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New Audio Disc Formats and Copyrights
JollyGoodChase writes "CNN has an article on Super Audio CD digital watermarking and the lack of digital outputs on any SACD or DVD-Audio players. Covers dealer responses, tech issues, and consumer options in a good summation of this technology."
It came with a sampler disc. Had some great blues and jazz tracks as well as some Roger Waters (Pink Floyd). It's so lifelike, realistic, almost gives me goosebumps. But if you are the type that can't tell the difference between 128k MP3 and the CD, then don't even bother.
My point is: (A) The difference is very clear. The high end is so full, cymbals sound like they are right in the room with you. (B) You don't need to have an audiophile level system to hear it (just halfway decent speakers). Of course every bit helps. For reference I have a set of KLH speakers, good but not very expensive.
No. A format doesn't begin mass market acceptance until the big record labels decide to stop accepting buybacks of the old medium. That's how CDs became "mass market": record stores stopped shelving vinyl because the record companies stopped buying back unsold copies. At that point, every vinyl album that didn't move became undigetible inventory, and it didn't make sense to buy many or even any.
The Mongrel Dogs Who Teach
I happen to have a DVD-Audio capable DVD player, and to be honest I don't think it's anything special. CDs still have excellent response over the range that's audible to humans, and 96db is a large dynamic range, no matter how you slice it.
In short, speaking as a DVD-Audio owner, I recommend not using DVD-Audio.
Feels like a slashback - but like many of you I've been following this for a while, I kept my own little list of interesting articles. Until now I've nowhere to put them, so this is as good an opportunity as any:
Terrorism, Copyright, or hacking. Apply whatever label you want to what offends you
It would be funny if it wasn't true:
But there's hope:
Hope you find them interesting reading. I'll go back to lurking 8)
Audiophiles are excessive. If I had a job to support my audio lust, I'd probably be classed as one, too.
Audiophiles have gone for this sort of thing. These people don't play CDs with just a high end CD player, you'll find they use what is called a CD "transport" which is a CD player with a digital out. For a nice one, a few grand at least, ranging up to five figures for these things. Then you need to feed this wonderfully accurate string of 0's and 1's into a DAC. Not just the crappy DACs in your receiver of sound card, these DAC units are generally made to match the CD transport and will probably cost somewhere between half and double the cost of the transport itself. Then, with your thousand dollar interconnect cables (a pair of RCA plugs, for example, but you'll find preference towards 'balanced' connectors), they'll connect it to a preamplifier and then into a power amp, which may be a set of monoblocks (one power amp per speaker, sometimes they bi-amp them, too!). Then you've got the speaker cables and speakers and I'll be dammed when they stop paying thousands of dollars for a piece of copper wire. Yes, a well trained ear can hear the difference between speaker wire and it does stand to reason that each wire has its own characteristics and high quality speakers can help those characteristics materialise. Not all audiophiles are this obsessive/rich. You'll find some who spend a moderate amount of money and simply buy what's best in their price range. But deep down inside, we all know they want a pair of Krell reference monoblocks driving each channel (or a large house to entertain guests, whichever turns out to be cheaper).
They'll have a seperate unit for DVDs as well. Sometimes they'll have an entirely different *system*. (I've known audiphiles to blow hundreds of thousands of dollars on a stereo system and spend only a few grand on their entire home theatre rig so it all comes down to priorities).
To them, you'll probably find that the analog outputs would suit them fine, assuming the quality of the DACs in the unit are up to scratch. For a new format such as SACD, the attraction is that digital sound encoded in DSD is a lot more freeform than PCM encoded material because you're not 'locked' in to a certain set of frequencies. The result is in a more natural, real sound with greater depth and image. A lot of the purists have avoided digital purely because vinyl 'sounds better'.
Oh, and the audiophiles won't care about copy protection too much. It'll degrade the quality of the recording anyway, no matter what you do.
+4 Insightful?!
*Some* DVDs have somewhat lengthy FBI warnings, but the idea that you're forced to "watch 2+ minutes" of them is a gross overstatement. 30 seconds, at the most. If you can prove me wrong, I'll give you $20. Obviously, those who modded this post up felt that it was either clever sarcasm, or are simply blind and ignorant.
Yes, you are prevented from skipping the warning on most DVDs, but again, they aren't 120 seconds long. Some major studio DVDs don't even have FBI warnings at all! It depends on the distributor, motion picture, and movie studio.
I can't sit here and hope to convince you anything about SACD, since most of you are too busy speculating and screaming your heads off because you can't go and copy an SACD of a disc that has most likely been out in CD for quite some time. What I can do is tell you the following things and hope maybe at least one of you will actually go out and hear a high-res format sometime before posting without once even givng an honest listen to the format.
