Slashdot Mirror
Sony, Matsushita set to battle over Audio DVD
Some of us might remember that wonderful battle fought before between Matsushita and Sony, over two formats called VHS and Beta. Well, the titans are at it again, this time over the new audio format for audio. Matsushita, along with people like Toshiba, BMG, Warner and Universal, are set to fight with Sony and Philips. Matsushita is a proponent of audio DVD, while Sony is pushing their own Super Audio Format.
I may have misunderstood, but if MP3 is compressed, it is not good enough on any half reasonable audio system. You CAN hear the difference between compressed an non compressed sources, without resorting to anything too esoteric.
The reason people think that CD's are better is because their LP's are all beat up. Longevity is here CD's are "better", not sound quality.
I can't agree with this; I destroy more jewel boxes and render more CDs unplayable in a year than I will probably significantly damage LPs or their jackets in my life. Maybe I am just a slob though.
I'd still rather hear a few pops than have a track rendered unplayable. And I have a better CD player, an older Marantz, than most people---even most people that think they have a good one.
They will cram all their shit onto a single disc, then make you plug your player into a phone line and send your credit card #'s for a listen. Sorta like the god-awful DIVX.
Another comment was (paraphrased)
"I hope they choose 32bit samples, 88.2kHz,
that's 4 times the quality."
Sorry, but when the quality already is 0.98
on a scale ranging from 0 to 1, the best
you can hope to do is around 1.02.
A valid point, though, is that there are
several steps in the making of a cd, and
that the approximations accumulate, and
it is the accumulation which should not
be discernable.
Still, high frequencies,
even if you don't hear them, cause
distorsion as well as audible frequencies
on loudpseakers (membranes behave less and
less linearly when farther from their
resting position).
You can of course eliminate high
frequencies before sending them
to the loudspeaker, but what's the point of
having them on the DVD?
Audio cassettes were around 10 years before the walkman came out. There were (and probably still are) high-end audio cassette products.
A good Dolby C tape deck, like an old Nakamichi and good metal-bias tape can produce very acceptable results. At least as good as Sony MD,
and for most recordings, considerably better than MP3. (I've heard tons of MP3's that sound worse than FM radio -- and yes, that's with 128k stereo encoding)
But, of course, we're near the turn of the millennium -- and we have to go digital with everything, and add copy protection up the wazoo.
The new formats should be 24 bit, with 96Khz sampling. This means that it will require about 3x the space of a CD.
Mark
This may be more down to Sony distribution in Australia. I used to live in Perth and when my Dad bought a 27 inch profeel monitor in 1985 he collected it from a storage cage in a carpenter`s shop!!
You are right, Sony have fallen foul of their unwillingness to licence technology to other companies on more than one occasion i.e. Betamax!
you're so wrong
Crystal Semiconductor DAC chips(used by H/K in some of their models, i can't speak for all of them) cost 5.30 dollars in quantities of 1000 for the top of the line. I don't know how much a Burr-Brown chip would cost but i don't think it would cost so much more. So your figures are wrong. Why do you believe they'd use 4 chips? Most would skimp and use just one. There's always Theta to use as many as they can. So dou you believe, say, a Theta DaViD costs almost 4 grand to produce? I don't believe it does. Most products cost only a fraction of their retail price. There is design, support, inventory for replacement parts and finished goods alike, shipping, and profit shared between producer, distributor and retailer.
Now the greatest costs are the profits, there is usually 20% markup for the dealer, you can calculate the rest. I don't believe any equipment costs a great deal to produce, most of the price goes to cover the design cost, brand, etc. The way you wrote you made it sound as if all those behemoths work for our good without profit for themselves, and you're very naive for that.
Actually, most soundcards are about 14 bits. They produce 16 bits, but the last two are just noise. 32 bit audio would not be doable in the near future. A 192 dB dynamic range is WAY too tough for any circuits that have been used up untill this point. As it is, even the expensive, professional 24 bit, 96kHz converters rarekly have more than about 20 bits of dynamic range (120 dB).
Also, the ADC/DAC is usually the best performing piece of a stereo system. If you look at a basic mass market amp it typically has about 14 bit (~84 dB SNR) performance. This is because most people can't (or don't) tell the difference. If you spend $500+ on an amp you can usually get 16 bit performance (96+ dB SNR) out of it. I've seen amps that claim 20 bit performance, but they were well over $2000. Speakers are where the real weak link is, typically. It is REALLY hard to make speakers that are as accurate as the amp or player. People usually just buy speakers that produce inacuracies that they like.
For comparison, here are some signal to noise ratio levels for typical formats:
Typical cassete tape - ~65 dB
FM radio - ~55 dB
8-bit sound card - 48 dB
-Matt (I'll register one of these days)
But if the unit can handle regular CD's and add audio DVD capability for little or no additional cost, it will still be successful.
