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Music Media

New Digital Audio Formats 410

Posted by CmdrTaco from the bits-bytes-and-tunes dept.
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."
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New Digital Audio Formats More

New Digital Audio Formats

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  • Cost (Score:5, Insightful)

    by opec ( 755488 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:39AM (#9413285) Homepage
    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).

    • Re:Cost (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sv-Manowar ( 772313 )
      I doubt it, the initial cost will be high - but if they really want to create demand and get people crossing over to their platform, they will have to drop the prices to be competitive

      • Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)

        by StillAnonymous ( 595680 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @01:22PM (#9413920)
        Hmm, yes, just like the price of CDs dropped after it became ultra-cheap to manufacture them.. Oh wait, it didn't!

        Never underestimate the recoding industry's greed.

        • Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Pieroxy ( 222434 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @04:06PM (#9414865) Homepage
          Hmm, yes, just like the price of CDs dropped after it became ultra-cheap to manufacture them

          Well, the CD didn't have any competition at the time. Cassette were poor-quality and died within weeks if left on your dashboard in the summer, and LPs were quite fragile, didn't play on mobile devices, cars, etc... Not even mentionning that both of them lost a bit of their quality on every play, nor they had convenient random access.

          CDs came with:
          1. conveninent random access
          2. High quality of the media (in regard to the competition)
          3. High quality of the audio recorded.

          Hence, they were a better shot than the competition on three points that were (IMO) very important to the general public.

          Now DVD-A and SACD ????? What the heck could be my motive to buy such a thing? 32 bits? 96kbps? 1-bit?

          Well if I worked in a recording studio or had a $10k stereo at home, why not... But we are talking general public over here. Joe Smith doesn't care, because none of these formats provide him anything he doesn't have.

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:15PM (#9413508)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:Cost (Score:3, Interesting)

        by rspress ( 623984 )
        When CD's first came out they were 11.99. Back then I often had a bigger CD collection than music stores did. They had a little display at the end of he aisle.

        They raised the price saying they need to pay for new pressing facilities to meet demand, there were only two in the world at that time. When supply caught up with demand and the vast catalogs of the record companies were on CD the prices did not go down. Why not, the public was used to paying it by then.

        Back to the topic, I think that DVD-A should

    • Re:Cost (Score:5, Insightful)

      by totally ( 147662 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:32PM (#9413596)
      No I won't. I refuse to pay the ridiculous sum they want now. I'll buy it used before I pay $18 for a cd.

      The main reason to introduce a new format, is to bring the control of DVD's to the music realm. Region coding being a prime example. I will refuse to buy Audio discs with arbitrary limits on how (and where) I can use it. I suspect my taste in music will undergo a further shift towards the independent artists who wants to be heard, as the Music Industry implodes under the weight of it's own greed.

      totally disgusted

  • And Ogg Vorbis is ready now! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:40AM (#9413296)
    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.
    • 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.

      Hey, a hacked .mp3 format that will still play on all my hardware is fine by me. OF course I'd rather have the most clean, compressed, multichannel format out now, but not at the expense of buying a new car stereo, new dvd player, new portable mp3 player, and convert all the music I already have. Mp3 works, but yes, SACD so

  • Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MesiahTaz ( 122415 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:41AM (#9413299)
    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 =)

    • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Eddy Da KillaBee ( 727499 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:48AM (#9413351)
      My understanding is that these two new formats support 5.1 surround sound, which is something that our "normal" audio CDs can't handle.

      These formats have been out for quite some time now, as I can remember seeing them at a local Best Buy and wondering what could play them. This was about a year ago.

      The question is more about when will these become more mainstream (I have yet to see newer albums released on these newer formats)? What about supported players? And most important, what about pricing?
    • ...and you need to read up on the anatomy of the ear.

    • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MuMart ( 537836 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:19PM (#9413524) Homepage
      Bullshit.

      The "Hi-definition" formats all have completely different mixes to the CDs making meaningful comparison impossible.

      Why do people assume that the people who designed CDDA were stupid? No amplifier/speaker/room combination at any price is accurate enough to resolve the resolution of CD audio. The air current around your ears is louder than the CD noise floor, and the human ear is not equipped to hear a 20khz tone.

      • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Entropius ( 188861 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:29PM (#9413582)
        Thank you.

        Apart from any additional channels (5.1 or whatever) get added to the new formats, the only one who can tell the difference between 16bit 44.1kHz and 32bit 96kHz is your dog.

        • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

          by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
          Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Not quite... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Theaetetus ( 590071 ) <theaetetus@slashdot.gmail@com> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @09:08PM (#9416486) Homepage Journal
          Apart from any additional channels (5.1 or whatever) get added to the new formats, the only one who can tell the difference between 16bit 44.1kHz and 32bit 96kHz is your dog.

          I am an audio professional - note, not "audiophile", but a real working pro in the field. Higher bitrates - 24, 32, etc. have a real benefit in pushing quantization noise down below the analog noise floor (16 bit has a maximum 96 dB s/n ratio, and the bottom of that could be audible if you crank your system up so that the maximum level is, say, 120 dB SPL - not recommended, BTW. 24 bit has a maxum of 144 dB SPL... so the noise floor would then be at -24 dB SPL... way below the analog noise floor. Beyond that - 32 bits - is unnecessary).
          And higher sample rates have a benefit, too... and not the "there are tones higher than 20 kHz that you can't hear, but you can feel and make a difference" claim that "audiophiles" try to spout without knowing what they really mean... Very few speakers (we're talking super high-efficiency lab instruments at this point) can reproduce a 48 kHz tone cleanly, so on that point, there's no need for a 96 kHz sample rate...

          However, to prevent aliasing of the audio, the Redbook standard says that levels going into the A/D converter during recording have to be below -40 dB VU at 22.5 kHz... To do so, and yet pass 20 kHz cleanly requires such a steep brick-wall filter that there is some serious distortion, ringing, etc. back down lower in the audio band. Moving the requirement up to 48 kHz (with a 96 kHz sample rate) allows the engineers to use much softer filters that will not cause so much distortion - a 3 dB drop through a filter causes a 45 degree delay in the phase, so the higher you can push those delays, the better.

          And that's why 96 kHz and even 192 kHz have some benefit. But it sure ain't so you can hear a 48 kHz or 92 kHz tone.

          -T

      • Why do people assume that the people who designed CDDA were stupid? No amplifier/speaker/room combination at any price is accurate enough to resolve the resolution of CD audio. The air current around your ears is louder than the CD noise floor, and the human ear is not equipped to hear a 20khz tone.

        I mostly agree with you, but I feel the need to point out that your "air current" description is way off. As someone who often likes his music LOUD, I feel compelled to point out the the usable dynamic range

        • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Funny)

          by Idarubicin ( 579475 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:40PM (#9414381) Journal
          An expensive, high-powered stereo can hit 120-130 dB. This leaves you with 30dB of noise.

          And if you keep listening to music that is that loud, believe me--you won't hear that noise floor for very long....

        • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Informative)

          by imsabbel ( 611519 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:40PM (#9414385)
          One thing: FORGET IT.
          You WONT get 120db out of any high powered home stereo. 130 NO CHANCE IN HELL.
          Any box of acceptable quality (so no boom-horns that make your rave loud but have 20%jitter) will yield between 85 and 90, perhaps 95db/m*W (95 is a real upperlimit, only reachable by transmissionline boxes or other stuff). So make your math: If you are 2m from your speakers, you need 5kW sinus output of your amp to listen to your "quality"-musik.
          And i BUT you DONT.
          So STFU
          • Ah, i feel better now:
            Addition:
            You signal/noise ratio WILL NEVER be limited in practice by the 112db of your cd. Simply because termal noise in your Transitor-juction regions will be bigger. And no, using tubes DOESNT make the sound better. If just increases your noise and puts a horrible disortion over your spektrum (which some people think is "warm sound")
      • Of course. Everything science will ever know about auditory processes was locked in stone in the '70's, when CD's current format was set. All those musicians and producers who feel there is a compelling difference in the studio are wrong and delusional, the guys on Slashdot with the Visual Basic chops have all the answers.

        At the start of the twentieth century many claimed wax cylinders captured the live event perfectly. In the mid-fifties Paul Klipsch (IIR) demonstrated it once again with vinyl and corner h

    • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by carlislematthew ( 726846 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:35PM (#9413611)
      I heard a demonstration by the people that made SACD - I think it was Sony. Each speaker cost about $30K and the amp and player looked equally expensive. They went on and on about how wonderful the demo was about to be before starting. They played it, nobody said anything at all. Everone looked at each other wondering if their crappy ears missed something that was devine and beautiful... Somebody asked for an AB comparison (which is possible, before you go on about channels and crap like that) and they wouldn't do it. Nobody was impressed and we wandered out of the room in silence.

