrading them at all, and you might want to buy a Rolling Stones disc anyway!
I can't comment on this since I don't generally seek out raw data on acoustics tests, but the difference is so obvious to me that I'm surprised someone hasn't done it yet.
If you'd like to conduct some experiments on yourself to see how good your hearing really is, I highly recommend going to PCABX.com [pcabx.com] and going through some of the materials there.
From the website: PCABX IS NOT intended to be a general replacement for properly-designed listening tests involving audio equipment that is already in your listening room.
I'll definitely concede that the average listener doesn't benefit from anything better than CD "quality", just like there are people who can't understand why someone would bother seeking out and paying for an centuries-old Stradivarius violin or a handmade Spizzichino ride cymbal. But there are people who care about these things and can tell, just like there are people who choose KDE over Gnome. Don't lump everyone in with the frat boys.
To be fair to the technology itself, a lot of the problem with the sonics of contemporary music is in the mastering. I do a fair amount of audio recording and while I definitely prefer 24 bit, recording something in 16 bit and simply leaving off the compression makes it sound a lot more natural (imagine that). But 24 vs 16 bit is definitely audible, just like 2" tape vs 16 bit is definitely audible. Some people can't tell, but then again some people think Britney Spears is good music. If they're happy with 16/44.1, more power to them. It doesn't affect those people in any way if I opt for 24 bit for as many links in the production chain as possible.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Anyone ever seen those commercials warning about the dangers of tobacco in cigarretes? I think its the-truth.com, not sure. Somebody needs to make a website like that, but warning the consumers against these marketing ploys to take our money. I'm talking about warning consumers about DRM in their computers hardware and OS, copy protected "CD's" (they're not really cd's since they don't follow the red book standard....), and now this copy protected SA-CD bull. Maybe we can start an organization or something.
Exactly. People upgraded from vinyl and cassettes to CDs because vinyl was hefty and inconvenient and was highly susceptible to wear and tear and scratches, while cassettes had the annoyance of having to fast-forward and rewind. Similarly, most people upgraded to DVD from VHS (though many are still on VHS only) for the convenience of not having to rewind, the smaller size, and the extra features on the DVD ... not for the quality.
With most people being content with MP3, which is a step down in quality from CDs, there's no way they're going to get the masses to pay extra just for a step up in quality.
Their best bet will be to sell hybrid SACDs for the same price or lower than current CDs, and hope that the added value will encourage a higher volume of purchases.
I personally won't be buying any SACD-only discs until
(1) I can copy them to my hard drive. If they're copy-protected it's too annoying to have to keep finding and changing physical CDs when I just want to sit back and relax and listen for hours. I rarely bought any CDs until MP3 and ripping came along a few years ago.
(2) Regular consumer hard drives become big enough to comfortably hold dozens of uncompressed SACD albums, like they can do now with uncompressed CD albums. There's no use in getting the extra quality just to wash it out with compression.
and
(3) my sound card, amplifier and speakers have all been upgraded so they can properly reproduce the SACD quality.
I don't see all those three events happening within the next decade.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
First of all, my background is that of a 'skeptical audiophile' with some non-trivial learning in electronics. If I had the money, I'd be running Bryston, Classe', etc.; the audiophile companies who back their sound with engineering. I've ABX'd (formally and informally) many bits of equipment, and heard substantial differences between amps, preamps, cd players, and all other sources.[1]
I say to you doubters that the CD format in its original form is as near to perfect as is possible with two channels.
HOWEVER, The excecution of a given CD is often quite poor. CDs are, let's not forget, relatively new technology; and more so now than ever before, the record companies are trying to make a quick buck without really working on the sound quality. The Great Old Classic (tm) albums were usually rushed to CD in the beginning of the format, where they got a really great noise floor but everything else got screwed up. Brubeck says in the article that 'Time Out' sounded much better on the SACD than on the original CD. Small wonder, since the original CD was only an average reproduction of the analog masters, or the (more) original vinyl.
If Miles Davis were alive, I'd be interested in hearing what he had to say about an SACD version of 'Kind of Blue' vs. the latest CD issue. There were three vinyl and four CD releases of that album before the current 'regular' release, and absolutely none of them have sounded as good as the latest CD. It is a breathtaking example of how good the CD format can get (with 40 year old analog masters, no less!), when proper care is put into it.
