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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."
Who can tell the audio difference between SACD and CD. It might be higher quality, but can people actually hear the difference.
... Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed...
that just like DVD-region encoding and similar BS that this will begin to disappear in a few years, if the standard is to survive.
also, did anyone else notice IBM as one of the companies ultimately behind DVD-audio? Do you think big blue will give linux hackers information on the copy-protection scheme used in DVD-audio as part of their commitement to opensource/free software?
my pet machine
Hah!
The last time their "advanced technology" was foiled by a felt tip pen! I hope they have something better.
Wait... I hope they dont!
there are always pro models of all gear that lack the sorts of 'anti-piracy' features of the commercial ones. once one person rips a source and it hits the Net, what's the difference?
Just raise the taxes on crack.
Consumers aren't going to run out and buy all new hardware just to support a new format that gives them really no added capabilities over their existing hardware.... CD-Audio is good enough quality sound; this new format doesn't offer enough of an improvement for it to catch on -- and that'd be the case even if the formats weren't fair-use crippled. Once you throw that into the equation, these formats have an even dimmer potential.
A format doesn't begin mass market acceptance until the fanatic audiophiles buy into it at the beginning, and those are exactly the types of people who will raise the biggest stink about the copy protection, and the lack of digital audio out.
NO CARRIER
If there is sound coming out of my speakers there will always be a way to make that sound into a mp3. Don't they understand consumers want mp3s or some other digital format.
SACD output is 2.8Mbit/s. Toslink cannot support this as it's not just the bitrate but its a completely different way of sampling.
For what it's worth SACD is the one truly innovative format, DVD-Audio just pushes up the sample size/sample rate that AudioCD has, is a completely new way to do things. See here for background
Anyway....
There is no(*) receivers that support decoding this into the 120db dynamic range and 100khz frequency range that the format supports. So the solution is to decode to high bandwidth analog outputs and feed each channel in analog format directly to a discrete amplifier.
(*) actually I just saw one the other day, a pioneer, with IEEE-1384 input for SACD/DVDA type formats, now to find a player with this output.
AFAIK, Digital watermarks are removed when the music is encoded with Ogg/MP3 , after all these compressions work by removing the sound elements that humans percive poorly.
Maybe, this is just a way of ensuring only 'approved' cd's are playable on this equipment, and therefore protecting their monopoly from the threat of joe blogs distibuting his own music without going through a record company....
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.
So what are they supposed to do? Start using "pay for play" market strategies more? Blow hundreds of millions of dollars coming up with yet another encryption scheme that two guys at MIT will crack the next Sunday? Or, will they dump their millions into the pockets of unscrupulous politicians and companies like Microsoft, and eradicate the act of personal computing as we know it? My opinion: First, they must lower prices. There is no reason that 90% of the artists out there should be earning more then average Joe. And second, they must implement more intensive pay for play schemes and stop relying on the sale of mass amounts of over priced garbage.With lower prices on complete albums, and the ability for people to pay only for the songs that they like, I think that you could see the music industry sustain the success that they have had in the past (not like they are hurting now, mind you). One would hope at leastthat with the increase in sales, they might stop shelling out billions in their campaign against our freedom.
In the second paragraph of the article it says "But many audiophiles are cool to the virtual padlocks, which could prove the undoing of one or both formats." WTF? Who exactly is "cool to the padlocks"? They don't give any names...
Further down in the article it even admits that "In a recent Gartner G2 survey, 88 percent of respondents said they believed it legal to make copies of CDs for personal backup use while 77 percent felt they should be able to copy a CD for personal use in another device. "
Regardless, if it can be played, it can be recorded. I'd like to see the look on David Migdal's face when the encryption is broken before the first disk is released...
"Copyright owners are entitled to use whatever formats they want to use," von Lohmann said. "If they really want to protect their content they can go back to vinyl."
How is THAT going to stop people? It simply makes it harder to rip?
With the proper equipment (read - PROPER) you can produce vinyl rips that are BETTER than some CD sources. Naturally the equipment is expensive, and there's always the inevatible static click or pop, but, with good digital procecssing, you can clean it up. I've done several albums off vinyl and burned them to CD with excellent results.
Which remins the question, did the mention vinyl beecause of sound quality, or because some people look at it as lower sound quality than cassette?
There are a few major flaws with all these new systems.
- Until you can readily get SACD or watever in the music store, you won't find people jumping to sign up. Plus if there is no significant improvement over a regular CD, then people will stick with CDs. What will the price be? Will they cost more than CDs? That will certainly deter people.
