Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.
Hmm, thought i'd read this before.
3 7873
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=106150&cid=90
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.
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.