I'll say it again: There is nothing inherently wrong with the CD format. The occasional person who detects a lack of 'airiness' in a top quality CD vs. top quality vinyl of the same recording, is hearing a very low level of random-phase and random-channel noise. That's right, that airiness is your noise floor poking up into the very threshold of your hearing ability.
I won't dispute that vinyl at its best sounds brilliant, or that it sounds better than 90% of CDs out there, but the CD format is capable of (a) reproducing sound more accurately than vinyl ever will, and (b) reproducing sound more accurately than the human ear can hear.
As a tiny aside, consider that the same argument has been put forth against transistor amps, even though their shortcomings have long since been pushed to several orders of magnitude beyond any mammal's hearing.
[1] As for differences in cables, I've read (and done!) the math: If you can hear differences in cables in a properly controlled test, then you need new equipment! Get rid of that Naim stuff, and those tube amps, and get something that's engineered well!
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
These "new" improved formats don't allow for any digital signal processing whatsoever. That might not matter to the mass-market, but it is going to kill the audiophile appeal.
http://www.audioholics.com/techtips/specsformats/d vd_sacd1a.php
Fortunately, ogg vorbis already supports multiple channels. So, I can still get the benefit of them without the hassle of juggling physical discs - assuming the music I want to hear can be converted accordingly (and if I can't oggify it, I'm not gonna bother)
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
ok, WTF is this? Granted, i don't have the best ear for music, but I think 128kbps audio streams genearally sound fine. A standard audio CD, at 1X, has like 689kbps, per channel? I'm sure it'll sound just fine at 320, and you can fit twice as much (or 4x- cant remember is 128 is per channel or stereo), without drastically changing the technology.
Point being, they're just trying to justify releasing as little content as they do per disk. Yeah, with a normal CD you can only fit an hour and 15 minutes, but with a DVD, you could release the Complete Works of Pink Floyd on one disk, and probably have room for The Wizzard of Oz on the other side. But if each track is recorded in eleventeen channels, well then obviously you can still only fit an hour of music per disk and charge through the nose for double albums.
Accurately describes what the people who will eventually benefit from this (RIAA) currently and will, in future, do to the consumer. DVDA
You cannot hear the difference between good quality 10-12 guage lamp cord and $12/ft oxygen-free copper "certified digital" wires. The first key is "certified digital", which has jack shit to do with the analogue currents that run through the speaker wiring, and is just marketing buzzwords. The second is that all you usually get at $12/ft vs $0.12/ft. is a shielded jacket with painted arrows and cheap terminators (jacks/plugs/spades.)
Jump into the bottom end of audiophile cabling, such as MIT's old PC2 cabling at around $30-40/ft., and you will start hearing a difference in how clean the low frequency bass is controlled (assuming the rest of the equipment matches.)
Your comparison in a "corporate boardroom" is completely useless. I guarantee the speakers were buried in the walls or ceiling, not properly aligned drivers in tuned cabinets with high quality crossovers. Even the shittiest of speakers can have their sound improved significantly through proper placement. Typically you want them in the neighbourhood of 2-3 feet from the back wall and 2-3 feet from sidewalls in the case of typical bass reflex designs, with tweaking the positioning having a dramatic effect as you try to minimize standing bass waves.
A $1500 THX certified amp is not audiophile equipment. It is mid-fi, mass produced, and about half the price I paid for my amplifier (and mine is about as cheap as you get for what would even be considered by audiophiles.) Think about it -- that amp has at least 5 channels, which means the amplifier components themselves are roughly comparable to a $600 stereo amplifier. Ten years ago even Pioneer and Onkyo mid-fi amps cost more than that!
That $295.00 Sony DVD player you are comparing to actually has the same high-quality DACs used in their top of the line equipment. What you get with the top of the line SA series from Sony is discrete output circuitry instead of chip amps. With the amplifier and speaker setup you were using, I would be shocked if you could have heard the difference.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
and then try and tell us that there is no difference. You completely show your ignorance by posting your comment.
... you could substitute the appropriate words in your post and it would be the a perfect argument for getting better audio equipment.
You know
How many here knows what "Take 5" sounds like?