There should be a way to allow the a-dvd master to pick their own trade-off between length and quality... 48 or 96 KHz sampling, 16 or 24 bit. 4 combinations to choose from.
Mark
why cant we join forces against the white eyed
invaders from the west? from now on all documentation
in japanese only! and no more publishing audio formats!
what do you mean by "these days"? They have always been this way. Proprietary formats mean more money. Consumers consider Beta a failure but Sony probably made tons of money with it.
Mark
True, MP3 is not CD quality. But you'll need good audio equipment to hear this, and the result only matters in certain cases, like with excellent pieces of classical music.
And then, why does anyone think MP3 is a dead end. It's very likely that there'll be an improved version, e.g. as part of MPEG 7. More than that, you can just make 256kBit MP3s (if it is supported), to get higher quality.
Actully it will fit on one CD. I know because me and my trusty CDR make it so.
SDMI, DVD Audio, MS Audio 4.0, Super Audio Disk... whatever.
I own a full-duplex Sound Blaster Live! card. If I can play any of these formats through my sound card, I can record the audio stream into a CD-quality WAV file with miniscule loss of fidelty (if any at all) and convert it to MP3 or VQF, and there's not one bit of copy protection or watermarking that will trace it back to me.
We've got the cat. They're still fighting over the bag. Sad, really.
MiniDisc is selling like hotcakes in Japan. I
don't think Sony has to worry about losing any
money here. Same goes for flat/plasma/whatever-
wierd-thing-they-can-dream-up TV, or anything
else that fits that description. You have no
idea of the rampant consumerism here.
Otherwise there's no reason for the new format at all. Face it, there will *never* be more than about an hour of music on most disks.
/. readers listen to C&W (I don't), but look at a C&W CD sometime -- they're only about a half-hour each because of this.
Musicians who write their own songs can't produce seven hours' worth of *good* stuff regularly. This amount is only for the boxed set retrospective that costs $200 and is sold after the artist is old and grey. And only the diehard fans and gotta-have-the-complete-collection freaks will pay that much.
Musicians who don't write their own songs won't put more than an hour of music on because record companies don't want to split the royalties forty ways. Probably not many
Japanese patent law is different than the US. Remember about 5 to 10 years ago, Japan finally granted the basic semiconductor patents to Texas Instruments that T.I. got in the 1950s in the US. Only at this later date did these Japanese companies start making large royalty payments.
I would love to be able to mix instruments myself, instead of just lame EQ'ing. But this will probably never happen.
Mark
I assume the Matsushita format isn't owned by anyone? They didn't exactly make that clear. They didn't make the differences between the formats clear either. They didn't really make anything clear except corporate politics. Is that all CNN cares about?
It would be nice to see a real comparison of the two formats. Which is better, and how? Ignoring, for just a second, that sony's format is propeitary and therefore evil. Anyone got a URL on that?
If these people don't get it together they will very quickly discover that there's no reason at all for people to switch to a DVD format from normal CD. DVD may have a definate advantage over VHS, which is a really crappy format, but the quality of normal CD approaches the limit of where the human ear can understand the difference in quality. And people _really_ won't want to upgrade to the new format if there's two competing formats.
DIVX MUST DIE.
Most people currently buy a CD player and VCR both; which costs about the same amount as a DVD player.
One of these formats, or both, will be available in low-end DVD players soon enough... and once the technology is available to enough people, audio DVD's will be available.
CD's didn't outpace records overnight - it took years (though CD's were a more obvious improvement over records than audio DVD is over CD's).
Mark
Each has advantages and disadvantages. It depends how we define "sound quality". If sound quality means to reproduce the instruments and performers as closely as posible to the live musical event, LP records (in my opinion) still have the advantage.
On the other side of the coin CD's have lower noise floors (quiet), higher dynamic range (punchy), and other technical specs that for the majority of people add up to what they perceive as "sound quality".
Just some food for thought.
--Ben
You, sir, are an idiot. Should I say that you cannot tell the difference between a .30 dot pitch monitor and a .25??
And yes, more than 16 bits (sampling) is needed to convey more of the warmth and essence of the *music* which is what vinyl LP records have been able to do all along. The current CD standard isn't the "perfect sound forever" that the RIAA would like us to beleive.
If you have a high resolution audio system, you can hear the difference between all these things.
--Ben
>LPs sound WAY different depending how good of a >turntable you have, but CDs sound *almost* the
>same in any old CD player. That is where CDs >excel.
This is a gross oversimplification. Contrary to what a lot of people seem to think, CD players vary wildly in quality. But yeah, almost any old CD player will be a marked improvement over a $100 turntable with a cheap cartridge and a worn-out stylus---or over cassettes.
CD's *don't* sound better than LP's. The sampling
rate is well within the discernable rate for the average person. LP's still carry better at the higher frequencies. However, the 96KHz rate of DVD-A should be better.
The reason people think that CD's are better is because their LP's are all beat up. Longevity is where CD's are "better", not sound quality.