      99% of people are happy with 128Kbps MP3. They have crappy stereos or listen to FM radio in their noisy cars. For a format to be very successful it has to be compelling to the masses and not offer something so boringly incremental that it doesn't even matter.

      IMHO the labels/music industry are just trying to create yet another format in order to try and get everyone to buy all their music AGAIN. Their sales are nothing like they were during the '90s when everyone was busy buying all their old music on CD.

      On a final note, I went to see that Star Wars digital thing on a digital projector. Unfortunately, the projector was out of order so they were just using the old 35 or 70mm projection system. At the end of the movie the guy next to me (who didn't know that the digital was out of order) commented on how amazing the digital quality was. I didn't have the heart to break the news to him. This is how I see these new higher quality (not multi channel) audio formats.

    • Re:Before anyone says it... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by kitzilla ( 266382 ) <paperfrogNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:47PM (#9413690) Homepage Journal
      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.

      I agree: I'm using Apple's lossless codec almost exclusively on iTunes now, and my MP3s now sound tinny and distorted to me.

      But that's not where *most* consumers are going. Record companies are coming to grips with the fact that consumers are gravitating toward lower fidelity music on increasingly portable devices. That's not where they bet things would go, but that's what is happening. Nobody is buying SACD devices for the additional quality.

      My guess is that we'll see a couple of archive-quality formats duke it out for one end of the market, while MP3 (or whatever Apple wants, since it's driving this train) dominates consumer music.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) * on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:44AM (#9413321)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • RobPiano wrote "but extra DRM goodness"

      Your use of "DRM goodness" made me laugh. Just another oxymoron like "military intelligence". The industry just may as well say they want to make my life worse by making their life better.

      Just so nobody won't accuse me of being closed minded, I will be happy to consider moving to a DRM standard to protect the industry, so long as it has no impact on my ability to:

      1: Make unlimited copies for personal use.
      2: Use unlimited devices for personal use.
      3: Convert between

  • So, uh, great... more money for the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:44AM (#9413323)
    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.

  • New Digital Audio Formats? Whaaaaa? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by schild ( 713993 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:44AM (#9413324) Homepage Journal
    Oh, by new you mean 3 years old. My mistake.

    Seriously though, these aren't new formats, they just took longer to catch on - I'm honestly surprised SACD is still around given the name branding of DVD-Audio. But I digress, these formats aren't new, computer companies are just getting around to supporting them and people are just getting around to buying them.

    • If you're surprised... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's because you haven't been paying attention either.

      DVD-Audio has been a total non-starter so far. Until the new "flipper" idea, DVD-A hasn't been backwards compatible with CD players. DVD-Audio has also been majorly bungled, being run by a boneheaded consortium, instead of a slightly less-boneheaded single company.

      SACD is still around mostly because Sony owns it. Sony has stuck behind MD, even in the US. They just stopped making Beta tapes a year ago. Why would you think they'd ditch SACD? Sony is very
    • Yeah right on. I've been reading about these for many months. I believe my DVD player is even DVD-A and SACD compatible, but I might be talking out of my hat on that. I do have a magazine in my bathroom right now that is at least six months old and has a six or seven page investigation into the two formats. I can't believe that CmdrTaco posted this and not Micheal.

  • Placebo galore... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dotslashconfig ( 784719 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:44AM (#9413328)
    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.

  • New, eh? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Phosphor3k ( 542747 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:45AM (#9413330)
    I've had my SACD player for well over a year. When I bought it, the model was over a year old, and it was a second gen model.
  • Given the past record of replacement formats, it's not likely. We look at the dozens of different media and formats from the past and notice that only two have been successful: the upgrade from wax cylinders to circular records and the subsequent upgrade from vinyl records to CDs: and there are STILL some who think LPs are better.

    This is why I think they'll fail:

    1. Existing technologies are "good enough"

    The most dangerous technology is that which is "just good enough". CDs have filled a void perfectly

    • Better sound from LPs? Unlikely... (Score:5, Informative)

      by serviscope_minor ( 664417 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:19PM (#9413525) Journal
      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.

      • Re:Better sound from LPs? Unlikely... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by John Miles ( 108215 ) * on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:35PM (#9413613) Homepage Journal
        In general, people who listen to their equipment prefer LPs. People who listen to the music are happier with CDs.