.wav. It sounded like a poor AM radio version of the song playing, but that goes to show just how much info between the two were actually changed.
First off, there definately are SACD/DVD-A combo players. There's quite a few of them covering the entire spectrum of how much you want to spend on gear. Personally, I think a good purchase would be the Pioneer Elite 47Ai, which also has digital outputs, another thing that article is completely wrong about. The 47Ai has, by quite a few people's accounts including my own, some of the best video output of any DVD-Video player out there, especially at its price point.
Second off, most DVD-Audio discs *can* reach 192Khz for a sampling rate, however, most of them are released at 96Khz. Another thing is that Verance has actually changed their statement of their watermarking from being unperceptable to 'unnoticable'. That's because, well, you can actually hear it! This isn't a faint different, it actually colors the sound a bit from the original. There was a small test conducted by a person who obtained the Verance software and after doing a compare between the source and the watermarked version decided to isolate the difference between the two into a single
Third, SACD can be produced by independant artists if they wish to, there's actually several mastering kits out there ranging from $5k and up that you can save up, snag, take home and master stuff to. Products like SADiE, Pyramix, Sony's own Sonoma, are all available to be purchased by anyone who wishes to produce their own SACDs. Just searching on the web for 'SACD Mastering' brings up a lot of smaller production houses willing to do it for you as well. Slowly, places capable of pressing SACDs are catching up in pace as more plants are opened and the tech gets out there.
Also, claims about SACD not being higher than '24kHz' (when it's really around 100kHz) and the like are also rather bunk. There's a lot of people trying to test DSD by methods meant for PCM, which simply does NOT work because they are two completely alien methods of handling sound from each other with just enough in common that they both can be handled by some of the same processors. A good article found here will explain a bit more actually what's going on with DSD. There's been some people claiming that from a 'mathmatical standpoint' SACD is on par with a cassette tape (!), but even your layman doing an A->B between the two could tell you that's not the case. As a friend put it "If it measures bad, but your output is good, then you're measuring wrong".
Lastly, the bit about the CD layers of hybrid discs not sounding as good is also a lot of bunk thrown out by groups like Warner (DVD-Audio's big pusher) whom want to scare a lot of people away. However, one thing to keep in mind, is that SACD hybrid discs are being snuck in without any such labeling as to their hybrid status on the packaging. For example, that brand new set of Rolling Stones remastered stuff in digipak packaging are all SACD hybrids. Vivendi Universal has just begun releasing hybrid discs with the possible intention of switching over to exclusively releasing hybrids in the next year or so.
They don't cost anything more than the actual CD, and since SACD players can be snagged as low as $120 now, it's a bit easier to get into playing the the high-res layer. However, at $120, players I'd consider 'amazing' aren't many, in fact, it'd be just one that was recently discontinued. The Sony SCD-CE775 5-Disc SACD changer is one of the best players I've heard under $200, easily doing Redbook playback comparable to some $1k decks I've heard. Internally the SCD-CD775 is almost exactly the same as Sony's $450 SCD-C222ES SACD player, save its cheaper casing, slightly different power supply and a bit cheaper capacitors. If you really wish to get serious, you can have people like this guy spend some quality time with your SCD-CD775 or a few other models of players and have him upgrade and change a lot of the parts for better sounding playback. However, I doubt that'll appeal to everyone who doesn't own at least a good set of headphones (Sennheiser HD-600s, Sony MDR-CD3000s, Grado RS-1s, Audio Technica ATH-W100s, Etymotic ER-4S, etc.)
Also, most audiophile have been raving about some SACD players and their Redbook playback ability. I don't know about this Arizona group of '53 people' or one particular shop whom wasn't even aware of decks capable of DVD-A and SACD while also providing digital out, but you look for reviews of Sony's 'SCD-XA777ES' player and you'll find many saying it does some of the best CD playback you can possibly buy. Phillips, Denon and others are getting in on players of the same quality at comparable prices.
In short, I've found that article to be rather a lot of FUD, and the reactions of quite a few here to be playing into that quite nicely. Personally I own both a DVD-A and SACD player and titles for both, but I rather prefer SACD after spending a bit of time on each using decent gear (Carver CM-1090 amp, custom amps, Sennheiser HD-600 headphones, etc.) I also own about 350 legitimate CDs and continue to purchase CDs on top of higher-res formats. Am I at all alarmed that my ability for backups of these newer formats are limited? No, not really. I take care of my discs and my need to back them up or play them on my PC (although the new SB Audigy 2 can play back DVD-Audio on PCs) or portable unit is pretty unnessicary. One thing I will say, is that if interest picks up enough, I'm sure a DeCSS-alike will surface and so will another hailstorm of controversy and merry fun that Slashdot readers thrive on.