I agree with you. I look at it this way: CDs are more resistant to minor damage (the error correction circuts keep it from becoming audible) and LPs will contiue to play through all but the worst damage (as you point out).
I think most vinylphiles like us take excellent care of our records and they will last a lifetime as a result. Yippie!
--Ben
THe biggest thing with Audio DVD is that it could possibly also have the video's on it. Meaning... If you have a DVD player you can pop the DVD in the Player and watch the video. YOu could do this on your computer as well. And if you are on the road you just pop the dvd in the audio DVD player and go for the trip. Personally I think ti would be a great deal
Sony's new super cd format will not require you to go out and buy a new cd player. All media is backwards compatible with current CD technology.
If you want higher sound quality, then you will need a new player to read the "high rez" layer of the disk.
With DVD audio, you will have to buy a new player no matter what to play the disk.
--Ben
CDs excel at lasting a long time, and sounding relatively the same regardless of how much you want to spend on equipment. LPs sound WAY different depending how good of a turntable you have, but CDs sound *almost* the same in any old CD player. That is where CDs excel.
Beta is still used by video production facilities everywhere. It's a far better format than VHS, and can record D-1 video extrememly well. Until disk storage is cheap enough to store the terabytes of daily broadcasts (in HD, no less :), Beta will still be the format of choice.
The article was short on details, and I'd love to see a feature-for-feature comparison of the warring formats, but I'd like to make a blind prediction nonetheless based on my experiences watching the consumer electronics industry grow up:
The superior format will finally win this time.
Of course, the battle will be very ugly in this technopolistic society where marketing declares winners and losers, riches and destitution; however, it's about time the children of the digital revolution start realizing the larger issues behind "I-want-it-now" satisfaction.
The winning format will be uncompressed, of course, without copy protection, and will have features that will please the pickiest of audiophiles: 24-bit samples, 96khz rate, and the ability to playback as many or as few tracks as the listener decides (or can afford the hardware for). Specs like this guarantee that the format will be poised for a new generation of digital freedom, and the super-high resolution will make it incredibly difficult to corrupt the fidelity. (Right now, the strongest argument against digital data distribution is the analog->digital and digital->analog conversion processes. Higher resolution demands superior conversion electronics, and that means the margin of error will fall well outside the audible range.)
Unfortunately, the winner may not emerge from this current battle; as I've said, I would like to see the specifics of both audio formats, but keep this prediction in mind. We'll see it take place as the digital revolution finally figures out what it's revolting against.
With the exception of The Wall and Billy Joel's greatest hits, all 200+ of my CDs fit on one CD. Most only take up 45-50 minutes. What is 2.7GB of storage going to get me? It'll just make it easier for the RIAA to gouge me for even mor emoney.
Posted by kegking:
DVD will have NO part in music today. People were stupid in the '80's (wow man its like silver!) and handed over the cash for CD's. I will not submit to the monster. This will end now! nNo more $17 doller cd. No more stupidity. DVD is a breath of fresh air from analog (VHS) to digital (DVD), but digital to digital will not be as easy. It will fail. Hackers will win. All is good. How long will it take them to find a way to start DVD ripping? 2-3 weeks people?
As far as I'm concerned 44Khz 16-bit Audio CD's sound great, and I'd dare any audiophile to prove otherwise in a blind listening test.
As for DVD-Audio, I don't see what the point is... Why can't you simply make a DVD that includes sound without a picture? The sound is already in Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC-3) on most movies, and with the capacity of DVD's, you could put a DD 2.0 Stereo track on there as well.. Bands could start using DD 5.1 to their advantage to do some really creative things...
Ooo, I forgot, DD is compressed, just like MP3 is. Well, guess what.. Same challenge to the audiophiles.. let's take a blind test.
well MP3 doesnt even keep up with CD quality, but it comes close.
but when everyone in the world is used to this new kick ass higher quality sound MP3 just isnt gonna cut it anymore... it only scales so high
hence there is now a reason to buy music (beter quality) MP3 may still be around (convinience) but when consumers can have higer quality they will want it
actualy, its much like tapes and CD's tapes can be easily pirated, but CD's are better quality... people still use tapes for convinience (we dont all have car CD players) but will buy CD's
thats how this could kill MP3..
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
But if the average person can't tell the difference between CD quality and the higher quality audio, or more importantly if their amp/speaker setup is the limiting factor, then they won't be used to higher quality audio and therefore MP3 won't die.
I wonder if those audiophile idiots will *still* claim they can hear the individual samples? :^)
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Are we talking *audible* quality, or are we talking *measurable* quality? I have a good ear (and think MP3s sound absolutely horrible--kinda like a metal cassette just about to crinkle itself into a little ball in a cassette deck) and I can rarely tell the difference between CD players.