It's got lots of trumpet solos, these need high quality stereo. Try Christina Anguirala CD and DVD-A and let me know if you can tell the difference in a blind test. If it sounds like she's in the room, then it's gona be a selling product. Otherwise think about it. Those who can hear the difference has already been buying thier own CDs anyway.
Sorry, you're very misinformed. Phase cancellation happens when identical audio is played from two sources, one with its phase shifted 180 degrees. Since the signals are added, the phase-shifted signals add up to zero, meaning you theoretically hear nothing. Of course, once the sound is no longer an electrical signal, and it bounces around the room, you're bound to hear something other than nothing, but the point is that two speakers facing each other will not cause phase cancellation.
John
When CD's were release they have an almost exact digital sounds quality about them, as close to studio sound as you can expect.
I ditched my record player, I ditched tapes.
I am not going to upgrade my gear AGAIN for quality I personally (as most people are) not being an Audiophile will not be able to hear or appreciate.
I will not buy any new versions and will recommend (being an IT Manager and freelance consulting partner in a small firm) that no one purchase or support this change.
it is a thinly veiled attempt to increase security, but the cost to the consumer is IMO unbearable.
new discs and new equipment... no thank you, I am MORE THAN HAPPY with the sound quality I have now.
My current system runs sound emulation through all 6 speakers... and lets face it, the band stays in front of you the whole time... unlike in a movie where surrounding sound is important.... !!!
I strongly protest this grab for cash.
Anon Coward
Well I don't know what weird ass kind of DVDs you get
Fight Club. Just happened to be the first DVD i grabbed. The PCM is called Dolby Surround. All the Anime i have does PCM as well.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Hmmm, could this be because the dB SPL scale was originally designed so that 1 dB is the smallest increment of level change a human can detect??
While I don't doubt that you believe you can hear a difference, it is highly unlikely that what you perceive is something that you can attribute to real physical phenomina.
Your body recieves information about sound around you in many ways, not just through your ears. It's true that the average cap on hearing is a 20kHz, but that does not mean that frequencies above that don't make a difference to your overall experience of sound.
From Phil Karn's post:
I have yet to hear a classical recording where the microphone preamp hiss and ambient noise (air conditioning, etc) doesn't significantly exceed the quantizing noise floor of 16-bit PCM.
I think what you're trying to say, using as many buzzwords as possible, is that the noise of these bargain-bin, pre-1980 recordings that you like to listen to is audible during the quiet passages. Do you know what you're talking about? How exactly do you propose we remove noise that is above the S/N ratio point without affecting the music?
As for designing steep filters, that's quite easy to do digitally with oversampled A/D converters.
The filter has nothing to do with the converter. Furthermore, the post you're responding to said "cheaply and easily," and oversampling, while perhaps easy, is not cheap. You don't have oversampling converters in your discman, or even your boombox.
Wait, do you live in a PAL region? Because in PAL DVDs, either PCM or MP2 audio is required, and AC3 is only optional on top of that. In NTSC land, MP2 and AC3 are switched.
This is patently untrue. SACD is a proprietary format, and the only studios handling DSD audio streams would be those at Sony HQ. I should know since I manage an all digital commercial studio.
Very few studio's in the US have the equipment to handle SACD style digital audio because it is a totally new and incompatible approach to digital audio. Far from being simpler, the electronics required for SACD DSD are a total redesign for almost all pro audio equipment.
Most digital audio in studio's is shipped around using AES/EBU or ADAT lightpipe connections at typical CD resolution of 16 bit, 44 khz. Digital data format is usually a hard drive with a Pro Tools session, or downmixed to plain stereo audio files. DSD is far too exotic and expensive to compete.
The main digital editing system out there today is Pro Tools Mix, which tops out at 24 bit 48 khz. Pro Tools HD (24 bit, 44-192 khz resolution) only shipped earlier this year and is still in its infancy. Using 96khz sessions takes up twice the DSP power and twice the disk space, so people aren't exactly flocking to it.
I was at the AES show in LA last week. I saw the Sony SACD demo, but I didn't see any level of interest from studios using it in any form, except in the sense of sending off a final mix to Sony to get authored into an SACD. Studio's aren't about to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars converting to SACD. Hell, many of the big studios still run analog consoles!
