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New Digital Audio Formats
Hack Jandy writes "Anandtech is running an article about new digital audio formats, including DVD-A and SACD. It also discusses how the newest digital audio processors from Intel will handle these audio formats in the future; a good primer for anyone interested in something a little more capable than CDs."
No doubt we'll be paying for these new audio mediums in a direct proportion to CD capacity and cost (holds 2x audio, we pay 2x much).
imho you omitted something. i do buy cds, if they are worth the money. but these ones are really rare.
Given the past record of replacement formats, it's not likely. We look at the dozens of different media and formats from the past and notice that only two have been successful: the upgrade from wax cylinders to circular records and the subsequent upgrade from vinyl records to CDs: and there are STILL some who think LPs are better.
This is why I think they'll fail:
1. Existing technologies are "good enough"
The most dangerous technology is that which is "just good enough". CDs have filled a void perfectly and the average person is perfectly happy with the marginally inferior audio quality they provide as opposed to LPs.
2. $$$
It costs too much to switch to a new technology. Just think about how much CDs cost nowadays: up to twenty dollars! Imagine how much DVD-Audio and SACD cost, especially as they have to accommodate existing players and feature backwards compatibility. (The current projected cost is about $40 to $50! Who will pay that for a few hours worth of music?)
3. No noticeable improvement
Though it can be digitally demonstrated that CDs have a substantially higher audio quality than LPs, many audiophiles will still insist that LPs do better in the low end. The fact of the matter is that the sound of music is in the eye of the beholder. Why? Because the quality of recorded sound is now sufficiently good that any small incremental improvements will now not be noted.
4. People are fed up with the record industry
Considering how good existing audio solutions are already, how many people do you think are going to look on this with an uncynical eye and be glad that they're getting superior new formats?
Not many, that's for sure. We have to realise that your average person feels shafted by the record industry (not the "RIAA") and so is fed up of having to continually pay up over and over for new formats, which come ever faster. First the gap between new formats is 50 years - then 20 - now just half a decade or so. It's tragic, as it means that technological improvements in this won't help matters.
Ah, well. I'll be off to listen to Tarkus now. On remastered CD, naturally.
The people who do know about DRM or any new formats have sworn to never use them.
This brings up a good point; how do you explain to someone who is NOT a geek (and has no interest in being one) about what DRM is and how it will effect them?
just don't explain it! they'll recognize it, when they are effected.
Almost all speakers connected to current DVD Video, DVD Audio, and SACD players use an analog connection. In countries whose copyright traditions recognize audio space-shifting as fair use, there's no reason, given a high-fidelity DAC and ADC, that the median listener (or even the 90-odd percentile listener) can't get acceptable quality through the analog hole. Therefore, any digital restrictions management on audio is moot.
Nobody needs an audio format that has a frequency range of more than 40kHz anyway because they can't hear the difference. You can only hear up to 20kHz, and you only need twice that because of the Nyquist theorem. What people need is good engineers mixing and mastering at ludicrous frequency ranges and then dithering it to something reasonable. Even though sound is also mixed at higher (and often floating point) bitrates, having 24-bit sound for the consumer would be more practical since it offers a wider dynamic range. Not that any rap or pop music has a dynamic range :)
English is easier said than done.
There are NO new audio formats that will replace CD. There are only two groups that want something other than CD Audio anyway: Audiophiles and the Recording Industry. Audiophiles want better fidelity and the industry wants DRM. 95% of consumers don't want either. As long as that is the case, I think it really will be something the market will control and not the big corporations. Add to that everyone already has a CD burner... and new audio formats are destined to failure.
The "Hi-definition" formats all have completely different mixes to the CDs making meaningful comparison impossible.
Why do people assume that the people who designed CDDA were stupid? No amplifier/speaker/room combination at any price is accurate enough to resolve the resolution of CD audio. The air current around your ears is louder than the CD noise floor, and the human ear is not equipped to hear a 20khz tone.
It doesn't matter how good a new format is or how many new features it offers, it it doesn't offer significant value (perceived or real), it wont take off.
Sure AAC is better, sure Ogg is better, but for most folks, even those with huge music collections and very exacting preferences in their audio systems, MP3 is still good enough. Why? Because most people care about the music, not the technology.
Caring more about the technology forces you to give up some of the music? Why? Availability. Maybe they've already ripped their audio collections to MP3. Maybe they've already invested in a good MP3 player.
Beta was better than VHS but VHS won too.
You want 5.1 (or more) channel sound in your compressed audio? Ogg Vorbis has it today. mp3's founders are working hard to hack something into that format, but that's all it is, a hack.
