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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.""
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.
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
At last, I have always needed those copy-proof CDs!
Oh, wait!
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?"
But - to get me to buy a new player and a new library of music..
You'll definitily need to buy a new player to play those, but why would you buy a new library of music? It would seem logic to me that those players are backward compitable, it uses an DVD drive, and DVD drives can play CD's...
If at first you don't succeed, then sky diving definitely isn't for you.
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.
That might constitute a bad example. I think that record companies distributed Heavy Metal bands on vinyl far longer than any other genre because the improved quality of CDs just didn't make any discernable difference to either the listeners or to the music.
Let's face it: primarily the record companies moved us all to CDs to allow them to let slide their back catalog of LPs and secondarily because CD sound is better. I don't want to hear that the sound is better from any "audiophiles" either. Audiophiles are the same morons who bought distilled water from discWasher for $5 for 4 ounces and buy "directional" speaker cables today and who use a green magic marker on the rim of their CDs. And then claim to be able to hear phase-shift distortion in CD music.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
What store's are you shopping in, Dave's DVD Warehouse? I haven't had any problems find new releases in VHS. They're usually in the section under the sign that says "VHS", next to the one marked "DVD".
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? ]=-
Here's an "audiophile to English" dictionary:
"warm" = crackly
"proven" = bigger, less convenient, less versatile
"superior" = elitist
"music" = jazz and classical
[ home ]
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.)
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.
Basically, yeah - I'm with you on this one.
The public only switched from LP and cassette to CD because it was several magnitudes of order better. (No more rewinding and fast-forwarding tapes that tend to wear out, or accidently get erased when someone runs by them with the vacuum cleaner. No more flipping the record over to hear the other half of the album. No more background hiss or pops and clicks.)
In fact, I'd wager that the actual ability for CD to reproduce sound more faithfully than the other formats was the *last* thing on people's list of reasons to switch, truth be told. (Most of the consumers who raved about CDs sounding so much better were really referring to the afore-mentioned lack of pops, clicks, tape hiss, or warbling effects of a turntable not spinning at the perfect speed, or tape transport mechanism slipping. They weren't really referring to improved high-frequency response, etc.)
(Heck, most of the CD players people first purchased were built onto sub $200 boom-boxes, that certainly weren't paragons of quality audio reproduction!)
The public simply won't switch formats again, simply on claims of "better than CD quality" sound. Most people won't even be able to notice the improvements, when they go to check this new technology out.
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.
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.
Amen. Glad someone else thinks as I do. I guess everyone needs to feel that they're special, eh? :) I recently got a Dolby Digital capable stereo system (the old shelf-top Aiwa crapped out, $200 for ~3 yrs, not bad). Panasonic's shelf-top, Dolby Digital 5.1 system for $250 at Circuit City seemed a decent buy. I'm happy with it - my DVDs sound discernably more clear than through the analog RCA jack connection. I don't have the rear surrounds hooked up (doesn't make sense in my apt.), but having a cleaner sound is nice.
... c'mon. How many folks out there are perfectly happy listening to 128kbps MP3s now, and you're selling more hi-fi sound than CDs? Nevermind the signal processing that systems like Bose's live audio do to translate a normal stereo signal into multiple surround channels, in an effort to "encompass" the listener with the music ... think what you might about those technologies, but they already exist and I dare say we don't need much of anything better!
Now, talking with my bro this morning (owner of a multi-thousand dollar home theatre system w/ THX EX, DTS ES, and all the other acronyms) and I have to say - I doubt that the subtle differences between Dolby Digital 5.1, THX, and DTS are even perceptible, lest you have a special room that you've sound proofed, dampened, accounted for any possible standing waves, etc.
Same goes for the higher quality D/A conversion on the SACD and such
Cheers.
...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 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?
lol,
Q: Is home-taping killing the music industry?
A: Yes Yes Yes. Instead of making billions and billions of dollars, the music industry is only making billions of dollars.
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?
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
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.
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.
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!
Actually SACDs are an entirely different format that uses a digital bitstream (known as Direct Stream Digital or DSD) at a much higher frequency instead of Pulse Code Modulation (PCM) used by CDs and DVDs. Ideally this is a better digital storage format, but requires more space than the PCM used in CDs. By "better" I mean that the Analog to Digital (recording) followed by a conversion back to Analog (playing) will result in anolog waveforms that are closer to the original waveforms that were recorded as compared to PCM.
This is not to say that DSD will really make much of a difference to the average user in terms of how their music sounds. Most people on basic stereo's will probably never heard the difference.
For reference, Regular DVDs use the exact same PCM as CDs. DVD-A uses a higher bitrate, but it is still PCM.
Personally I'm of the opinion that most mass produced CDs don't even stress the limit of potential "quality" of the CD format (PCM). I have a few extremely well recorded and phenomenal sounding CDs that indicate to me the potential of the CD format, but most CDs are mediocre recordings. Why should improving the format (DVDA or SACD) make a difference? If recording quality doesn't increase, it won't matter at all.
Spyky
I've heard the difference, and it's remarkable.
My only friend who has a SACD player also has a $20K+ stereo (and I mean *stereo* -- no surround nonsense) with external amps, gold-tipped cables, etc... He played Brubeck's Take 5 on normal CD and on SACD for me. The change to the cymbals was unbelievable; it sounded like they were in the room.
Granted, I don't know how much amp/speaker investment is required before you can hear the difference. But if the investment is low and the price of these fancy CD-replacements drops, I'd be interested. As for copy protection, anyone who thinks new formats will prevent copying is a fool.
-Mr. Bonobobo