More exclusive Dualdisc on the way (1 Viewer)

[Justin Lane]

You need to stop sweating the little things Rich. Life is too short to get "surprised and dejected" over audio formats.

Anyway....

I actually just had my first software playback issue in the slot loading player in my truck with the new Springsteen Dual Disc. The player wouldn't recognize the disc (had no problems with Bowie Reality or Rob Thomas, the only other DD I own). The player in my truck also has problems with Chesky Hybrid SA-CD, which are not to redbook spec (redbook does not call for a SA-CD layer) and not recognized. In both cases I decided againt boycotting either format (though in the case of SA-CD it really wouldn't matter since the major labels are boycotting the format anyway).

J

 

[Justin Lane]

Don't be so dramatic. It is only an audio format!!!!

J

 

[Justin Lane]

I agree with your buddy. This disc is excellent sounding with a 24/96 surround track which is top notch. There might have been some space limitations since the stereo track is "only" 24/48, but this sounded excellent as well. As for the actual music, I felt it was a decent enough offering, if not a bit much on the love song side (love has been the greatest muse throughout art history however).

Can't believe I got this package for only $9.99 on release week at Best Buy.

J

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Justin- DualDiscs are thicker than even the thickest dual layer DVD. It's a real issue no matter how much you wish it not to be.

 

[Justin Lane]

Kevin,

Everyone who has been following the Dual Disc progression knows this fact already. The thickness causes issues with playback from a read standpoint. My point is that the thickness has zero impact on wearing out a player from a mechanical standpoint, a point that you have tried to make over and over again with claims that years (not sure how many 5, 10, 15, 100) down the road could lead to players breaking mechnically.

Most small consumables have lifespans in the 3-5 year range to begin with (a sad but true fact), so worrying about mechanical issues over long time horizons is not realistic. I have had both DVD and CD players fail mechanically which never had a Dual Disc touch their transports, and played only the respective discs designed for the player. Both were out of warranty, so I had to eat the cost of the player. Part of life with today's mass produced electronics.

J

 

[RobBenton]

The Rob Thomas Dual disc does have good sound on the dvd side the 5.1 mix itself is very dissapointing.. this kind of music needs a good surrouns treatment and you don't get that here.. oh well.. at least it dvd-a and not just DD.

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Please state why you are so certain of this. Where are your "facts"? What is the data to support your unilateral conclusion? Specs are specs for a reason. The thickness of a DualDisc is thicker than the specs that any current DVD or CD player is designed for. A DualDisc weighs more than the spec any current DVD or CD player is designed for. You or anyone else simply cannot *know* what the long term effects are. *That* is why all those hardware manufacturers came out with DualDisc advisories. If they don't know, how can you? Hmmm? Maybe if *you* were a hardware manufacturer, you'd design in 3-5 year mortality. Thank goodness you aren't, otherwise people like this would be out of luck:

http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=232548

 

[Justin Lane]

I am not sure why you have this tone, or posted a link to a thread which has nothing to do with the current discussion. Please don't try to obfuscate the current thread with personal attacks and attempts to be witty. I never stated I was a hardware manufacturer, nor stated the short lifespan of small consumables was good, which I sad was a "sad but true fact". Oh well....

J

 

[Dan Joy]

Count me in with [rant]I AM PISSED CROWD![/rant]
I bought the Bruce dual disc (DD) on Tuesday (my first DD), and it played flawlessly in my car. Took it home and burned it to ITUNES on my pc for my IPOD, still no problems. Last night put it in my Sony 222ES 5 CD changer, some god awful screeching noises took place, the disc would not play, and when I took it out, there was a scrape along the middle inner circumference of the cd side.
At least offer me a redbook cd layer I can play at home, yeah I know I can burn a copy to CD-R. It's not like I have a cheap Walmart cd player. Arggghhh, no more of these for me!
I found this, SONY CRAP

Read the bottom paragraph about damage to slot playing cd players, why even make this CRAP!

 

[John Kotches]

Rich,

My evidence isn't anecdotal. I test every player that comes through here for review with DualDisc. If I didn't, I wouldn't be doing a good job. Or do you consider only reports of failure to be factual vs. anecdotal?

 

[John Kotches]

Rich,

Just to be clear, here's the players involved:

1. Meridian 598DP
2. Panasonic RP-56
3. Simaudio Moon Orbiter
4. Meridian G91
5. Denon DV-5900
6. Pioneer DV-59AVi
7. Nakamichi CD-300 (car single slot)
8. Mercury Mountaineer Factory (car 6 disc slot)
9. Oritron Portable CD
10. Dell Inspiron 9100 DVD/CD-R/RW Combi/
11. IBM Thinkpad T40 DVD/CD-R/RW Combi

Oops, my bad, that's 11, not 10 different drives. Sorry, I can't get you the specifics on the Oritron player, my stepdaughter took it with her to her grandmothers.

As far as the discs go...

1. Diana Krall The Girl in the Other Room
2. Rob Thomas Something to Be
3. Paul Williams I'm Going Back There Someday (This is a pre-release screener)
4. 3 Doors Down Away From the Sun
5. Bare Naked Ladies Everything to Everyone
6. Simple Plan Still Not Getting Any
7. Grateful Dead American Beauty
8. Jane Monheit Come Dream With Me
9. Blue Oyster Cult A Long Day's Night
10. Big Phat Band Swingin' For the Fences
11. Britney Spears In the Zone
12. Avril Lavigne Under My Skin

Sorry for the last couple of titles, if you live with a teenage girl, you end up with some titles like the last two

My point is this, I see a fair number of players, running the gamut from inexpensive walkmen to some of the very high-end and I'm not seeing failures. I'm not saying there aren't failures, I don't think they're running rampant either.

