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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."
There *is* a difference in sound quality beyond that of your MP3s or even your Audio CD collection. SACD and DVD-A are a whole new world. It is like heroin for your ears. Once you've heard the same album on CD and then SACD you'll wonder how you ever lived without the newfound detail.
Everyone, go out to your local audiophile shop and try it!
I just hope Apple supports them =)
Are you an open source warrior?
I sat through a very painful lecture by a guy from Phillips telling us about how wonderful SACD was. The end story is that its backwards compatible with CD, but extra DRM goodness. The technical difference between DVD audio and SACD were so fabricated as to make me lose all of my dwindling respect for the audio industry. I wasn't the only one to think so either. They talked a lot about frequency response, smearing, head room, and trelis algorithms. The end result was it was not better quality than DVD audio, but it sold better.
Don't give a technical presentation and tell the audience of engineers that the reason the technology is better is that it sells better and is harder to pirate.
If given a choice between the two pick DVD audio.
We get to "re-license" all the music we've already bought a license for? Without a discount? Great. Wonderful. What a perfect business model they have there.
Oh, by new you mean 3 years old. My mistake.
Seriously though, these aren't new formats, they just took longer to catch on - I'm honestly surprised SACD is still around given the name branding of DVD-Audio. But I digress, these formats aren't new, computer companies are just getting around to supporting them and people are just getting around to buying them.
schild
editor, f13.net
Most of the people who prefer SACDs to normal CDs are the people who frequent HydrogenAudio.org and Head-Fi.org. They also tend to go out and purchase $10,000 audio sources. The general consensus is that SACDs aren't really going to catch on. They cost a tad more than normal CDs, are sort of transparent in sound quality, and most average consumers wouldn't be able to tell the difference, even on high end systems. The fact that CDs are such an entrenched technology, and that there are so many consumer CD players that don't support SACDs right now will only further limit the format.
DVD Audio is a slightly different story. Most DVD players on the market support DVD-A and CD playback. And since DVD technology isn't nearly as aged/integrated into the consumer frame of mind (5 years vs. 15 with normal CDs), people will be able to justify going out and buying a DVD player that supports the format. In addition, the DVD players that can playback DVD-A aren't that expensive at all, and the relative sound quality generated by playback during movies and audio CDs will make the technology a worthwhile investment to most.
I've had my SACD player for well over a year. When I bought it, the model was over a year old, and it was a second gen model.
DVD-A and SACD media and players are available since a number of years, the DVD-A specification is from 1999, and sony's first SACD player was introduced in the same year. Players that support both formats are available since more than a year. Neither format has caught on for a number of reasons, the higher price of players that support any of them beeing the most important imho, but there's also the lack of interesting content and that people don't want to end up with media in a format that could die out in a few years.
On the topic of SACD, SACD2 is currently beeing discussed, so SACD is definitively old news.
I know that DVD-A is encrypted with a new, strong encryption and that no rippers exist and according to hydrogenaudio.org probably will not exist untill home quantum computers..
Does anyone know more details? I know for sure that my player only outputs downsampled content on both optical and coax.
Files can be copied with any DVD-ROM drive but the files are useless.
Also, what is the situation with SACDs?
No rippers seems to exist either, so it's
also encrypted and downsampled for digital outputs? What is the filesystem used and how is legacy CD-support achieved?
All accurate info and links would be appreciated.
Capitalization is the difference between "Helping your uncle jack off a horse" and "Helping your uncle Jack off a horse"
In general, people who listen to their equipment prefer LPs. People who listen to the music are happier with CDs.
That, in a nutshell, is the reason behind the audiophile community's preference for LPs. Those people think of music the same way Lance Armstrong thinks of chain lubricant.
Dahlmann tightly grips the knife, which he may have no idea how to use, and steps out into the plain.
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?
I had that very experience last night, talking to a friend about allofmp3.com...
I tried explaining it from a few different angles, but I think the one that worked best went something like:
"You buy a new Ford, expecting it to work just like your old Ford (jokes about Fords not working aside). Except, it only runs on Ford brand gasoline. And only genuine Ford dealers can repair it - even the most minor problem like a burned out headlight, or adding wiper fluid. And you can only drive it on Ford-owned roads (which all have a Ford-tax toll booth on them). And if you want to sell it, you need written permission from Ford, and they can decide to only allow you to sell it back to a dealer for a pittance, or they can even chose not to allow you to sell it at all. Best of all, although you don't work for GM, don't know anyone that works for GM, and have never even owned a GM car, they've taken all those steps not so much to make more money or to piss you off (they really couldn't care less about your opinion of all this), but to stop GM engineers from stealing their ideas."
What did you do that your CDs delaminated in three months? I have not had a SINGLE cd delaminate. I have a CD that my parents bought me when I was in second grade (I just finished my first year of college) of some Bach organ fuges, it still plays just fine. I got the disk in 1992. Twelve years old, still plays fine. I have other CDs just as old, as do my parents. All of them play just fine. I don't think I have ever thrown a CD out due to it not working properly, other than disks that have been accidentally trod upon, and have cracked. The only problem I have is jewel cases getting dull over time, and cracking at the slightest amount of pressure.
I ask again, what did you do with them? Store them in direct sunlight? Keep them on the dashboard of your car in the summer? CDs are like records in some ways. As John Hartford sang, "Don't leave your records in the sun/They'll warp and they won't be good for anyone". This applies to CDs as well.
/usr/games/fortune
I am an audio professional - note, not "audiophile", but a real working pro in the field. Higher bitrates - 24, 32, etc. have a real benefit in pushing quantization noise down below the analog noise floor (16 bit has a maximum 96 dB s/n ratio, and the bottom of that could be audible if you crank your system up so that the maximum level is, say, 120 dB SPL - not recommended, BTW. 24 bit has a maxum of 144 dB SPL... so the noise floor would then be at -24 dB SPL... way below the analog noise floor. Beyond that - 32 bits - is unnecessary).
And higher sample rates have a benefit, too... and not the "there are tones higher than 20 kHz that you can't hear, but you can feel and make a difference" claim that "audiophiles" try to spout without knowing what they really mean... Very few speakers (we're talking super high-efficiency lab instruments at this point) can reproduce a 48 kHz tone cleanly, so on that point, there's no need for a 96 kHz sample rate...
However, to prevent aliasing of the audio, the Redbook standard says that levels going into the A/D converter during recording have to be below -40 dB VU at 22.5 kHz... To do so, and yet pass 20 kHz cleanly requires such a steep brick-wall filter that there is some serious distortion, ringing, etc. back down lower in the audio band. Moving the requirement up to 48 kHz (with a 96 kHz sample rate) allows the engineers to use much softer filters that will not cause so much distortion - a 3 dB drop through a filter causes a 45 degree delay in the phase, so the higher you can push those delays, the better.
And that's why 96 kHz and even 192 kHz have some benefit. But it sure ain't so you can hear a 48 kHz or 92 kHz tone.
-T