- I don't get this watermarking crap. Yes, watermark will not let you make unauthorized SACD (or insert other format here). So that just means that there will be no independent artists which can use this new format. They will be stuck with the old CDs.
- Also, a watermark won't stop someone copying the disc, it will just stop them making a disc with the same content. Look at the Dreamcast. Why would I need the disc anyway when I can play it on my computer, on an iPod, or throw it on a regular CD.
And they can't try and convince me that putting only Analog outputs will stop copying. Analog to digital is no big deal. Some quality will be lost but whatever people will still do this to be able to listen to their disc elsewhere.
If it does fly, it will probably end up with way of the DVD. Great technology, but not fulfilling its purpose (ie the non-copying).
The RIAA is currently, and has been for quite a while, working on a new foolproof copy protection mechanism. With this system, no one will want to even try to bypass the copy protection mechanism and rip the CD, it will be futile and useless to even try.
I was at their secret meeting on a undisclosed island in the pacific[shaped as the head of Hilary Rosen] and I was floored to hear of this new mechanism. They were working on it for many, many years, they were quite visionary. Slowly it is entering the unsuspected consumer's home even now. They call this new scheme JPCM: Just Produce Crap Music.
No one will ever want to rip any CD anymore... Enter the complete DRM system for music!
SACD, meet DivX. DivX, meet SACD.
My
Limekiller
It's not the same as "cool with the padlocks", i.e. willing to accept them. "...cool to the virtual padlocks..." means that they are giving the padlocks a so-so reception; they are only slightly interested in the technology because of the padlocks. Think cool as in lukewarm, not cool as in "Cool, man!"
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
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)
There is no(*) receivers that support decoding this into the 120db dynamic range and 100khz frequency range that the format supports... (*) actually I just saw one the other day, a pioneer, with IEEE-1384 input for SACD/DVDA type formats, now to find a player with this output.
The WSJ had a fascinating piece [subscribers only] on SACD last year. Some excerpts:
The CNN article is full of shit.
> Yet each format contains digital watermarks
The SACD watermark is actually an analog watermark. The surface of the CD itself is watermarked, not the data, which is pristine.
> Moreover, there are no digital outputs on any SACD or DVD-Audio players now available,
The Accuphase DP-100 transport has a digital output, although it isn't a coaxial or Toslink. The Meridien reference 800 also has a digital output.
Sure, these are high-end players. But if you want low-end digital output, just play the CD layer on the SACD, and get the digital outp of the 16b/44.1khz stream.
> The Audible Difference in Palo Alto, California, is refusing to sell SACD or DVD-Audio players until manufacturers can ship a hybrid unit that plays both formats as well as legacy CDs in the highest quality sound available.
Should've picked a more knowledgable or reputable dealer. The Pioneer DV-AX10 plays both SACD and DVD-A. Even low-end companies like Apex have DVD-A/SACD/MP3/CD players (AD-7701).
- patiwat
There are intrinsic problems with SACD and DSD audio encoding. SACD is *nowhere near* refrence quality and, by design, can never achieve this. These "armies" of audiophiles who prefer SACD are the same audiophiles who pile on the vinyl rhetoric as if a needle lathing into a plastic groove was the be-all-end-all of the audio world. Vinyl does sound fantastic, but the very nature of the beast means that it cannot, nor will it ever, have the same sonic clarity that Linear-PCM can obtain.
SACD works by taking 2.8 million SINGLE BIT SAMPLES. That means that the same is 1 or 0, friends. It modifies the sample before it. Up or down. When you're talking about an audio waveform, imagine how many bits it will take to do a full wave sweep. SACD simply cannot keep up with PCM audio. This is not like a Linux vs. FreeBSD debate. This is proven, time and time again, through rigorous analysis of DSD.
Audiophiles tend to like the format because it "dumbs down" the sound, since DSD is incapable of reproducing the finer details, it resembles vinyl! A dithered and smoothed audio signal. DSD (SACD) relies HEAVILY on post-filtration.
Linear PCM is the correct progression of digital audio. Each second can yield up to 192,000 samples, each with 24-bits of accuracy. Only one sample is needed to sweep. DVD-Audio supports up to 192khz sampling frequency. SACD cannot sample much above 24khz if I recall. Sony has also purposely DEGRADED the CD track on their SACD hybrid discs to FAVOR SACD. The resolution is chopped down to around 14-bits.
DVD-Audio is a far more accurate future for digital audio. Anybody convinced that DSD/SACD is superior is living in their Clie-induced Sony hallucinatory candy land. Get with the times and get with the program. The future for audio archival will continue to be PCM.
