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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).
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.
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.
This was a really, really uninformative article. Bonus points for being "blurbed" as about DVD-A/SACD and then having almost nothing about them.
I have a DVD-A/SACD player. It's hooked up to a home theater system that toals out at about $6,000, not counting TV. DVD-As and SACD do definitely sound better than CD, but they only sound better in scenarios where a person has a stereo that runs more than about $1,000. Below that point, the limiting factor isn't their media but the speakers.
That said, I really regret having purchased it. I'm not a huge classical music fan, and my interest in jazz is minor. There aren't a huge amount of major releases out there for someone like myself. It is amusing, though, to go to the store and see the completely random stuff that does make it out (The Bangles Greatest Hits? Queensryche?!? The Top Gun Soundtrack?).
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?
Hmm, thought i'd read this before.
3 7873
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106150&cid=90
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.
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.
In the porn industry we call this Double Vaginal Double Anal. Only a few girls will do it though.
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 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.
This whole better-sound-from-lps is a bit of a strange myth. Maybe, on a first listening, *if* and only if you keep all of your audio equipment in a clean-room, you might better sound quality.
Since most people don't have the luxury of a clean room and a pristine LP for each listening, better sound quality is hard to get. If it exists at all.
I spent a while recording some LPs to CD a while back on some dedcent equipment (not pro or anything, but not junk). LPs are incredibly static prone. If you so much as look at them they get all charged up and attract most of the dust in the room. Once you manage to get most of the dust out of the tracks (it's impossible to get it all out, and any left degrades the sound quality) you will notice that the sound quality of any of your favourite LPs (ie the ones you listen to lots) will be degraded because they wear. Oh, and of course, you have to go through the hassle of getting all the dust removed *every**time* you want to listen (or you get very crackly sound).
With a CD, as long as you take a bit of care not to scratch the hell out of it, you put it in and get pretty much error free sound every time. With out all the crackling.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
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"
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
Just think of the advantages.
Some may be tempted to point out these are only benefits for the music industry, and you'd be right. After all, we're just their customers; why should we benefit?
Honestly, tho, this is ridiculous. With the popularity of the iPod and iTunes (disclaimer: I neither have an iPod, nor use iTunes so I'm not being baised), why do they even bother with these new physical formats? People have demonstrated over and over again that they'd rather sit down at their computer, find the song they want, and click "Download". Sometimes, there's even the word "Buy" associated with it.
But shame on me, this is the music industry afterall... a body that wouldn't know what the market wants even after we try beating into their skulls with a giant cartoon mallet.
We're geeks... We're the sorcerers of the modern-day world. --
A rather cheap one, sadly, but the sound is still incredibly good. Dylan's Blonde on Blonde sounds fantastic in 5.1, and the choir in the Stones' You Can't Always Get What You Want has never sounded better. Dark Side of the Moon is, of course, astounding. In all cases, higher frequencies sound better than they do on standard CDs.
As far as pricing, I bought most of the SACDs new for about $10-11/disc.
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?)
$40-$50???
Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon, SACD: $13.49 from Amazon.com
Miles Davis Sketches of Spain, DVD-A, 14.99 from Amazon.com
Whatcha talkin bout Willis???
My additional 2 cents: I have a hybrid DVD-A and SACD player and the formats are worth it (IMHO) for the 5.1 channel mixes alone -- granted, not all music lends itself to surround mixes though. But check out The Flaming Lips Yoshmi Battles the PInk Robots on DVD-A to experience something way beyond what your CD player is capable of.
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
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.
... 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.
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."
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.
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
Early CDs had problems with the foil peeling off. I still have problems with brand new CDs destroying themselves (I have ~270 discs and have had to repurchase five with two more that I recently noticed had pits in the foil...). I think it's the printing; I rip my CDs, put the cases on a rack, and then the disc in a binder that is stored away in a cool dry place. I've had the most problems with CDs from Century Media; they recently changed their printing methods and the newer discs don't seem to have any problems (so far).
That said, I still have the first CD I ever got when I was ten (1996) and it's been through a lot of abuse and still plays fine.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
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.
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
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.