        That, in a nutshell, is the reason behind the audiophile community's preference for LPs. Those people think of music the same way Lance Armstrong thinks of chain lubricant.

    • Re:Will these technologies succeed? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by saddino ( 183491 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:36PM (#9413616)
      Imagine how much DVD-Audio and SACD cost, especially as they have to accommodate existing players and feature backwards compatibility. (The current projected cost is about $40 to $50! Who will pay that for a few hours worth of music?)

      $40-$50???

      Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon, SACD: $13.49 from Amazon.com
      Miles Davis Sketches of Spain, DVD-A, 14.99 from Amazon.com

      Whatcha talkin bout Willis???

      My additional 2 cents: I have a hybrid DVD-A and SACD player and the formats are worth it (IMHO) for the 5.1 channel mixes alone -- granted, not all music lends itself to surround mixes though. But check out The Flaming Lips Yoshmi Battles the PInk Robots on DVD-A to experience something way beyond what your CD player is capable of.

    • 1. Existing technologies are "good enough"

      This pretty much says it all. I think people underestimate how carefully the CD audio standard was chosen all those many years ago. Its a great example of a technology so well engineered from the beginning that there just won't be a good reason to replace it anytime soon. Its like the oil driven internal combusion engine - its lasted over 100 years and its just not going to be replaced anytime soon until we really need to.

      As a recovering audiophile (I'm in

  • Wow (Score:5, Informative)

    by UserChrisCanter4 ( 464072 ) * on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:47AM (#9413347)
    This was a really, really uninformative article. Bonus points for being "blurbed" as about DVD-A/SACD and then having almost nothing about them.

    I have a DVD-A/SACD player. It's hooked up to a home theater system that toals out at about $6,000, not counting TV. DVD-As and SACD do definitely sound better than CD, but they only sound better in scenarios where a person has a stereo that runs more than about $1,000. Below that point, the limiting factor isn't their media but the speakers.

    That said, I really regret having purchased it. I'm not a huge classical music fan, and my interest in jazz is minor. There aren't a huge amount of major releases out there for someone like myself. It is amusing, though, to go to the store and see the completely random stuff that does make it out (The Bangles Greatest Hits? Queensryche?!? The Top Gun Soundtrack?).
    • > This was a really, really uninformative article.

      Sadly that seems to be the norm for Anandtech now. I used to visit them daily because their reviews were that much better than everyone else's, but recently they've really been going downhill.
    • You spent six grand on a stereo and you are surprised by the top gun soundtrack making it to a high quality audio format? You should be ashamed of yourself. The movie itself is one of the most-used to promote high end audio equipment due to all the crazy audio shit that's going on, and the soundtrack will have made it in by proxy.

      Queensryche, incidentally, is a band which knows what it's doing, and so that doesn't surprise me either. Operation Mindcrime is a marking-post in the history of butt rock :)

    • Why is cost an accurate indicator of the quality of someone's system? Do you have conversations with people bragging about how much more you paid for your system than theirs? "they only sound better in scenarios where a person has a stereo that runs more than about $1,000." Gimme a break. This is audiophile bullshit at its finest, all you want to do is justify the obscene amount of money you spent on fancy blue LEDs and optical interconnects that were dipped in holy water (reduces jitter). I'm picturing som

  • New? DVD-A and SACD aren't new. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by canavan ( 14778 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @11:57AM (#9413409)
    DVD-A and SACD media and players are available since a number of years, the DVD-A specification is from 1999, and sony's first SACD player was introduced in the same year. Players that support both formats are available since more than a year. Neither format has caught on for a number of reasons, the higher price of players that support any of them beeing the most important imho, but there's also the lack of interesting content and that people don't want to end up with media in a format that could die out in a few years.

    On the topic of SACD, SACD2 is currently beeing discussed, so SACD is definitively old news.

  • Ridiculous kHz (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@g3.1415926mail.com minus pi> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:02PM (#9413437) Homepage Journal
    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 :)

    • Re:Ridiculous kHz (Score:4, Insightful)

      by real_smiff ( 611054 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:22PM (#9413544)
      i think (tin foil hat on) the plan has been to compress (dynamically compress) the fuck out of audio cds for the last few years so that the new formats DO sound better - if only because they are mastered properly (rather than clipped to hell). it's like what i've heard about the DTS track on some DVDs having the bass turned up to fool people into thinking it sounds better than the AC3 (this may be true anyway, i don't know).. or maybe that's just a byproduct of the loudness race, whatever, it's convenient: they've got a whole market for selling things again right there, cunning bastards.