:^)
OK, so you're right... *sighs* Many CD players seem to add their own "color." I have an oldish JVC 6-disc changer sitting next to me right now, and it sounds vastly different from most other CD players I've heard...but that's because it mucks around with the signal, upsampling to 18 bit (like I said, it's oldish) and then smoothing the wave. Ugh. Gimme the crappy high end over pseudo-vinyl anyday.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Better sound quality just isn't enough--yeah, the pundits said that about CD vs. LP, too. :^P
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
You'd be a dumb-ass to go out and buy either of these players - unless you want to be one of those people who bought a Betamax VCR and are now using it as a door stop!
The same thing will happen to Sony's Mini-Disc format - unless they're going to market a product, how can they expect it to gain mass-market acceptance? I live in Australia and have neither neard of nor seen Mini-Disc players/recorders in magazines, on the shelf, or on TV.
For some reason Sony likes to invest millions of dollars in developing new products without actually selling them! How can they re-coup the cost of their investment unless they're prepared to sell the crap?
What about Sony's new "Plasmatron" TV? I don't see any TV adds in Australia for that one - but I *HAVE* seen adds for the new one from Philips. Just another example of Sony being selfish with their technology and not wanting anyone else to even *pay* good money for it!
As far as I'm concerned, when my 17" Sony Trinitron monitor dies, I'll be buying one of them nice flat ones from Philips!
Hold on... wasn't JVC the creator of VHS?
^D
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
Yup. Matsushita, as in "Matsushita Kotobuki Electronics", or MKE, which happens to be the company that owns the trademarks "Panasonic" and Technics, doesn't have anything to do with Japan Victor Company (yes, that's JVC).
Now, I can't explain why the mediadroids came up with the story that MKE created VHS. Specially after having seen some JVC marketing stuff (many years ago) claiming that they were the creators of VHS.
^D
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
24bits 96Khz. Somehow I don't think this will spark much of a revolution. After all, many geeks seem to think that listening to MP3s through a soundcard is good enough for them.
I thought that at most patents expired after 14 years... Why then is Mit{mumble} still paying $250 mill/year for royaltys? CD's entered in 82, that would be 96 when the patent expired.
Or is there something that I don't know? (highly probable)
Zapman
Does anyone know whether DVD Audio titles will still have geographic zone restriction like DVD video titles?
There's the problem of quality; current MP3 encoders/decoders don't support rates above 48kHz; also, the MP3 process distorts the high-frequency information a bit.
And higher sample rates are a Good Idea. While 44.1 is enough to represent frequencies up to 22.05kHz, the harmonics of the higher frequencies become distorted by the sampling process. 96kHz would allow pretty much all human-audible sound to be encoded non-marginally.
Have you tried making 256k mpeg2s? (mpeg1 layer2)
They tend to have better quality, at a minor (given the higher quality of the file) size increase. Encode faster too.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
What about more channels? I know it'll bug the audiophile purists, but what about a 5.1 encoding on audio discs? This alone almost makes the extra space all used up on a DVD if you add higher audio quality as well.
no that is not the real reason. they have been talking about audio DVD virtually since DVD was being made
I don't know about anyone else, but I read about this "format war" about three months ago in "Home Theater Magazine." Maybe I am the only person with a subscription?
Maybe JVC's "real" name IS Matsushita? I always thought that JVC created VHS too, but I think maybe JVC is a marketing name for Matsushita.... think about it, who would buy a Matsushita TV? heh
The DVD/A specification already handles this. You can have higher quality sound, such as two-channel 192khz/24, or have more channels, such as 24/96 5.1 or whatever, or have hours of 16/44.1 audio.
They also allow different compressions formats, such as Dolby AC-3, and a lossless ocmpression format that gives 2-3x compression on the audio.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
> There should be a way to allow the a-dvd
> master to pick their own trade-off between
> length and quality... 48 or 96 KHz sampling,
> 16 or 24 bit
If I remember correctly, that is exactly what DVD-audio is about. And a few more.
And IIRC, they simplified things by not requiring audio players to be able to decode MP3 streams.
Personally I'd have required an MP3 decoder in the player: For the cases where you do want 100 hours of stuff on one disk, you can do it.
Designing a good format is all about expecting the unexpected. Sure, not every content-provider will have around 100 hours of audio to put on a disk, but it sure would be nice for say an archive copy of a trial.
(5.2G gives 100 hours of 115kbps MP3. Double-track gives a little under 200 hours. Reducing the bitrate can dramatically increase the capacity for stuff like voice-only.)
Roger.
MiniDiscs are certainly made by other companies, and the ATRAC encoding method isn't hidden from review either. Or would you call VHS "proprietary" as well because you can't duplicate it in your garage?
what's the difference between the audio on dvd-video disks now and dvd-audio? i've heard dvd's with only music recorded in 24/96 that sound pretty great -- why do we need a new standard, what's the difference?
later,
ian
No Matsushita isn't owned by anyone... they instead own many of the Japanese companies you buy from. They are quite the juggernaught and if it wasn't for them sagging under their own weight would prolly dominate every field of eletronics sales.F /...