.mp3 format that will still play on all my hardware is fine by me. OF course I'd rather have the most clean, compressed, multichannel format out now, but not at the expense of buying a new car stereo, new dvd player, new portable mp3 player, and convert all the music I already have. Mp3 works, but yes, SACD sounds so much better, but I can't play SACD on anything I own!
Hey, a hacked
It's like the Vinyl to CD migration, do you really want to change all your electronic formats every other year? Almost sounds like licensing, no thanks!
Thank you.
Apart from any additional channels (5.1 or whatever) get added to the new formats, the only one who can tell the difference between 16bit 44.1kHz and 32bit 96kHz is your dog.
Ok, I'm in my mid 40's, you need to know that as it gives some sort of perspective on my views on this.
I still own the old 7 inch reel to reel Sony Tapecorder 500 that my dad bought in the sixties, they still had many of the ten inch (?) 78 rpm records, as well as the newer 45 rpm singles and 33.3 rpm "long playing" records.
The reel to reel was the god of quality, especially on the faster speed settings eg 3.75 (?) inches per second, and even better it was of course stereo, long playing records were still mono.
A few years go by and long players and singles went stereo, but rpm stayed the same, disc material changed and most notably turntables and pickups changed and quality improved.
Along the way there were a few wierdos, I still have a Philips quadrophonic system with active (mains powered with integrated amplifiers and feedback circuits) speakers (which are a lovely sound) but pretty much by the time _I_ started buying music the standards were set, noticeably enough that things like picture disks and coloured vinyl had sufficiently different physical characteristics that any reasonably good stereo could show an audibly loss of quality with such media.
Only trouble was, especially at parties, you ended up buying copies of records you already owned because the last copy got scratched yet again...
Then came compact cassette, (i'm going to gloss over 8 track, because it was the betamax of self contained audio tape formats, technically better but still sidelined) much lower audio quality than vinyl but a really user friendly physical package and very very tough, until the tape got chewed by worn pinch rollers...
Compact cassette evolved, notably the run times, especially for blanks which everyone bought to record their vinyl onto to save the vinyl from wear and tear, grew to 60 minutes, 90 minutes, 120 minutes etc, but most people thought the longer tapes were too prone to stretch, and a C90 TDK SA tape was just long enough to hold a complete long playing record on each side, which was nice and not just by chance.... autoreversing players saved even the hassle of flipping the tape.
Apart from this the real advantage was the ability, just like the old reel to reel jobs, or making your own compilation albums.....
Players with dual decks made especially with high speed dubbing ability were cool too....
Then CD's came out, CD's were totally indestructible, so despite the fact that I had probably already purchased, for example, Hurry On Sundown / Hawkwind 6 or seven times on vinyl and 2 or 3 on compact cassette, I bought it yet again on CD.
I was pretty disappointed that the quality, although much better than compact cassette, wasn't quite up to a new unscratched vinyl quality, but the indestructibility of this new medium won me over, this was the same as compact cassette, only with better quality......... then about 3 months later my first CD delaminated and started skipping..... then more did......
Now I have 100 gig of Mp3's, at 192 kbps and digital at that (as opposed to analogue) the quality is not as good as new vinyl, but it is reasonably close to new CD audio, and as good as compact cassette, more importantly, by the time the vinyl has become scratched, the compact cassette deoxidised and the compact disk delaminated the quality of the mp3 beats them all, quite apart from anything else because it STILL BLOODY PLAYS and notably compared to the CD being digital it isn't fucked up by the medium it is recorded on to (unless the HD crashes I suppose)... perhaps most significantly it is really compact in filesize so I can get around 170 tracks on a CDR of the same capacity as will hold 12 original cd audio format (red book) tracks, blank cdr cost me pennies, literally about 1% of the cost of a shop bought music CD.
Sony minidisk was cool too, but it seems to be another betamax / 8-track type casualty, technically superior, but never reaching critical (useful) mass and so forever destined to niche / speciality mark
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
99% of people are happy with 128Kbps MP3. They have crappy stereos or listen to FM radio in their noisy cars. For a format to be very successful it has to be compelling to the masses and not offer something so boringly incremental that it doesn't even matter.
IMHO the labels/music industry are just trying to create yet another format in order to try and get everyone to buy all their music AGAIN. Their sales are nothing like they were during the '90s when everyone was busy buying all their old music on CD.
On a final note, I went to see that Star Wars digital thing on a digital projector. Unfortunately, the projector was out of order so they were just using the old 35 or 70mm projection system. At the end of the movie the guy next to me (who didn't know that the digital was out of order) commented on how amazing the digital quality was. I didn't have the heart to break the news to him. This is how I see these new higher quality (not multi channel) audio formats.
Higher sample rates and larger bit depths sound GOOD. No suprise eh? They really make CDs sound like crap. Even most amateur albums are recorded at a higher resolution then CD's and resampled.