    • Re:Ridiculous kHz (Score:5, Informative)

      by Kiryat Malachi ( 177258 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:30PM (#9413587) Journal
      You have your terminology totally wrong, first off. You state that noone needs a frequency range greater than 40kHz; what you meant to state was that noone needs a *sampling rate* greater than 40kHz. The 20kHz you state next is the frequency range of human hearing (usually a little bit lower for adults, most adults will top out in the 15-19kHz range).

      Engineers need to work at high bitdepth and sampling rate, not at high frequency range, although FR is a direct consequence of sampling rate.

      Next; there's no such thing as a floating point sampling rate. You're thinking bitdepth, and using a floating point bitdepth is uncommon. Most current digital editing systems (i.e. ProTools) record 24bit fixed point audio during tracking, and maintain some higher level of precision during mix; IIRC, ProTools 5 had 60 bit main buses, but I could be quite off on that.

      Next, physics.

      Yes, theoretically you only need 2xBW (bandwidth), but anyone who actually works on this shit will tell you that they want more. This is because in order to avoid aliasing artifacts, you need to filter everything above BW. Unfortunately, brick wall filters are not implementable in realtime (and not really implementable in a stored data system either, but that's another story again). So you've got a non brick wall filter, which means you need some frequency range above your max desired signal frequency, but below your 1/2Fs frequency. This range is where your filter is transitioning from passband to stopband.

      Next, we have beating artifacts. This occurs when you have a sound at a frequency very close to your 1/2Fs frequency; while frequency will be properly reproduced, you'll get amplitude modulation artifacts. Because of beating, typical industrial sampled data systems sample at a minimum of 5xBW; 10 or 20x BW is preferred. Since we're looking at a 20kHz BW, 192kHz (DVD-A) should do quite nicely.

      I'm with you on the lack of dynamic range in modern music though; load a Britney Spears track into an editor, then load a classic jazz track (I recommend Miles Davis' "So What") and compare the envelopes. Scary.

      • Re:Ridiculous kHz (Score:5, Insightful)

        by theLOUDroom ( 556455 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:37PM (#9414368)
        Yes, theoretically you only need 2xBW (bandwidth), but anyone who actually works on this shit will tell you that they want more.

        I think it's worth pointing out that the requirements for RECORDING and PLAYBACK are different.

        In a recording studio 32bit, 192KHz, is great because the ANALOG filter that must used to stop out of band signals can be easily implemented, and the extra bits give you room to do all sorts of DSP.

        On the playback side of things, you only need 24 bit, 44Khz. You don't need a "brickwall" filter on the output because you can upsample and filter the 44KHz stream before it hits your crappy analog output filter.
        (You might run your output D/A at 192KHz, but the SOURCE media does not need to be at that sampling rate.)

    • Wrong (Score:3, Interesting)

      by XNormal ( 8617 )
      You can only hear pure sinusoidal tones up to about 20 kHz but it has been shown that in complex wideband sounds such as percussion the effect of frequencies over 30kHz is still noticable.

      Deducting from sinewaves to arbitrary waveforms is not valid unless you are talking about linear systems. The ear is not linear.

      Most people don't have equipment that can faithfully render even the quality of a standard CD but the frequency range of these new formats is not totally useless.

  • DVDA? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:02PM (#9413442)
    In the porn industry we call this Double Vaginal Double Anal. Only a few girls will do it though.

  • DVDA (Score:2, Funny)

    by PhatCobra ( 770162 )
    I just hope that the acronym DVDA catches on... that would be funny.

  • D.V.D.A. (Score:2, Funny)

    by KajiCo ( 463552 )
    lol couldn't they come up with a better achronym than DVDA, now i won't be able to use this format without thinking of Orgasmo.

  • There are NO new audio formats. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Cycline3 ( 678496 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:13PM (#9413494) Homepage
    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.

  • can we go a whole month without a new format.? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rtphokie ( 518490 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:20PM (#9413527)
    It doesn't matter how good a new format is or how many new features it offers, it it doesn't offer significant value (perceived or real), it wont take off.

    Sure AAC is better, sure Ogg is better, but for most folks, even those with huge music collections and very exacting preferences in their audio systems, MP3 is still good enough. Why? Because most people care about the music, not the technology.