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
And the answer was of course it is. It is owned by Matsushita who will use their huge presence to make it suddenly appear in a whole lot of "different" companies products at once.F /...
---
Openstep/NeXTSTEP/Solaris/FreeBSD/Linux/ultrix/OS
--- I do not moderate.
How will this kill MP3? I think we had this discussion before, about the "secure" digital music format. Anything that produces and analog output (or a digital sound output, if you have nice hardware) can be fed into a soundcard and encoded. Granted, the difference between MP3 and DVD is wider than the difference with a plain CD, but people will still use their MP3 players, just for the sake of laziness.
0 1 - just my two bits
You're right about LPs sounding better than CDs, but they are NOT longer-lived. I'm listening to LPs that were produced in the 50s, but CDs will not last longer than 15 to 20 years, due to improper sealing of the metal layer. Possibly gold CDs will, but you can hardly get anything on gold, and you wouldn't want to pay the extra 10 smackeroos for the privilege anyway. At least I wouldn't.
Switch the . and the @ to email me.
Does anyone remeber Minidiscs? I do. I own one.
All this talk about 6 hours of music and quality the human ear can't desitingush is crap because most people don't care.
As the first post pointed out, the real explosion comes from portability, conveniance, and ubiquity. I personally wish that Minidiscs were pushed harder. They sound almost as good as CDs, hold the same amount of music (more if you cut the stereo) and they are conveniant and cheap.
THAT is the sorta thing people need, kinda like a CD-age version of the casette tape.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I did a little research and I guess I was wrong.
m l
It looks like Matsushita DOES own Japan Victor Co.
Take a look at http://www.mei.co.jp/corp/customers/contents_e.ht
Down at the bottom of the page under related site is Victor Company of Japan (JVC)
Maybe JVC's "real" name IS Matsushita?
Nah, Matsushita's marketing names are Panasonic and Technics.
Are you suggesting CD's have better sound quality than LP?!! Ridiculous!
I grew up thinking that, but now all the news stories covering this are saying it was Matsushita. Hmm...
My only question is, why not use, or start modifying the existing dvd video players to have the capability of playing dvd audio. I see absolutely no reason why dvd audio players should cost ~$1000, when a dvd video player is ~$399 and up. Surely the dvd audio can't be any more complex than dvd video. Give me a machine that can play both dvd audio and dvd video and i'll buy. (mainly because i'm buying a dvd video machine anyway).
Jarod
Folks, it doesn't matter a bit if you can tell the difference between brand MP3 and 24/96.
It really doesn't.
Those idiotic, muddleheadded, psychotic brain-damaged folk, like myself, who are so deluded in thinking that they can tell the difference that we'll do two things:
1: ignore all contrawise thinking people
2: Buy/use the "better" sound encoding
Those who think we're dumb will be ignored, until such time as they also become similiarly deluded.
hanzie.
********* sig: If you don't like the law, get filthy stinking rich, and buy a better one.
Why not have more than one standard format defined, so that the record companies can choose what's most appropriate for each release. In this day and age that shouldn't be too difficult? I mean, imagine if mpeg videos only came in one resolution and frame rate!
(5.1 channel audio should be accomodated in the same way).
if you want sound quality, try vinyl
"I just can't sit while people are saying nonsense in a meeting without saying it's nonsense" J Watson, Sci Am 288:(4)51
Sony seem to have been trying to do that for years. As soon as everyone had a CD player, they started talking about minidiscs. (at least 5 years ago) They're still trying to supersede CDs so we will all have to go out and buy a new player. They probably couldn't care less about the format, as long as it's theirs. Not that Matsushita aren't trying the same scam.
There's a limit to how much quality is worth having. Most of that quality would be lost on the amp/speakers of most hi-fis. Not to mention the limits to the limited difference in clarity discernable by the human ear. Noticed how sound cards still only work with 16 bits for wave sounds? This is why.
Still, I can't think of many uses for that much storage, unless it's recordable, which it won't be.
This will slow down the roll-out of DVD-Audio.
Sony and Matsushita will settle with a patent-sharing, compromise solution that includes both standards.
Business goes on. Everybody involved makes tons of moola selling consumer electronics to teenagers...
Mike
--
Mike
--
"Wi nøt trei a høliday in Sweden this yër?"
Believe it or not, 24/96 I believe is worth it. 16/44 is just plain lame. While I don't claim to be able to hear the samples, anyone that "listens" to music feels the inherent supoeriority of vinyl. Now, the problem is that the qualities of vinyl that people like (analog, fullness, more natural stereo seperation) are mitigated by the imperfections of atoms. Bits are the answer, but CD's weren't it.
24/96 is ~ digital vinyl, or digital analog... I would argue that anything beyond that is in fact superfluous, but CD's are very lacking when it comes to accurately reproducing the original.