FYI: "Dolby Surround" (a.k.a. Dolby 2.0) is *not* PCM, it's just decoded that way. It is a compressed track, usually at 2ch/192KBps.
I only own one DVD with real PCM, Massive Attack's "Eleven Promos". Most of the other music DVDs I own (Underworld's "Everything Everything", Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" etc.) have Dolby 2.0 tracks for their stereo audio. They're usually quite acceptable, too.
the fact that you mentioned Klipsch in your "God" setup indicated the shortcommings of Joe Consumer. Try some B&W or Martin Logan speakers. Klipsch, lol. You might has well have said Bose. /me watches the audiophiles vomit to the 'B' word...
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
With most people being content with MP3, which is a step down in quality from CDs, there's no way they're going to get the masses to pay extra just for a step up in quality.
In practice they would probably need to upgrade their entire sound system and ensure that the acoustics of the room were perfect to notice much of a difference. Most people just arn't into this, if they can hear it and there isn't any blatently obvious distortion then they are not going to notice.
Content, be it audio or video must simply be of sufficent quality for the average person.
Amd how are we going to put stuff we recorded in our vido camera in a media easily viewable in a TV set?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I just turned around a song out of my studio in just over 13 hours. Tracked, mixed, everything, most of all mastered to 16 bit CD format.
This was a very good lesson in how much is lost- even with the most hardcore esoteric wordlength reduction.
The tune is "Take A Number". This song was actually inspired from Slashdot- it comes out of those Columbine/Hellmouth threads and civil liberties threads, with lyrics like "and if any classmates are scary or fey/some nice men will come quick and take them away". Anyhow, I went through the entire recording process with this. It was recorded to a digital multitrack machine, but the summing was passive analog, and while setting up tracks I generally cranked up the instrument I was working on, heard it right up front clearly.
These 'solo' tracks, turned up loud, provided the clearest sound picture. I got familiar with exactly how each track sounded. Then working with the full mix over the passive analog mixer was an impressive experience- this is through analog 2-buss compression, but before any form of digital limiting or processing. The sound of this was freaking gi-normous, and that is what I'd like to dump to SACD. It was just huge, despite the digital sources. Technically the passive combining results in an effective resolution (minimum resolution to completely describe every sound) that is outlandishly huge, with no added noise to boot.
Capturing this to SPDIF, and monitoring over even 24 bit A/D to D/A, changed things a lot. The depth shifted somehow- the focus became more on the upfront things, and the massive scale of the analog/passive rig got quite a bit smaller.
Mastering that to 16 bit, even with highpass dither and IIR noise shaping, was another change in scale. If the same tonalities and balances were kept, the sound ended up a bit dull but without the energy or scale it'd had. Enter the mastering engineer- and the solution was to bring the focus still nearer. Result, a CD mastering that had as much of the liveliness of the original as possible- but the scale of the thing is totally, way off! It's like a choice- when you're down at 16 bits, you can have the scale, or you can have the liveliness- you can't get both at once. There's not enough data to carry it off, even in a best-case scenario.
Then of course I made an mp3 out of it, but there's no point even griping about that, it's so far from the original ;) with luck it can still blast out of people's stereos okay.
But I just wish I had access to SACD authoring. To do what I do the way I do it, I could take advantage of that. Not everybody could, but I do stuff the way I do it for a reason.
Yes... the Nyquist frequency is what this is called, exactly 1/2 the sample rate.
No human can hear above 20000 Hz.
Sorry, no... Average hearing is 20 Hz to 20 kHz. Children (and women!) can frequently hear higher, as can people who have protected their ears. I'm an audio professional, a member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers and a member of the Audio Engineering Society. I get my hearing tested annually, and NEVER go to a concert or club without earplugs. I can still hear 24 kHz pretty well, and 28 kHz (just barely) - as measured by the House EAR Institute.
So a higher sample rate is superfluous.
No - and before you say something like "well, maybe you can hear it, but most people can't", that's NOT the reason for a higher sampling rate.
If you're at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate, then you can't have anything going into your A-D converter above 22.05 kHz (the redbook standard says that you have to be 40 dB down by 22.05 kHz).
To have 20 kHz at a full level, and be down 40 dB just 10% of an octave later requires a filter that is as near to brickwall as you can get... And note that in low-pass filters, going down 6 dB in voltage changes your phase by 45 degrees. Steeper filter = much more phase distortion, all the way down the band for several octaves.