    Caring more about the technology forces you to give up some of the music? Why? Availability. Maybe they've already ripped their audio collections to MP3. Maybe they've already invested in a good MP3 player.

    Beta was better than VHS but VHS won too.
    • Sure AAC is better, sure Ogg is better, but for most folks, even those with huge music collections and very exacting preferences in their audio systems, MP3 is still good enough. Why? Because most people care about the music, not the technology....
      Beta was better than VHS but VHS won too.

      That's pretty much apples and oranges though. There is a vast difference in the difficulty required to support a codec versus a physical format. Given sufficiently powerful and flexible playback devices, supporting new

  • SACD is incredible (Score:3, Interesting)

    by vijayiyer ( 728590 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:24PM (#9413554)
    I have a SACD setup. Hearing is truly believing - my $150 SACD player blows away $1000 audiophile CD players, IMO. I had written it off as theoretically useless until I heard it, but now I'm absolutely sold.
    • But how can you compare SACD to CD when they master the CD version and SACD version differently?? SACD stores 4 times more audio information than CD, but that information is a quater of the quality - net effect zero, and all you've done is moved the sample frequency way out. Or look at it the other way - take a CD player with a 1 bit DAC - and record the output of the 1 bit DAC just before it gets turned into analogue and put that on a disc - that's essentially what SACD is - what a waste. You can't properl

  • What are the copy protections in DVD-A and SACD? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SigNick ( 670060 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:25PM (#9413559)
    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.
    • 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..

      I doubt it will be that hard. For a DVDA to be playable, the user must have the key to decrypt it. That key might be encoded on a chip on the circuit board in the player, or in the software on their computer, or wherever. That's the weak link - that's what hackers are going to go for.

      All it takes is for someone to analyse that ch

  • It's fantastic! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FoboldFKY ( 785255 ) on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:32PM (#9413599)

    Just think of the advantages.

    1. Us filthy stinking consumers get to buy all our music all over again for easilly twice the price, giving the poor, suffering music industry a much needed (and obviously deserved) infusion of cash.
    2. In the case of SACD, we even get the added benefits of digital rights managements, which we freeloading, undeserving maggots so justly deserve for our years of support of the music industry.
    3. And, to top it all off, the majority of us who aren't audiophiles (lucky buggers) will experience absolutely no improvement in quality whatsoever! Wow!

    4. 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.

  • I recently bought a SACD player. (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kufat ( 563166 ) <kufat@nOSpaM.kufat.net> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:33PM (#9413606) Homepage
    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.
    • My DVD player (Sony DVP-NS755V) supports SACD. So I bought some discs. I don't have a audiophile grade sound system, but it's pretty OK. Homebrew (but very high quality) loudspeakers fed with a Sony 6-channel surround sound receiver.

      The DSDs (SACD) discs sound truly amazing. The Dave Brubeck Quartet's Time Out DSD sounds like you are in the studio. I have it in regular CD as well, the difference is very audible. The remastered Dark Side of the Moon DSD is incredible, as well as another classic, the f

  • Ok here's the deal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Monkelectric ( 546685 ) <{slashdot} {at} {monkelectric.com}> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @12:40PM (#9413641)
    I'm an audio nut and am sitting next to about 20 grand worth of studio gear --

    Higher sample rates and larger bit depths sound GOOD. No suprise eh? They really make CDs sound like crap. Even most amateur albums are recorded at a higher resolution then CD's and resampled.

    However, as usual there's much more to the story. You *DON'T* need 5.1 or 8 channel audio cds, thats stupid. Your brain can process 2 channels of audio, thats why every modern recording format only has 2 channels. 5.1 is great for movies, but stupid for music. Its basically an attempt to sell really expensive stereos/amps.

    And here's the conspiracy theory: As usual there is ALOT of money to be made off format changes. There will be licenscing fees, patents, royalties, and millions of new copies of the white album to sell so you can finally hear it the way it was meant to be (note: sarcasm). But whats really happening is -- the record labels want to reestablish control of the audio format, these formats will reset the arms race and send us digital audio enthusiasts on a 5 year quest to crack their format.

    Sony has lost *EVERY* format battle they've started (Minidisc, beta, ATRAC, Memory Stick, and the upcoming Cell Processor), they will loose this battle to, so expect DVDA to overtake SACD. However, I am personally resigned to not buying any format until I can make an OGG or MP3 from it, and you should be to.