Why are we willing to put up with MP3's? Because they fit onto devices we can afford, and are transferrable at bandwidth's that we can afford... in the long run, neither of these are an issue.
Actually, by the time a music format like this catches on, we'll all have faster computers with more storage & more bandwidth - we'll just move to a variation of mp3 or something similar which uses more bandwidth & has most of the quality of the new music format.
Meldroc, Waster of Electrons
Yes, the point of all this ridiculous bickering over format is so one company can establish a monopoly. Anti-trust issues aside, these companies simply want to have a successful proprietary format so everyone else has kiss up (i.e, pay $$$) to buy in. What happens is that this fighting usually causes the new technology to be delayed for years (or never happen, like stereo AM radio), and you can guarantee we poor end users will get the short end of the stick.
How best to serve the customer is never an issue. The issue is to try and screw all the competition and create the perception of being the best. You think SmallSquishy got where they are today by providing the best software for users. Has anyone used Windows or Office lately?
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
Is it just me, or does Sony really seem to be into proprietary formats these days? Memory Sticks, MiniDiscs, Super Audio Format, etc. I guess they're hoping one will catch on so they can rake in the licensing fees.
Just an idea, maybe it really sucks, I dunno. But I think it might be nifty if musicians had, say, 4 or 6 channels of sound to play around with, instead of just the ordinary 2 for stereo. (And of course so-called "surround", which isn't quite the same as having 6 channels to play with.)
I suppose most musicians wouldn't find any real use for that. But it could be pretty cool for dance music, say, in a club. Make for a more interesting experience than stereo.
Is this a daft idea?
You've missed the point. If a company owns the format and others license from it, it makes a bundle of cash in royalties. Read the part about Sony and how much it gets from CDs again. Sony wants to stay on the gravy train. The people supplying gravy don't.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
Hah, like that would ever fly. Sony, combined with the RIAA and all its minions, would have put up such a stink over that you'd be able to smell it in Antarctica. Requiring an MP3 decoder would have been their worst nightmare (and a consumers dream).
BTW, I think you're right on the multiple sampling rates.
--
--
Jason Eric Pierce
I think they should find a balance between increasing quality and capacity. If the disk can fit seven times more data, make the audio format 32-bit, 88.2 K sample rate. Four times the audio quality, and you can still fit over 2 hours of music onto one disk.
No sig.
The complete works of Led Zeppelin/Mozart/Rob Malda, all on one disk, perhaps?
No sig.
Oh, well. I suppose record producers have to eat, too.
No sig.
You know, I remembered something important long after posting:
:)
I've worked a little with studio equipment (Akai HD recorders, DAT decks, digital processors). I don't recall ANY of them having a sample rate higher than 48khz. I think a lot of audio processors now are using 20 to 24-bit sampling but are still sampling at 48khz (at best).
This isn't even taking into account distortion and limitations imposed by microphones and speakers.
I agree completely that higher sampling rates and bit counts will reduce distortion (esp. at higher freqs as you said), but I'm left wondering what good it does if the distortion is introduced by components in the studio -- I guess you reduce the (negligable?) cumulative effects.
I also wonder if we'll start seeing HD recorders and tools that do 24-bit/96khz. Better buy bigger hard drives, musicians....
Anyway, I'm sure this thread is pretty much dead now. Just wanted to get two more cents in. Thanks.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
whew! 'cos i thought for i second you said "a new audio format for video" and i was like "but hey dude! what about the pictures and subtitles and stuff".
mincin' it up with the best...
--
Rare Window - free your photos
I know there's a big markup. On the high-end equipment a markup of 50% isn't that unusual, often higher. Part of what you are paying for is for someone to really design something right without marketing constantly trying to figure out how much cost they can cut.
I stand corrected on the price of DACs. The new Burr-Brown DACs have come down significantly in price and are now around $3 in 1000 quantity. The last time I looked over there they were on the order of $40.
As for building high-end equipment, which I have been involved with, it isn't cheap. A lot more care needs to be taken in terms of selecting matched components and using quality parts (i.e. no tantalum caps or carbon resistors in the signal path). None of the consumer-grade equipment I've seen does a decent job of using quality parts. Open up most Sony or other cheap equipment and you'll find it's full of 10% carbon resistors, tantalum caps, cheap electrolytics, and jumpers all over the place on a phenolic PC board with marginal solder connections and a just barely adequate power supply using LM78xx class regulators for the analog section (which are terrible in terms of noise).
Most consumers wouldn't notice much difference with a high-end DAC with their $200 pair of Bose or Sony speakers. Someone with a pair of NHT's, Magnapan, Martin Logan, or Wilson's will definitely hear a difference because the speakers will be able to much more accurately reproduce the sound without muddying it with their own color.
