DVD Audio: Will This Replace CD's? Or Is It A Music Industry Con To Make More Money

Anyone else wondering about this statement?

-- electric sound of jim (electricsoun...), August 5th, 2003.

On a DVD the images are certainly compressed, a lot. I think the audio that goes along with the films is too, but not sure about DVD audio (ie audio only) sound.

BTW
We are talking about space saving, file-shrinking computer 'compression' here, not the 'audio signal squashing' musical sort.

So, that would be a DVD player then?

I think a 70min 24/192k stereo album would just about fit in its raw form on a DVD5, but I suspect the lossless packing is required to squeeze extra stuff like the surround mix and (in many cases) DVD-Video compatible stuff like a 5.1 Dolby Digital/DTS mix on there too.

In one sense it is a load of bollocks. We don't 'need' it. It's chiefly about copy protection (as is SACD). But, then again, lots of people have some form of multi-speaker system now (for DVD-V) and some advocates of 'true' surround sound (e.g. not gimmicky pinging from speaker to speaker, but an attempt to create an immersive, 'real' soundfield) say it'll do to stereo what stereo did to mono (I think that's the better comparison - not CD/vinyl, cos there's no consumer gain in convenience/longevity here).

I'm mildly curious on a technical level to see what difference there might be between an old analogue master dubbed at 24/96k and transferred bit-for-bit to DVD-A and one remastered the same way, dithered, noise-shaped and SRCed down to 16/44.1k for CD release, through domestic equipment.

That answers your question, Ryan.

People have been far more interested in technologies that increase convenience and give them more control over their music, at the cost of sound quality (mp3's) than in repurchasing their entire record collection JUST to improve the sound quality (DVD-Audio, SACD).

Some companies already use the existing DVD format to ship fantastically long audio programs. You can get Morton Feldman's String Quartet II from Flux as a continuous five-hour program on DVD. It runs on regular DVD players at CD quality sound.

On the other hand, it would be great if they dug up all those old Quadrophonic mixes from the '70s (I think?), back before that technology was dropped ...

I think if the industry were hoping for this idea alone to guarentee DVD-Audio's success it would be a very naive move.

People moving to replace vinyl with CDs is not entirely analogous to replacing CDs with DVD-As -- in the former I think that people, beside wanting to improve sound quality, realised that vinyl's days were numbered (this shows today with the lack of vinyl players being produced, especially on all-in-one systems for the consumer market) and knew that realistically they should replace their CDs at some point.

However DVD players have the ability to play CDs, meaning people have no reason to replace their collections except the audio quality, which as Chris says most people won't care about.

A bit clunky, but I think my point's in there somewhere...

I've listened to both new formats, and Michael's probably right that we don't really NEED this...you can certainly tell the difference between a regular CD and these new formats, but people who don't have audiophile ears (which is to say, most of us) won't really see enough difference to spend the extra money upgrading all of our home stereo/home theatre equipment, just yet...especially when you take into account the incompatibility between the new formats. (Both SACD and DVD Audio players will play standard CDs fine, but DVD Audio players may not play hybrid SACDs at all, and SACD won't play DVD Audio, and your computer may play neither.) Personally speaking, I think SACD sounds better than DVD Audio, but having said that, it's more likely that DVD Audio will win out in the long run thanks to the compatibility with DVD video players.

Interestingly, there are a number of new players that will handle both formats, from Pioneer, Sony, and Philips. Some of them aren't even all that expensive, though the cheaper models tend to convert SACD audio signals to DVD-compatible PCM format (from what I understand), which sort of kills off the audio advantage of SACD. But at least you can play both. Higher-end combo players should have separate pickups/decoding assemblies, which should keep them both at their appropriate quality level.

I listened to Fleetwood Mac's Rumour in 5.1 surround and in standard stereo, both on the DVD Audio format, and in both cases I felt disoriented, most likely because of extremely bad mixing on the high-end. (It felt like someone was pushing something against my eardrum, oddly enough; someone else listening with me concurred.) Certainly this isn't what the Mac intended?

Seriously .. The music and the technology will be the instruments and the mix will be the art?

As for Sean saying he can certainly tell the difference between CD and the new formats (in stereo), I do wonder how much of this is down to the greater data rate and how much to some fairly creative remastering of the source material. I remain a bit dubious on the case for 24 bits and twice the frequency band on the playback end.

As for that Feldman DVD - I've got that and it's actually a touch better than CD in that it's 24/48k stereo PCM. Six hours long. No, I've not got through it in one sitting.

This was definitely a concern, but we did an A/B of the new Police remasters, one on CD and one on SACD, and there was definitely better definition on the SACD version of it; things which weren't as obvious on the remastered CDs became very clear on the SACD version. It's not so clear with the DVD-A unfortunately, because of the surround sound versions and the obvious remixing being done to accommodated that. I'd be willing to say the difference is probably minor to most ears, though.

That's interesting. I'm not going to get all double-blind on your ass, but how were the comparisons done? Through the same machine/DAC presumably? Level-matched (there was a suggestion in an earlier review of a hybrid disc that the CD and SACD layers did't seem to be at the same volume)? And - here's the unknowable bit - can we be sure the CD version and the SACD version differ *only* in the manner of their digitisation?

For my own part I should go and record a chunk of that Feldman, dither/noise-shape/filter to 16/44.1k and see if I can hear any difference.

Screw SACD/DVD-Audio - I want my Rhapsody (or iTunes or whatever). A point I once made about distributing music online is that unlike a physical format, there's no locked-in restriction on sound quality. Right now, you download or stream music at a worse compression rate than a CD. But I can't think of a reason that, with enough bandwidth, you couldn't get the same audio at better than CD quality — and then download a new player/codec/whatever and run it through the same stereo. You get the upgrade without buying a new CD player and a new copy of Dark Side of the Moon.

- How do you get 5.1 headphones for our SACD discman? Where does the subwoofer go - on my ass?

- My car already has a sub and four speakers but there's no room on the dashboard for a center channel.

- That's four more speakers to hook up for my mom.

- What about those cheapo radio/CD players people keep in their offices? Are those going to have surround sound?

etc.

.. Or it could be a wireless on-demand download.

The industry is limited in its imagination.

- What about those cheapo radio/CD players people keep in their offices? Are those going to have surround sound?

Chris Dahlen in ass-woofing shocka!

Or, using the innovations at both ends of the industry, the Farmers Manual release Recent Live Archive is DVD9 in MP3 format: it's 93 hours, 38 minutes long.

It's a nice idea - gently squeeze a 20bit file into a 16bit tube, then allow the extra bits to poke out either end when played on the right hardware - but I'm not if it's really used properly.

Warner, the world's fourth-largest music company, is in the final stages of securing technical licenses that will enable it to sell a bundle of music and extra features on a single DVD, according to people familiar with the matter. The DVD would include a music album that plays in both stereo and surround-sound on a standard DVD player -- plus video footage that plays on a DVD player or a computer. There will also be song remixes, ring tones, photos and other digital extras that can be accessed on a computer.

People familiar with the situation say Warner is close to a deal with Apple Computer Inc. that would make the digital tracks essentially identical to those the computer company sells through its iTunes Music Store service -- something that has proved elusive for others in the music industry, since Apple has been unwilling to license its proprietary copy-protection software to outsiders. People briefed on the talks said a likely solution would involve Apple creating the digital tracks and Warner putting them on DVDs.

I'm thrilled already.