Cheers,



Excuse me while I go work on some more anecdotes.

 

[Justin Lane]

Sorry to hear about your problems. I also am listening to Devils and Dust right now on my Sony 222ES. It has and is playing flawlessly, and is recognized by the player as a CD (damn Dual Disc is confusing players making them think it is redbook compatible ). I did have problems playing this disc in the slot loading player in my truck, whereas other Dual Discs gave me no problems. We may be seeing some manufacturing deviations on such a wide spread release as I would imagine extra capacity had to be brought online for a release of this magnitude.

J

 

[Kevin C Brown]

Wait, you just said that there was "zero impact on wearing out a player from a mechanical standpoint". You just flip-flopped?

I have only ever stated that there *might* be problems, and I personally do not want to take any chances. But others should definitely be aware of the risks. Which you are trying to (hmmm...) obfuscate.

The "facts" that I gave are that DualDiscs are heavier and thicker than any normal CD or DVD. A DVD/CD player's mechanism is a physical motor entity that does undergo wear, fatigue, and stress over time. And in some cases: failure. Those are facts. Personally, I don't want to accelerate that process any more than I have too. (Shoot, what is the driver maker's players that give the H02 error? )

This is a dead horse, and I'm done beatin' it.

 

[Justin Lane]

I agree, though I said as much 6 posts ago. Sheesh....

J

 

[Tim Travis]

I just got the Nine Inch Nails: With Teeth dualdisc. The cd side will play in my car and my Pioneer 563A. But the pioneer plays only part of the dvd side. It recognizes it as a dvd-a, and all the visual stuff works. But both stereo and surround versions do not output any sound, just the visuals. When i play the music video in surround, it plays fine.
Is there any hope of hearing the album in 5.1. All my other dvd-a's and sacd's play fine, never had a problem.
Thanks
Tim

 

[Justin Lane]

Tim,

Did you get the firmware updated on your Pioneer? There have been countless issues with your model playing discs authored with the newest DVD authoring. It is a hardware issue that Pioneer should fix at no problem. DO a search here for information on the problems and the fix.

J

 

[Paul.S]

Kevin & Justin: Here's hoping that the BD/HD DVD format unification talks produce a single hi def DVD format that will also become the 'sound carrier unit' for hi rez audio, thereby enabling us to buy hi def DVD players just about when our SD DVD player spindle motors die from Dual play and/or Dual shards come flying out of our DVD-ROM drives.

Tim: Fellow 563A owner here. Indeed, plz do tell re whether you did the firmware upgrade on the 563A that enabled it to play the Neil Young, Seal IV and Tommy DVD-As or not. I'm very curious to know whether the NIN Dual playback problem you are experiencing is an entirely new/isolated issue or a new title wrinkle on a old, documented problem.

-p

 

[Kevin C Brown]

I also just got the NiN DualDisc. I can't believe it, but they actually lie on the insert, saying that it is a "standard audio CD" and that it will play "anywhere a normal CD does". Hogwash. But then if you read all the way to the end, it mentions it might not play in car players, slot loading mechanisms, and changers. :rolleyes

At least with the Judas Priest DualDisc I looked at (but did not buy because I opted for the separate CD + DVD version instead), they say right on the back that it has a nonstandard CD layer and that it might not play on all CD players.

I have tested the NiN disc on 2 of my 10 CD playable devices so far. Plays OK in a Panny CD/MP3 portable. But here's an interesting data point: I use EAC (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/, go to "technology") which is the best CD ripper known to man. (It rereads sections of a CD multiple times to make sure it is getting a bit for bit copy. It keeps rereading until it gets a statistical match between different reads. Quite brute force but elegant.) On my PC CD drive, usually with EAC I get a read speed of 11-14x or so real time. With the CD side of With Teeth, I'm getting an average read time of 2.1x. That difference is due to having to reread sections of the CD many more times than usual due to variances in each read. That's the bad news. The good news, is that with the multiple reads, EAC is still telling me that I can get a bit for bit perfect copy. But that also tells me it takes multiple reads to *guarentee* a bit for bit copy and that you *do not* get a perfect read on the first try.

Also, I think Kris mentioned that a DualDisc weighs between 9% to 13% more than a CD (13%?) and DVD 9 (dual layer DVD 9%?). Seems more to me. I'm going to see if I can dig up a Mettler balance at work and do some weighings of my own...


But what I'm hearing so far, I really like.

 

[Rich Malloy]

Not at all. An anecdotal report is a factual report. Your anecdotal reports of compatibility in this thread are just as factual as the anecdotal reports of incompatibility in this thread. An observer wondering whether these discs have compatibility problems will find that confirmed in this thread, and will note that your findings of no incompatibility cannot be extrapolated into a determination that a given dual-disc will be compatible in their player.

We even have a report of compatibility in one 222ES and failure in another. Take this for what it's worth, and determine whether it's a risk you're willing to take. For myself, I'm happy with real CDs if this is the best they can do with dual-disc.

Justin, I appreciate your distinction about dual disc failure, that we haven't heard reports of them causing mechanical damage to someone's player (beyond a few stuck discs needing extracting) and only reports of playback failure. That's a worthy point, but some of us don't consider it quite good enough when the disc won't playback the music... even if it doesn't damage our equipment while not playing back the music. I guess it meets the first commandmant of "do no harm", but fails to meet the second of "please play the music".

 

[Albert_M]

The Springsteen disc really irritated me. I purchased it the other day only to have it not work in my car or my computer. I didn't even try it at home or the dvd I was so mad. I returned it yesterday. I guess that I won't be enjoying his new cd. What crap. If they want to release "better" versions, fine, but sorry if doesn't work on any and all of my cd players, then no way. Either sell them separately or in a form that plays on any cd player.