    • I'm an amateur nut with only about 2 grand of gear, but I'm also a just graduate college student ;) I'll blow many more paychecks on boxes with knobs in the near future. One thing, though -

      Your brain can process 2 channels of audio, thats why every modern recording format only has 2 channels. 5.1 is great for movies, but stupid for music.

      The really odd thing, to me, is that surround sound (5, 6, 7, 8.1, etc.) "surrounds" you with the sound sources. Why in hell would a music CD want to do that? What a

    • 20 grand? Hell, I've got more than that in just my amps. I guess MidFi is good enough for some people.

      You'll have a really hard time arguing that you need greater bit depths and sample rates in stereo but that extra channels are useless. Your brain is capable of processing far greater than two channels (which only defines a line segment BTW). The brain is capable of processing audio information throughout a sphere, si it's quite easy to see that more channels are far more useful than more bits per chan
  • In my opinion, SACD never got off the ground because the licensing fees made it too much of a chicken-egg proposition. The hardware manufacturers didn't want to pay to add a useless SACD chip to their equipment, and the record companies don't want to pay the added expense of licensing SACD from Sony/Philips.

    The whole thing could've been handled better from the perspective of the record companies and from the SACD if they had done the following when the format originally came out.
    1. For the first five yea

  • You know what... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by JamesP ( 688957 )
    All these fancy formats: 192kHz, 24 bits, everything is perfect, until you plug your DVD-A, SACD player to your stereo, that has a 44kHz, 16 bit DSP for equalizing sound...

    Sorry...

  • They've been around since at least 1999 - see here [sonymusic.com].
  • With the right software you can play DVD audio with your computer. I am considering getting a high end sound card (~$100) and doing this.

    Anybody tried this? Did you notice a big difference? I have good speakers and a good receiver, but nothing spetacular. I wonder if you need super high end stuff to even notice a difference...?

    Tor

  • How about (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Hugonz ( 20064 ) <hugonz@NoSpam.gmail.com> on Sunday June 13, 2004 @02:52PM (#9414453) Homepage
    How about a two-layer DVD full of FLAC tracks, maybe 48kHz 24 bit audio.... I mean, as opposed to the CD, the filesystem is alredy in there.... that'll be 9GB of compressed lossless audio.

  • Marginal improvement (Score:4, Insightful)

    by majid ( 306017 ) on Monday June 14, 2004 @12:55AM (#9417444) Homepage
    DVD-A is supported by most DVD players, but not by CD players. Most SACDs are the hybrid type that work with CD players, but a few "universal" DVD players like my Pioneer DV-47 and DV-45 support them as well. For classical music, which is most of what I listen to, SACD seems to be leading in title availability, and only adds a couple dollars to the price.

    I tried a double-blind test of two albums I have in both CD and SACD, Bach's Goldberg Variations by Glenn Gould (the 1982 recording), and Hickox's recording of Vaugan-Williams' Norfolk Rhapsodies and Pastoral Symphony (technically, the SACD version is not "pure" DSD but rather converted from 24bit/98Khz PCM).

    I listened to them from a Pioneer DV-45 through a Headroom Little headphone amp and Sony MDR-F1 headphones. The double blind consisted of shuffling the discs with my eyes closed and popping one of them in the player. I then tried to guess whether what I was hearing was SACD or CD. 3 times out of 5, I failed.

    I retried the experiment after careful A/B listening to the discs, and I was then able to distinguish them in 4 out of 5 cases. Glenn Gould's humming along is a little easier to detect.

    I am sure you could get better separation using a more expensive setup than my $1000 one, but I have a hard time believing it is going to make a huge difference. The audiophile world is full of companies selling snake oil like $1000 power cords, and relying on cognitive dissonance to convince buyers they can actually hear a difference.

    Conclusion: the difference is there, but it is very minimal. Don't believe the SACD or DVD-A advocates who tell you about "night and day" differences, no more than you should to vinyl LP advocates who do it mostly because of the perverse retro chic.

    If you have a good surround setup, you may benefit from the multi-channel experience, but in the real world most recordings are not that well mastered, and that is going to be the limiting factor in most cases.

    If you want the best audio experience, get off the couch and go to a live concert. The home audio experience is going to be at best 25% of the real thing. Paying $50,000 on an audiophile setup to go from 24.5% to 24.99% is a phenomenally stupid waste of money.

    My conclusion is that the much-maligned CD Audio is an excellent format that exceeds the useful parameters of any home audio experience, and am busy backing up my CD collection to lossless codecs on my home computer.

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