The high end equipment does not make these compromises. The BOM is higher and the quantities sold are much lower (since the average consumer doesn't have a system that could notice it with their $200 pair of Bose speakers). Due to the quanty sold, the manufacturer must charge more to stay in business. If you're Sony or Panasonic then you plan on hundreds of thousands if not millions of units selling. If you're Theta, Pass Labs, Audio Research, etc. then you figure you'll sell less than 10,000 units. If you were to sell 10,000 units at $100 profit each and you have a number of employees you'd go out of business real fast.
This isn't to say that Sony or Magnavox couldn't make a high-end player. They could, but they're constantly looking at how they can cut costs which defeats the purpose.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
I can very well see why a good DVD audio player would cost $1000. Have you tried pricing what it takes to build a good high-quality DAC that can handle 20 bits, let alone 24 bits? More than that, you need more expensive op-amps, better quality resistors, capacitors, filters, and so on. A high-quality 24-bit DAC isn't cheap either. The noise floor becomes much more critical and hence a much more expensive design is in order.
For good quality audio equipment you don't get away with using cheap electrolytic capacitors or carbon resistors any more or the really cheap op-amps and voltage regulators. Now you need to move to 1% or better metal film resistors (or better) and polypropolyne/polystyrene caps and either discrete or very high quality op-amps. The power supply needs to be beefier and have better noise immunity. More than likely, a separate power supply is needed for the digital vs analog portions of the circuit.
Oh yeah, now that you're 24-bit you want to use balanced XLR connectors. For that nice clean balanced output you now need two DACs per channel running inverted for a total of 4 DACs.
A starting 24-bit DAC probably starts at $20 each. You're at $80 already for only one piece. Now another $60-80 for op-amps, $30 for resistors and caps. Now throw in the power supply for $80 for a good toroid transformer and double regulated supplies, independent for each channel and for the analog and digital portions. You're up to $250 already and nothing has been covered for the transport or other circuitry. Add video support and AC3 5.1 channel audio and you could easily exceed $1000 for parts alone.
Of course, most of those here couldn't tell the difference between a CD and a cassette, given how fond you are of MP3 format. MP3 has some serious shortcomings quality-wise, and some could be fixed without too much difficulty (i.e. using a logrithmic scale for dividing frequencies rather than a linear scale).
For those of us who really like to try and reproduce music (rather than noise) we do notice the shortcomings of 44100/16. Hell, even consumer equipment typically tries to enhance it (i.e. 8x oversampling) since trying to make a 20khz brick wall filter is about impossible without screwing up the phase and other artifacts.
The filtering involved in the recording side also effects the sound since all input sound must be filtered to reject any signal above or at 22050 to eliminate aliasing.
DVD audio is a long-welcomed addition by hi-fi entheusist since CD's are so screwed up. The recording industry took the minimal acceptable standards and went with those much the same as they pushed cassettes, another bare-minimum standard, or VHS, which was not properly engineered from the beginning (unlike betamax, which used a much better head geometry).
Of course, the DVD audio spec supports several sampling rates besides 96khz and several bit depths from 16-bits to 24 bits. This means those 10-CD collections on those late-night commercials could be replaced by a single DVD.
Also, if they support AC3 and DTS audio DVDs all the better. Full-surround DTS audio would be a nice medium to play with.
CDs are ancient technology, and anyone who wants to replace them with MP3 should go back to their 3" computer speakers and sound blasters.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Um, Change that would to a wouldn't.
Yeah. *Sigh* Money tends to cause major coporations to have huge "Whose is biggest?" contests. Usually, the loser ends up with theirs cut off. Oh well, if corporations didn't make money, they would be in business.
RB
My God, when will these companies ever learn that they are just killing themseleves by fighting over a format. THE CUSTOMER DOESN'T CARE HOW IT WORKS! All a customer wants to know is that when the button is pressed, something happens! Preferably, the right thing happens. They could be making money sooner if they just agree on a format.
RB
Yeah proper Surround Sound is neat-o, but the complaint still stands that this would be aiming towards a *very* small portion of the market.
Even if you could sell four speakers to a respectable sector of the market, who is ever going to set them up properly? This just doesn't fit with consumer products...Surround without properly positioned speakers is quite worthless.
I just don't understand how Sony, et al expects to move many of these on those merits....although I suppose all they have to do is convince the public its superior....I dunno, the whole thing sounds like a waste of resources to me.
I'm amused that we're finally reaching storage capacities we have no use for....everyone is grasping at straws on how to soak up the extra GBs with data noone really wants...
Well, from what I've heard they are regrettably going the full higher-quality route, at least in terms of Audio-DVD. Frankly I don't believe the world needs 24-bit 96kHz sound in a general consumer format.
The average listener doesn't even pick up what CDs have to offer. 24-bits 96 thousand times a second still sounds awful if its going through a four-inch speaker in a boom-box. A-DVD will cater to a miniscule fraction of the market....I just don't think they can pull people away from their CD collections.