Oversampling gets around this to some extent, but causes problems of its own.
Now, if instead, you're sampling at 96 kHz, then you only have to be down 40 dB by 48 kHz... or about 30 dB per octave (or do a multiple stage filter, and have increasing effect as you get closer to 48). This pushes the phase problems up out of the audio band to where they no longer matter.
And a 16 bit quantization is essentially perfect for all music except that with an extreme dynamic range, and even then, only if you are anal.
Quiet room - 20 dB SPL.
Perfect 16-bit recording = 96 dB S/N
Loudest possible level = 116 dB SPL
I don't know about you, but I can sure hear louder SPLs than 116.
Then, add in the effect of non-perfect 16-bit recordings, some (even minor) allowance for headroom in the system, and you either get a lower overall level, or more noise.
24-bits, on the other hand, gives you a theoretical 148 dB S/N ratio... and at that point, that's pretty damn good, and you can start arguing that more than 24-bit is not necessary (though, that's not true about processing - my workstation has its internal math processing at 32-bit).
The 96 KHz sample rate on DVD audio is insane. And as for 5:1 surround sound, please note humans only have 2 ears...
Can you hear sound coming from behind you? I know I sure can. The shape of the ear reflects different frequencies in different ways and allows us to localize sounds (in addition to Intra-aural Time Difference and Intra-aural Amplitude Difference that allow us to localize high and low frequencies)
Due to the phantom image from the L-R pair, the center channel is not that important. It really came up in movie theaters, where the screen was so large that there were timing differences from one side of the house to the other, and so you could get audible phasing and delays if you were seated to the far left or right of the screen - by putting the dialog in mono in the center channel, you completely kill that problem. However, it's not necessary in home theaters, where the L-R speakers might have a separation of only 3-5 meters. However, most of the DVDs out there have the center channel for dialog, so we're kinda stuck with it. This is why quad came out for music rather than 5-channel. 'Course, it never caught on, but that's a different story.
One stipulation I will make, though, is that I'm not in favor of the .1 track... That's primarily there because people don't want to put large speakers all over the room - they'd rather have little satellite systems that don't go below 250 Hz, and a separate subwoofer that they can shove behind the sofa so their wives/girlfriends don't get mad.
You can get _much_ better sound with 5 matched full-range speakers.
-T
I'm sure it'll sound just fine at 320, and you can fit twice as much (or 4x- cant remember is 128 is per channel or stereo), without drastically changing the technology.
The bitrate is specified for both channels. So, a 128kbps MP3 has 64kbits allocated to each channel. As for 320kbps being good, it's generally accepted amongst audiophiles (at least, the ones that are willing to touch MP3 at all), that 256kbps is the ideal bitrate for "archive-quality" recordings. Funnily enough, it's also close to the bitrate of the ATRAC1 codec (not MDLP, which uses Sony's new ATRAC3 codec). The quality increase in going to 320kbps is generally considered not worth the extra space neeeded. At 256kbps (approximately a 5:1 compression ratio), you should fit 5 hours of audio per 700Mb CD-R. 128kpbs is the most common because it is considered the best compromise between quality and space (I personally think it can make difficult material sound like shit, so I normally encode at 256kbps). Battery times for MP3 players are usually calculated for 128kbps MP3s because higher bitrates require a faster data transfer rate (because the higher the bitrate, the more data stored for a given second of audio), which increases power consumption and reduces battery life. This is especially important on HDD-based players such as Creative's Nomad Jukebox series and the Archos Jukebox series.
As for the audio capacity of DVD-Audio and SACD, it'd depend greatly on the bitrate of the audio used. Is there a technical handbook a la the "Red Book" that gives technical details such as this? In order for there to be compatibilty a standard had to have been drafted. Given the capacity of DVDs (around 4.7Gb), DVD-Audio would still be able to hold a serious amount of music even if there were many channels. Even so, there would have to be a reasonable limit on the number of channels and so forth, because most people have at most a 5.1 setup anyway. Your fancy new DVD-Audio isn't going to sell well if it can only be played properly on the ÜberSystem 2002 the Jones's have in their living room.
