Will DVD-Audio Survive (1 Viewer)

[Patrick Sun]

The 2 words that come to my mind when I see SACD or DVD-A is: Niche Market.

 

[Greg_TSL]

A truly frightening thing is that a large portion of mainstream consumers are choosing MP3 over high bandwidth audio AND CD!
If the trend continues I should get into the "Sharp Stick" department. I will whittle sticks to extremely sharp points and sell them for $50.
They are cheap, portable, have no moving parts, and can deliver an ear piercing poke with a minumum of electrical input!
Yeah! Get your new SharpStick3000! Cheap!

 

[John Kotches]

Geeze, spend a few days flat on your back, on prescription narcotics and see all the fun you miss?

Where have you gone Joe Dimaggio?

On a more serious note, I think it was Mike Up who was discussing DTS 24/96.

A few points about DTS 24/96:
1) It requires a decoder that supports the extensions. The vast majority of decoders in the market don't support 24/96K, because they've just come into the market within the last year.

2) It requires more compression. You're going from ~14Mb/s to ~1.5Mb/sec. This means your compression ratio is now ~9:1 instead of ~4.5:1. More compression means more artifacts.

It's a tradeoff and while DTS 24/96 might sound marginally better than previous iterations, it isn't in the ball park of audiophile sound if one bases it on the demonstration that DTS made at CES a few weeks ago.

Regards,

 

[Tony Genovese]

The 2 words that come to my mind when I see SACD or DVD-A is: Niche Market.

Now, yes. But... if DVD-A succeeds in releasing dual format disks (with a CD layer) and SACDs continue to make headway with dual format releases (ala the Stones) even if they're not marketed as such, I could care less if it's a niche market. Eventually, people will need a new player to replace one that is broken, and hopefully will have many choices of universal players at different price points. Then they can enjoy their DVD-A and SACD's that they didn't even know they had and all the benefits of high res, multi channel, etc.

 

[David Judah]

I always find it puzzling when some say they won't invest in DVD-A and/or SACD because of bass management issues. IMO, they are really missing out.

Sure there are some instances where it is a problem(like those who have true sub/sat systems), but for the most part music isn't as bass demanding as movies on DVD-V and the benefits of the higher resolution sources outweigh the problems associated with imperfect speaker placement.

Also concerning DTS CDs: While I prefer to have a music release on one of the hi-res formats(and that's the way the market has gone now), DTS encoding for music, when done right, can be remarkably effective. Listen to Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth for not only an example of excellent multi-channel mixing, but for excellent sound quality, as well.

As far as the survival of DVD-A goes, it really has a leg up because it has DVD in its name. I suspect it will survive since alot of DVD players from a variety of manufacturers have included it, but for it to break out of niche status, the discs will have to come out day/date with CDs and be the same price. I thought Warner promised that would be the case starting this year with their releases.

DJ

 

[Lewis Besze]

If the sub and speaker are not in time with one another, their crossover -3db points and surrounding frequencies can not add because they must be in time with one another to add.

The continiously variable phase knob will give you what you need in that regard,which is far less crucial in the first place then correct TA for the other speakers,due to the decreased sensitivity of the ear for LF signals,and their non directionality.

 

[John Kotches]

And if this report is correct from High Fidelity Review, the hybrid DVD-Audio disc could be right around the corner.
THe details can be found here.
Kudos to Philip Brandes for tracking this one down
Regards,

 

[Justin Lane]

I thought Warner promised that would be the case starting this year with their releases.

I think Warner's promise was along the line of those artists who are interested in DVD-A (or who Warner perceives will sell DVD-A). So if R.E.M (who supports DVD-A) comes out with a new album, it will probably be DVD-A, but not every Warner artists will get a DVD-A.

The Hybrid spin makes issues interesting for DVD-A. Multichannel releases take more time to do then stereo Hi-res, but if Warner dedicates themselves to Hybrids, they could easily place a Hi-res stereo track on each disc without any additional work. We will have to see how this issue plays out.