I fully agree; one year ago, I read information concerning these formats in a french audiophile publication. I really like the backward compatibility feature of the Sony format with current CD players. One year ago, the Matsushita format did not seemed to be backward compatible; did it change since or is it just meaning that a Matsushita player will be able to play standard CD ?
Yeah, but a well-recorded LP in good condition on good equipment will sound better than a CD on similar equipment.
There are problems inherent in digitally reproducing audio. Even at 32 bits and 88.4KHz (or whatever the other poster suggested), there's the possibility of artifacts and sampling problems. Analog avoids a lot of this.
So, no, you're confused.
I still listen to the CDs I bought in 1983 and I haven't noticed any sound or material degredation. The better digital electronics of today's CD players combined with the overkill redundancy of the CD format will let me listen to them for years to come.
You can't fight in here - this is the war room!
That's actually the point of SACD - It's apparently backward compatible with normal audio, unlike DVD-Audio (unless they have 1 layer 16-bit 44Khz and 1 layer 24-bit, 96Khz.)
The other problem with this little debarcle is that Philips make all the transports for Matsushita's CD players (Technics etc..). Sony make them for Toshiba. I think you'll have all the small fry fighting against the two big boys - look what happened to MiniDisc vs DCC. DCC lost out big time. If they make SACD recordable, maybe that might help.
A three minute song with 24 tracks would fill a single CD. You would need a 24x CLV CD to get that data off the disk and then manipulate 24 100 Kb/s streams in real time. And that is if there are only 24 tracks.
Not likely.
Besides, why would you want to have to include a mixing console on every device?
128kb/s MP3s are inferior to CD on my cheap PC speakers. Through my stereo, the difference is even greater. I have a hard time with most (but not all) 256k MP3s. Bandwidth will solve this problem eventually.
To me, the technically obvious solution is MP3 on a UDF DVD disk. Any additional data (track information, etc.) can also be put into the file system. But I guess that's just too simple...
Ah, but the big difference is that you can't get tapes off the internet! Otherwise, the analogy is the same, but that's a pretty important distinction.
The article, of course, had no useful information. The DVD-Audio spec is just that, DVD discs with 24/96 audio. This requires a new player, even if you already have a DVD player, it doesn't know about the audio-only format.
The Sony spec, however, is very cool. My understanding is that it's a ~3MHz 1-bit delta-sigma encoding, and that's on the second layer. The first layer is good old CDDA, so the "Super" discs will play in existing players, but the new expensive player will be able to read the high-quality layer. It's the better standard, and it has the backward compatibility hook to gain acceptance.
You have violated Robot's Rules of Order and will be asked to leave the future immediately.
I just finished reading a post where someone called a poster an "idiot" for wondering why DVD was even necessary.
I'm sorry, I find it very hard to believe, even with the best possible equipment, that anyone can tell the difference between 16 and 24-bit audio. I also don't see what 96khz sampling gets you, except a frequency response up to ~48khz. That's real useful when the human ear can't hear anything higher than 20khz.
I'm all for more accurate sampling and reproduction, but the human ear is far more subjective than the equipment being discussed here.
Save the whales. Feed the hungry. Free the mallocs.
Looks like Sony is about to screw itself over. Even if the high-end audio wankers (word of the day: "wank.") really dig this format, they aren't the ones who will make it popular enough to really go somewhere. Acceptance by the few hundreds who will pay four thousand bucks for a new kind of CD player does not imply mass acceptance by the Great Unwashed who think things like cassette tapes are really keen.
The only reason the cassette really took over was the walkman, which was about as low-brow and consumery as you can get. It'll take something like that (the killer app for the format) to really make the format go over in any way.
Similarly, if these extended-length audio things don't offer something cool that normal CDs can't do, they won't go anywhere. Just better sound isn't enough, and we can't expect there to be anything worthwhile to say about 7-hour-long albums. 70-minute albums are already bad enough, for the most part. Do we really need the typical record label garbage of two good songs and _six and a half hours_ of B-sides? Sure, there are a few artists who could really do something with that (imagine having an artist's entire catalog on a single DVD or two), but most of them are the record-label-hyped one-hit-wonder-types. Seven or eight hours of the Spice Girls? Or, for that matter, _yet_another_ reissued classic rock set? Like we need _yet_another_ version of all that Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin you've all already bought, what, three or four times already? (Vinyl, cassette, CD, reissued gold CD, big boxed sets of CDs with two new "bonus tracks" to suck you in and make you buy the same music again and again and again...)
Anyway, record labels suck. Don't let them decide what format we should be using.
With DVD players at about $200 (compared to $100 for a standard CD player), it would seem like DVD Audio is inevitable.
I doubt there's going to be many 6.5 hour albumns. More like the standard 45 minutes plus a few music videos or something.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
You are correct. These guys fought for years over what became the original DVD spec, and are also fighting over DVD-RW.
The interesting thing about the DVD fight is that the format was redesigned in the process from "VHS Quality" to something considerably better.
--
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.