----------
When the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is no longer our friend.
Something I haven't seen comment on is the claim that you need SACD or DVD-Audio to get 3 dimensional sound.
Complete bullshit.
The best way to get 3D sound is to record the source material in binaural, and use headphones.
In fact, given that most serious listening is done on headphones--not to mention all the people using iPods, MP3 players, Walkmans and so on--I'm surprised there aren't more binaurally-recorded albums released.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Measuring the distance between furniture to provide the appropriate distance for sound waves to expand...?
Um, no. Standing waves are caused when two surfaces are parallel and (at least somewhat) reflective - there will be some frequency (plus all of its harmonics) that has a wavelength exactly equal to the distance between the surfaces. As a result, when it reflects, it will come back perfectly in phase with the original signal and will add, and then reflect again, and add, and reflect again, etc. This is also known as a resonance.
As a side note, they can also occur in non-parallel areas, when some multi-path reflection forms such that the overall path has that same wavelength (or whole-number multiple of wavelength) distance.
Standing waves are usually noticed as being "standing" waves when they're lower frequencies - with a wave length of a foot (1 kHz), it's a little tricky to find the nodes if you aren't paying attention. With a wave length of 10 feet, though (100 Hz), there are nodes every 5 feet apart - alternating nodes will be destructive nodes, where the wave "stands" at a null, and constructive nodes, where the wave "stands" at a peak. As you walk, you will hear the tone come and go, and it will appear to "stand" still in certain areas.
You can get the same thing in RF frequencies, and it's most frequently heard as picket fencing - as you pull up to a stop light, your radio signal suddenly goes away... then when you pull up half a car length, it comes back... pull up another half and it goes away... etc. At the MHz range, with electromagnetic wave velocities, wave lengths get to be around 5-15 feet.
The thing about sound needing to 'expand' is just plain silly... Your subwoofer is probably only about a three foot cube? Maybe smaller? Well, like I said, at 100 Hz, you're talking about a 10 foot wavelength. There's no expansion going on in there.
I think where you're getting confused is bass coupling - where you put your sub into a corner, or against a wall, and you get drastically increased low frequencies. This is due to sound reflecting off the wall(s) (because unlike high frequencies, the low frequencies are likely to be in approximately the same phase over the 3 feet they travel from the speaker to the wall and back) and adding with the original to get 3 dB higher level (or in a corner, approximately 4.5 dB higher level).
Anyways, your point is absolutely true, though. Most "audiophiles" are spending loads of money and have no idea what they're listening to.
My ex-roommate had a $15k (I know, it's not that high-end for "audiophiles") home theater system and read Hi-Fi mag, Home Theater, Audiophile, etc. His surround sound system was Cambridge Soundworks' setup with 2 small speakers on sticks for the stereo, a small center channel, two tiny side-firing surrounds, and a honking sub sitting off to one side behind a couch.
I pointed out the obvious flaw in his system - his speakers barely go below 250 Hz (and start rolling off at almost 1 kHz!) and his sub doesn't pick up until 125 Hz... He's lost 2+ octaves in there. He didn't believe me...
So I put on an a capella album.
There is almost no energy in the human voice below 150 Hz, and really not much energy until you get up to the second and third harmonics for the vowels - 400-800 Hz. Then, there's another drop that comes back at about 1-2k for the soft consonants, 2-4k for the hard consonants, and 4-6k for the sibilants. Then, there's nothing above that. Most of the energy of the voice is right where his speakers couldn't reproduce, and as a result, the a capella singers were almost gone.
He was proud of it because the bass could shake him in his seat, and he could show the price tag to people. Not because he cared about the sound.
-T, member of the Audio Engineering Society, and the Society of Broadcast Engineers.
Trumpets/cornets can output high SPL levels, on the order of 130+ dB SPL in front (1 m) from the bell.
16-bit PCM has a S/N ratio of 96 dB.
Thus, quantization noise floor will have to be at least 34 dB SPL in order for you to get the trumpet without distortion. I know many recordings that have lower noise floors, though.
-T
Consider, AM is in the high KHz, and FM is in the medium MHz range. UHF TV is higher than that, and microwave and cell are in the low GHz range.