J

 

[Justin Lane]

Also concerning DTS CDs: While I prefer to have a music release on one of the hi-res formats(and that's the way the market has gone now), DTS encoding for music, when done right, can be remarkably effective. Listen to Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judges Ruth for not only an example of excellent multi-channel mixing, but for excellent sound quality, as well.

I agree David. DTS CDs can sound very good, but they are still no substitute for a good Hi-res recording. Because they do not offer stereo tracks as well, they will never be a major player in my book. Still, there is some great music on DTS SACD that may never see the light of day on SACD or DVD-A (or at least for awhile), so if you are a multichannel fan they are well worth picking up.

J

 

[Lee Scoggins]

It's a tradeoff and while DTS 24/96 might sound marginally better than previous iterations, it isn't in the ball park of audiophile sound

I agree with you on this John, but I will say that some of the 24/96 recordings from Chesky and Classic Records are superb.
A lot depends on the mastering involved.
By the way, I hope you are feeling better.

 

[peter m. wilson]

hi,
i love DVD-AUDIO and DTS discs and even hdcd coding. i have yet to hear SACD, but i'm sure i'll love that too when i get a player.
i just hit the WIDESCREEN link in one of the last threads and read something that i do not love, i think i just pity.
it is the outright stupidity of DENON not including it's prorietary link capability on it's new 2900 reasonably priced combi player.

my 5800 is at Denon at this writing getting the upgrade that includes this link.
i will not be buying their $5000.00cdn 9000 series dvd-a only player. i will be buying someone else's or a good SACD player. THESE GUYS ARE TOTAL ASSHOLES!!

peter m.

 

[StaceyS]

I agree with you on this John, but I will say that some of the 24/96 recordings from Chesky and Classic Records are superb.

Lee, I think John was strictly talking about DTS 96/24, not the DAD stuff that Chesky has done, which is all raw 96/24 PCM. Unless of course Chesky did some DTS 96/24 that I have not heard about.
I agree, I like the Chesky 96/24 stuff.
I don't believe DTS 96/24 has a chance. The DTS 96/24 encoder down samples to 48 kHz on the encode.

 

[John Kotches]

Lee,
I'm limiting myself to 1 hour stints in front of the computer, and prescription narcotics can be fun Thanks for the well wishes. Its just a matter of time (another week or so) before I'm back to a somewhat normalized schedule.
I've caught up on a lot of the reading I needed to do so it's not been wasted time.
Stacey rightfully pointed out that DTS 24/96 and the Chesky / Classic records DAD discs are completely seperate animals.
Should I spin Coltrane's Blue Trane, or Alan Parsons' I Robot tonight? Ahhh decisions, decisions.
Regards,

 

[Ian Montgomerie]

A truly frightening thing is that a large portion of mainstream consumers are choosing MP3 over high bandwidth audio AND CD!

Why on Earth is this "frightening"?

MP3s are way more convenient than CDs. They sacrifice some quality, but not much - a properly encoded 256 kilobit MP3 is pretty difficult to differentiate from CD even on a high end audio system. When you're talking about boombox speakers, computer speakers, typical headphones, or any high noise floor environment (e.g. your car), there is no significant difference. In a device smaller than a CD walkman, you can hold dozens of CDs worth of music. I keep many of my CDs in my car (since car MP3 players are still darn expensive). Instead of buying a second copy and a megachanger for home, I have my entire music collection on my hard drive, available at the touch of a button complete with arbitrary custom playlists. Personally I have a VERY high preference for custom playlists. And I can select whatever songs I want, and burn a mix CD for my car with about one minute of effort. There is no megachanger yet invented with anything close to the responsiveness and ease of navigating a 100+ CD collection as, say, Windows Explorer.

Bashing MP3 is IMO a typical audiophile overreaction to any codec that is lossy or has poor "stats" (sampling frequency, bit depth, etc). 128k CBR MP3s encoded with joe random encoder can sound pretty bad. But in blind listening tests conducted on expensive speakers, the ability to discriminate MP3 vs. CD pretty much disappears when you use high bitrates on a good encoder. ~256 kilobits VBR on the encoder I use sounds really good, and is much smaller than the original CD source. In my own informal testing I couldn't consistently pick out the difference versus a .wav file (this blind test is trivial to do in a winamp playlist).