An excellent URL that explains the plain truth about SACD/DSD versus PCM: http://www.iar-80.com/page38.html
...used to be named the "Arizona Sound Society", but no one would take them seriously.
<rimshot>
*ducks and runs*
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
To take the audio output of his player, hook it to the audio input of a good sound card, produce an MP3, and put it on the P2P. For almost everyone, the sound quality would be adequate, and most people would never even know that it went through an analog step along the way.
So much for copy protection.
The only good weather is bad weather.
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.
One thing that I find very intriguing about P2P is that works from the 1910s and 20s and early 30s are very popular. Although I'm only in my thirties, I'm a huge fan of this stuff and I never had convenient access to it before P2P. One of the reasons you never see it isn't because it's not entertaining, interesting and informative, but because there's no longer any profit in it.
The rediscovery of our archived electronic entertainment history is a bigger challenge to the current entertainment industry than how to protect the latest warmed over reinventions of those old acts. The more I look and listen to the old media, the more astounded I am at how cyclical and repetitive the whole notion of recorded entertainment is.
And to address the topic head on, watching and listeing to those old recordings makes you very aware that quality is extremely relative. When you're really excited about hearing something you'll get up and dance and sing along to something that sounds like hell. The question is how to make people enthusiastic and obviously the entertainment industry if failing to even attempt to address this.
The recorded entertainment industry is like a lover who just didn't get it right one night. The consumer and the industry have been fucking for decades and then something happened and the recording industry says to the consumer --you've changed.
The consumer is like, no way baby. I'm still the same ol' cowboy. You know, let's get it on. But the entertainment industry is pulling this, no it's not the same anymore. You used to care about quality and now you try to get it anywhere you can. It makes me feel so cheap! If you really love me you'd at least spend some money.
And the consumer is like --what? Love you? What are you talking about? Why don't we just fuck like we always did. Nothing changed. It's the same ol deal. You say I changed, but you're the one who changed.
So, they don't fuck no more. But this relationship is special because it's all been recorded. So, the consumer goes back and starts watching the vids from back when things started and the fucking was still good.
Meanwhile, the recording industry joins the church and gets active in conservative politics and slowly starts developing these weird twitches.
Fucked up scenario. I'd hate to be the cop to do a domestic call on a couple like that.
+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.
Take an analog player, and remove or bypass the final analog output filter. The output waveform should then show some artifacts from the sampling rate. Split the output, and feed one path through a notch filter for the sampling rate, then into a phase locked loop to recover the clock. Use that clock to control the sampling rate for an A/D with more bits than the D/A in the player. If you can keep the noise level low enough, and can calibrate a correction curve for the player's A/D, you can recover the original.
To calibrate, look for low-frequency waveforms, which will allow you to see all the stairsteps from the D/A.
This assumes classical D/A conversion, and fewer bits than the noise threshold. It's probably possible for 16-bit CD players, but not for 20-24 bits. Telephony only has 8 bits, so 56K modems have an easier job, although they have to compensate for a lousy transmission line.
begin ramble
/.
I got to thinking yesterday that we've nearly come full circle with audio technology. Thanks in part to the public's desire to "steal" that which is not theirs, and thanks in part to the greedy record labels who's only focus is to "steal" all they can from the public. I'm not going to go into detail on this, I'm sure you can all figure it out. What I do find rather amusing is a lack of perspective (more often than not, though this doesn't apply to everyone) on both extremes of the debate.
What I really wanted to talk about though, is how the audio industry spent years making conumer and professional audio gear with increasing fidelity and sound quality. Mono went to stereo then surround. The recorded mediums went from records, to 8 tracks, to cassette tapes (1/8"), to CDs. Now we have SACDs and DVD-Audio. The later is simply a much higher resolution PCM format while the former is a totaly new and actually quite exciting DSD format (Direct Stream Digital.) The DSD format is supposedly (though I have never heard an SACD for myself) of such high quality that it does make a noticeable difference. What makes these formats interesting, is that if we can't provide the players with quality digital to analog converters (which can be very expensive) then the whole point of the formats is lost because the system itself can't reproduce the streams properly. A more ideal setup for our increasingly digital-only entertainment systems would be that the signal remained digital up until the speakers, at which point the self-powered speakers could handle the conversion and amplification of the signal. Analog signal degredation (noise, interference, etc. although these can be problems with digital signals too but that's another story) would only occur for a short period of time and would be negligible. It would, in fact, be less expensive to implement such a system than to start the conversion process at the player and attempt to have high-quality, RF shielded analog components, and high quality connections all the way through the system to keep the audio pristine.