-T
Yes, as much difference exists between a Hyundai Excel and a Porsche
Bladeenc is the worst MP3 encoder out there. Not only do its MP3s sound terrible, it is very slow at encoding. On the other hand, Fastenc has been the best offering from Fraunhofer [co-inventors of the MP3 format] so far. IMO, its 128 kbps MP3s remains unbeaten by any other encoder's, not only quality-wise but also speed - on a Pentium 233, I was getting 3.2x realtime; on a Celeron 400, about 4.5x.
Note that Fraunhofer's codecs [a la l3enc and mp3enc] usually go for about $300-$400. Then consider Fastenc is free. Amazing, if not incomprehensible. I believe the Win32 standalone build was a fluke which was soon pulled off [hence the Geocities mirror]. Now it's only available as an inextricable part of other programs [CoolEdit 2000, MusicMatch etc.]
You will notice the difference between encoders if you know what to look out for: a warbling, swishy, underwater-like sound distortion is the most prominent artifact. Once you encode a few files with Fastenc and do a careful comparison with your old MP3s on a good set of headphones, you will never be able to tolerate BladeEnc again. No wonder Tord [the project maintainer] recently abandoned development.
If you're encoding at higher bitrates, I would recommend LAME, another GPL'd encoder which should be transparent at 170 kbps and above. The recommended setting is "--alt-preset standard", which should average out at 200 kbps.
But if space is important and you prefer 128 kbps, then Fastenc is the way to go. Note that it's Win32 only, but it should run fine under Wine.
For more information on audio encoding, quality comparisons and a lot more, visit Hydrogen Audio and ff123.net.
Finally, if you intend to rip music only for use on your computer, I would recommend Ogg Vorbis instead of MP3. Not only is it free in every sense of the term, it is possibly the highest quality audio encoder out there - even 100 kbps sounds transparent to most people. I switched a long time ago and have no regrets. Its only Achilles' Heel is hardware support [car players, portables and so on] but this should be addressed soon - Ogg users have been quite vocal about it
Have fun.
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
What I don't understand is why the hardware industry would want to build DVD-A or SACD drives, but not recordable versions. Isn't that a step backward? What are we supposed to back up data on then? And don't we have the consumer right to backup a software or music CD for personal use? This just sounds like a major waste of corporate money.
What's the point with electronic music? Sure if an artist wrote a track with the full 6 channels, then it would make a difference, but it's not like non-electronic production, where its all stored multi-channel on a DAT anyway. Hell, most electronic music isn't made in anything more than mono anyway (bar the occasional stereo chorus type effect).
Who knows... maybe the next High Contrast track will sound like it's come from SIX different computers!
... and then there were none
Also, I don't think very many symphonic orchestras are miked only 1 m from the trumpets and cornets.
That said, I suppose it's conceivable that some orchestras in some really quiet studios with some really good microphones and preamps do, on rare occasions, exhibit dynamic ranges somewhat in excess of 96dB. I certainly can't hear that in my living room, and I'm not prepared to pay twice for my recordings to hear it.
That is a true figure, but keep in mind I'm talking about 1 m in front of the bell, and more specifically, it's the sharp transients in the attack that will peak over 130 dB, where the sustained note might be closer to 110-120... And we are talking about some of the loudest possible passages, here... Not average level. Also, I don't think very many symphonic orchestras are miked only 1 m from the trumpets and cornets.
You'd be surprised... Though a lot are miked with hanging overhead mics and booms in the audience, there are some schools of thought that like to mic close up, with every two to three musicians sharing a mic. That said, I suppose it's conceivable that some orchestras in some really quiet studios with some really good microphones and preamps do, on rare occasions, exhibit dynamic ranges somewhat in excess of 96dB. I certainly can't hear that in my living room, and I'm not prepared to pay twice for my recordings to hear it.
To most people, there's no perceiveable difference... But then, most people like listening to 128 kbps MP3s on computer speakers, so who are we kidding? :)
Hell, I've got an iPod with a jack built into the stereo in my car... so I listen to MP3s while in the worst possible listening environment.
But then, I encode at 384. :)
-T
This is not the age of pamphleteers. It is the age of the engineers. The
spark-gap is mightier than the pen. Democracy will not be salvaged by men
who talk fluently, debate forcefully and quote aptly.
-- Lancelot Hogben, Science for the Citizen, 1938
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