Perhaps you find it "frightening" that I actually used a blind listening test and based on what I heard, or in this case couldn't hear, I rejected expensive audio gear like CD megachangers and multiple copies of CDs? I know that for some reason, a lot of audiophiles seem put off by the very concept that one might want to use blind listening tests to get around the common tendency to hear what one expects. But yet even in _non-blind_ informal listening, with lower bitrates, most people seem to have no problem with MP3 quality on their systems.

 

[John-Miles]

Well I havent read all of this thread yet.... I may do an edit nce I have, but I think the problem may be solved by the Hardware companies... the way universal players are comming out my hope is that in 2 years or so when more titles are available on both the consumers who wil upgrade will just get a universal player.... *heres hoping (oh god no shudder) apex makes a universal player* come on if they did J6P might gent into these formats...
but regardless im hoping a hardware solution will fix this software problem.
Hmm well now that i caught up to my post i will do an edit
First of all calm down guys, although this seems typical for any thread involving SACD and DVD-A
In my opinion the only way either format will make headway is with hybrid Discs at the same price as cd's.... actually scratch that.... we need lower prices than cd's thats why many people go with MP3's once prices are reasonable people will buy again.

 

[Craig_Kg]

They must get the bass management in the players, where it should be. Many are not going to buy another receiver just to use bass management that should be in the player.

I don't see why. Just as movie format upgrades require receiver/prepro upgrades to take full advantage of them, hires audio could demand the same for firewire support - then all the configuration only needs to be set once rather than in each player.

Also, it'd be nice if the video data could be sent in digital form for decoding on the display device so the player was reduced to a transport.

I agree with the comments about the popularity of MP3 and wish Sony would licence ATRAC more affordably as I love the minidisc media format.

 

[Justin Lane]

Perhaps you find it "frightening" that I actually used a blind listening test and based on what I heard, or in this case couldn't hear, I rejected expensive audio gear like CD megachangers and multiple copies of CDs? I know that for some reason, a lot of audiophiles seem put off by the very concept that one might want to use blind listening tests to get around the common tendency to hear what one expects.

Ian, properly done MP3s can sound very good, almost CD quality, but there are still some compromisies (namely high frequency response to my ears). (This thread is all over the place, DTS, HDCD, and now MP3)
DVD-A and SACD are entirely different beasts though. Recently for my non-audiophile girlfriend I performed a blind test for her between the SACD and CD layers of a couple Hybrid SACD and she picked the SACD layer everytime as sounding better to her. It was not the most scientific of tests, but the results were consistent. My system is what I consider "mid-fi" but the improvements were still audible. I am convinced that people with half decent speakers and receivers will notice the improvement DVD-A and SACD provide over CD even with untrained ears. The two new formats are just that much better then redbook CD. This isn't a guarantee of mass acceptance, but does give the listener a tangible reason to upgrade.
J

 

[Lee Scoggins]

My system is what I consider "mid-fi" but the improvements were still audible.

One of my friends plugged in a Super Audio player into an input to a boombox. You could still hear the difference! You can't beat a sampling rate 64x that of 16/44 CD.
MP3s are convenient in work in our current world of limited bandwidth, but make no mistake, they are inferior sonics to the best formats currently.

 

[Lee Scoggins]

New are Audiosynthesis, Bel Canto, GamuT, Krell, Lexicon, MBL, McCormack, Meitner, MSB, Opera, Shanling and Zenith.

As Adam Sandler would say "Super Audio has 30 players. Not too shabby."

 

[Lee Scoggins]

Add another SACD player from Xindak (#31), a Chinese high end manufacturer that Acoustic Sounds is importing in.

And we may also have Ayre up soon as I am hearing for my friends (#32?)...