In essence, and in the end, we have both side shooting themselves in the proverbial foot. One industry (the record labels, which have several hands and a few feet in the consumer audio industry) are so terrified of ever increasing bandwidth at home, and millions of P2P users, they will stop at nothing to find a way to prevent end users from using their music with the fair rights that owning your own copy of Britney Spears' "So what if they're fake?" entitles you to.
Of course, the really funny thing is. The majority of consumers couldn't give, as Eminem puts it, "two squirts of piss" about SACD and DVD-Audio. Much of the world is happy downloading or compiling their music in MP3 format (yes there are OGG fans out there, and sheep who are hearded into WMA) and the fact remains that MP3 is not and will never be Red Book CD-Audio quality. So if we're happy listening to music in a format that degrades stereo imaging and has increased sibilance and harmonic distortion rather than a format made popular in the late 80s, it's the record companies and consumer audio companies who will loose in the long term because their focus remains on maintaining their empires, and that is one of the wonderful things world history has taught us, those who fail to adapt to the changes of the masses are ultimately overthrown by their own lust for control. That is not to say that the companies can't phase out CDs and DVDs, in order to replace them with formats that are so restrictive one can't even use them. In the end, and like any really good story, the people will prevail. We always do. Although I can't believe I just wasted 30 minutes typing this crap on
end ramble
Now isn't this the perfect way to go about copy-protecting music? You see, if I want to encode to MP3 (and I do, I'm an iPod owner) then, as I read your statement, I'd be able to do it. I wouldn't get the best available quality, but so what? I'm compressing it to a lossy format anyway which is only going to get played over a set of headphones.
Is this the compromise we've been looking for? Non-protected mid-range quality which allows us to rip and encode as we choose, followed by a layer of higher-quality music which can't be ripped? I'd be satisfied with that.
Cheers,
Ian
The same thing happens with my Realmagic Hollywood+ program on my windows partition, but happily when I'm in Linux, MPlayer and Xine will let me do whatever I want. Unfortunately, support for my DVD decoder card isn't quite where it needs to be (you can check out the state of affairs at the DXR3 and Hollywood+ driver project page), so the DVD quality is a little off in Linux.
Actually, the example of being unable to skip the FBI warning is a good one to show non-techwise people, who might zone out if you tried to explain the entire CSS encryption and region-coding scheme to them. I watched something with my mom recently, and she definitely noticed when I pointed out how we were being forced to watch the warning screen.
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.
It has been said before, but it bears repeating.
I have over 1400 songs that I ripped myself from legally acquired CD's that reside in an MP3 player slightly larger than my hand. It has changed the way that I listen to music. This convenience has become the singal most important factor in my music listening. I have bought more CD's since I got my MP3 player than in the previous 7 years combined. I'm not going back. I won't go back to vinyl or tapes, and I won't move forward to a new format or copy protected product that won't let me play music the way I want to listen to it. If independant artists are the only ones who release unencumbered music, then I'll buy from them.
By the way, if all RIAA studios switch to copy-protected CDs, does that mean we can repeal the "tax" on blank tapes and blank CD-Rs that "compensates" the major labels for the losses they will no longer be suffering?
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
I own a DVD-Audio player that has digital outputs, however I don't use them because I have a few DVD-Audios that are encoded at a 192KHz bit rate that my amp can't handle.
DVD-Audio diske sound is audibly superior to any CD I have heard, and not just marginally; in particular the audio stage is much smoother and well-defined because of the presence of a center channel. I am less impressed by the effects of a rear channel - at least with the current state of the art. Audiphiles have long been aware of the 'hole in the middle' in a conventional stereo system - this is gone with these new formats.
As far as copy protection, both SACD and DVD-Audio come with ripable alternative formats - SACD has a CD layer, and DVD-Audio disks have a conventional DVD format audio layer. Since it takes a good deal of stereo equipment to do justice to DVD-Audio I am currently happy with the lesser formats for my other uses - car stereo, PC playback at work, etc.
I do agree with the article's assertion that labelling as to the copyability of DVD's, SACD's etc. is important, and should be required by law. Buyers should be making informed choices. I would also like to see some sort of requirement that fair use rights are protected (one generation copy support, for example) as part of any copyright legislation.
Ultimately of course I expect that any copy protection scheme will be defeated - for example bootleg ROMs for SACD players could quite clearly defeat watermark requirements.