However, as usual there's much more to the story. You *DON'T* need 5.1 or 8 channel audio cds, thats stupid. Your brain can process 2 channels of audio, thats why every modern recording format only has 2 channels. 5.1 is great for movies, but stupid for music. Its basically an attempt to sell really expensive stereos/amps.
And here's the conspiracy theory: As usual there is ALOT of money to be made off format changes. There will be licenscing fees, patents, royalties, and millions of new copies of the white album to sell so you can finally hear it the way it was meant to be (note: sarcasm). But whats really happening is -- the record labels want to reestablish control of the audio format, these formats will reset the arms race and send us digital audio enthusiasts on a 5 year quest to crack their format.
Sony has lost *EVERY* format battle they've started (Minidisc, beta, ATRAC, Memory Stick, and the upcoming Cell Processor), they will loose this battle to, so expect DVDA to overtake SACD. However, I am personally resigned to not buying any format until I can make an OGG or MP3 from it, and you should be to.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
"We get to "re-license" all the music we've already bought a license for? "
Why? Did the "license" for your old music expire?
I'm not a big fan of the MPAA/RIAA but all your doing is "scare-mongering". Your old music will play just fine, be it 8-tracks, cassette tapes, or CDs. The only thing you need to worry about is taking care of your media, and player. And you can't blame "external" forces for that.
"Without a discount? Great. Wonderful. What a perfect business model they have there."
Damn those car manufacturers. Not giving me a discount when I wanted to upgrade from this horse and buggy. What a terrible business model they must have.
And how exactly do you know it's worth it, if you don't buy it ? I've bought CD's for the "one good song" and been pleasently surprised, and I've bought them and been disappointed. I was just thinking about this as I picked up the new Velvet Revolver CD (GUns and Roses - Axle + Scott Weilen (sp?). It was only $9.99 at worst buy. If more CD's were $9.99, I would probably triple the number of CD's I buy, because I wouldn't feel so bad when I got a "dud"
Save a Life. Donate Blood. Please.
This brings up a good point; how do you explain to someone who is NOT a geek (and has no interest in being one) about what DRM is and how it will effect them?
By vastly oversimplifying of course! Just tell people that it will almost always make it impossible "to record". When it isn't impossible, it will be very complicated and you'll need a geek such as yourself to make it work.
The only ones happy with digital music are the ones that own iPods? Ridiculous.
That is just dishonest. He changed the original post from "I run a small record shop" to "My friend runs a small record shop" a pasted the rest almost verbatim. If you're going to repost your "friend's" post, at least link to the original and acknowledge it's a repost.
Given the fact that entries in Roland's blog are popular Slashdot story topics (or maybe vice versa, it's hard to tell now), you'd think he'd have a little more sense to keep things on the up and up.
All these fancy formats: 192kHz, 24 bits, everything is perfect, until you plug your DVD-A, SACD player to your stereo, that has a 44kHz, 16 bit DSP for equalizing sound...
Sorry...
how long until
... not representative of the public at large, I'd wager.
The type of customer who seeks out the small, independent record shop is going to be different than the kind who just goes to whatever place is most convenient (Best Buy, Sam Goody, etc.), or whatever place has the best price (probably Best Buy, Sam Goody, etc.). Your friend's customers are probably far more likely than the average music shopper to (a) be interested in fringe formats like vinyl, (b) have strong opinions on DRM.
I'm not saying that his/her experiences aren't valid, just that you should be careful about generalizing too broadly from the experiences of small, boutique businesses in today's age of big-box retail.
Read my blog.
Why is cost an accurate indicator of the quality of someone's system? Do you have conversations with people bragging about how much more you paid for your system than theirs? "they only sound better in scenarios where a person has a stereo that runs more than about $1,000." Gimme a break. This is audiophile bullshit at its finest, all you want to do is justify the obscene amount of money you spent on fancy blue LEDs and optical interconnects that were dipped in holy water (reduces jitter). I'm picturing someone walking into the audio store and saying "I'd like to make my system sound $2000 better today."
I listen to 192kbps MP3s on my Rio Karma through my two year old Memorex-branded headphones that came with a long-gone twelve dollar CD player and it's still a moving experience.
I hate to break it to you, but you don't need thousands, or even hundreds of dollars of equipment to enjoy music. If you stress out listening to music from a fifty dollar boombox from Wal-Mart, you're probably more interested in absolute, utter perfection than just enjoying the goddamn music.
People enjoyed and were moved by music back in the 30s. Remember the 30s? Mono sound, crackly records, ridiculously lo-fi. Good equipment then is equipment you can't find in the dumpster today. But they got by. I wonder how - they didn't even have SACDs!
Ah, i feel better now:
Addition:
You signal/noise ratio WILL NEVER be limited in practice by the 112db of your cd. Simply because termal noise in your Transitor-juction regions will be bigger. And no, using tubes DOESNT make the sound better. If just increases your noise and puts a horrible disortion over your spektrum (which some people think is "warm sound")
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
How about a two-layer DVD full of FLAC tracks, maybe 48kHz 24 bit audio.... I mean, as opposed to the CD, the filesystem is alredy in there.... that'll be 9GB of compressed lossless audio.
At the start of the twentieth century many claimed wax cylinders captured the live event perfectly. In the mid-fifties Paul Klipsch (IIR) demonstrated it once again with vinyl and corner horn speakers. Mid-eighties, yet again with CD + 'insert your favourite Japanese receiver here'. The only true constant is how many times technology has achieved 'perfect sound' without ever once recreating a sonic event indistinguishable from the original.
Assuming they own a DVD player...
Step one: Insert DVD. Press play. Hand them the remote and tell them to press FastForward during the Warning screen (or even better, find a DVD that has the commercials flagged to disable the FastForward button as well).
Explain that the DVD player is intentionally crippled to deactivate the FastForward button. DRM means intentionally crippled products. Explain that a Geek (possibly even you) could repair it so the FostForward button works properly, but that it is a crime with a 5 year prison sentence.
Two: Explain that it is not copyright infringment to make a backup copy so that he doesn't have to pay again if the original gets scratched. Explain that it is simple to copy that DVD onto a DVR-R disk. Explain that DVD-R disks are intentionally crippled - they have a crucial section of the disk BURNED OUT and destroyed before they are sold. Since the DVD-R disk you bought is DAMAGED, the copy won't work in a DVD player. Again, DRM means intentionally crippled products and intentionally damaged products. Explain that a Geek could repair the backup copy so that it works, but that too carries a 5 year prison sentence.
Three: Suggest he mail-order a DVD from overseas - say England or Austrailia. Explain that the mail-order DVD will be exactly the same as a local DVD except that it has a country code number on it. Explain that his DVD player would be perfectly capable of playing that DVD except that it is intentionally designed to REFUSE to play any DVD with a foriegn number stamped on it. Again, DRM means intentionally crippled products. Explain that a Geek could repair the DVD player to play his disk just fine, but that carries a 5 year prison sentence too.
So DRM means crippled products that prevent you from using your own property (FastForwarding / making a backup / playing a disk you bought), and that DRM means going to prison for fixing your own property.
If you REALLY want to get the point across, have him actually mail-order that DVD and don't tell him it won't work. Once he gets screwed for the price of a DVD he'll never buy a DRM'd product again.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
The arrogance of demeaning everyone whos experience of music differs from LocoSpitz's is just staggering. That it strikes a chord with so many Slashdotters is just depressing.
DVD-A is supported by most DVD players, but not by CD players. Most SACDs are the hybrid type that work with CD players, but a few "universal" DVD players like my Pioneer DV-47 and DV-45 support them as well. For classical music, which is most of what I listen to, SACD seems to be leading in title availability, and only adds a couple dollars to the price.
I tried a double-blind test of two albums I have in both CD and SACD, Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould (the 1982 recording), and Hickox's recording of Vaugan-Williams' Norfolk Rhapsodies and Pastoral Symphony (technically, the SACD version is not "pure" DSD but rather converted from 24bit/98Khz PCM).
I listened to them from a Pioneer DV-45 through a Headroom Little headphone amp and Sony MDR-F1 headphones. The double blind consisted of shuffling the discs with my eyes closed and popping one of them in the player. I then tried to guess whether what I was hearing was SACD or CD. 3 times out of 5, I failed.
I retried the experiment after careful A/B listening to the discs, and I was then able to distinguish them in 4 out of 5 cases. Glenn Gould's humming along is a little easier to detect.
I am sure you could get better separation using a more expensive setup than my $1000 one, but I have a hard time believing it is going to make a huge difference. The audiophile world is full of companies selling snake oil like $1000 power cords, and relying on cognitive dissonance to convince buyers they can actually hear a difference.
Conclusion: the difference is there, but it is very minimal. Don't believe the SACD or DVD-A advocates who tell you about "night and day" differences, no more than you should to vinyl LP advocates who do it mostly because of the perverse retro chic.
If you have a good surround setup, you may benefit from the multi-channel experience, but in the real world most recordings are not that well mastered, and that is going to be the limiting factor in most cases.
If you want the best audio experience, get off the couch and go to a live concert. The home audio experience is going to be at best 25% of the real thing. Paying $50,000 on an audiophile setup to go from 24.5% to 24.99% is a phenomenally stupid waste of money.
My conclusion is that the much-maligned CD Audio is an excellent format that exceeds the useful parameters of any home audio experience, and am busy backing up my CD collection to lossless codecs on my home computer.