What is Digg?145 Comments
- adventis, on 01/12/2008, -2/+43If I'm honest with you, the winner won't be DVD-Audio or SACD. It's long been the mp3 or flac.
- robbiedo, on 01/12/2008, -1/+41By the lack of smarmy comments, it must truly be forgotten.
- Sensai, on 01/12/2008, -8/+40You sir sound like an intelligent gentleman. May I interest you in some volcano insurance?
- TangentThought, on 01/12/2008, -2/+20The Super Audio CD logo looks kind of cool. Also found it weird for Sony to be backing both formats.
- haydesigner, on 01/12/2008, -2/+18A "Jewboy" being racist.
Go fig. - superkendall, on 01/12/2008, -4/+18The destruction of both those formats is remembered by everyone, which is why there is an attempt to unify behind one HD video format (Blu-Ray) and why it's nonsense that they both could have continued side by side.
I do have one SCAD disc myself (which I only have because I could also play it as a normal CD) and it does sound FANTASTIC. It's really a shame that whole format died off, perhaps with the resurgence of Blu-Ray SACD will take off again to some limited extent. - electrosound, on 01/12/2008, -1/+15SACD and DVD are with out a doubt far superior to CD. Anyone who says otherwise has either never heard it or just convinced they don't need it. The main problem with these formats however is that one must have a pretty decent multi channel stereo system to fully experience the benefits. The SACD Depeche Mode reissues released in Europe sound incredible as does The Beatles Loved in DVD-A. These formats might have taken off if the record industry and seriously pushed the formats instead of trying to fight piracy. At this point both formats are pretty much dead. I can only hope that the future brings some of these properties to a lossless download format like FLAC.
- Alphab, on 01/12/2008, -1/+14For people who thinks DVD-A and SACD do not bring anything new, they should really listen to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon SACD, The Eagles' Hotel California and Queen's A Night At The Opera on DVD-A. (on a decent 5.1 setup of course)
Listening to Money, or Bohemian Rhapsody with all the sounds in surround... It's really game changing.
It's not just the surround effects or the much better quality, but since instruments or vocals are not mixed up together but separated nicely on different loudspeaker, everything becomes crystal clear !
I'm lucky enough to have one of the very few dual standard player (Pionneer DV 656A), since I could not be bothered to choose between Queen or Pink Floyd. Both standards sound pretty much the same.
I for one really blame the music industry, Sony and Toshiba and all. Because of their greed, both standards are now dead and we'll never get other legendary record remastered.
CD is reaching its end, like LP or tapes before it, so it's only logical sales are going down. Normal cycle would have had one of those new format emerge, and people rebuying their stuff with the better quality.
But the industry was too busy suing grand mothers or kids... - twiztidsinz, on 01/12/2008, -3/+15Battle began back in 2000, and it was about as wild as it is today:not very.
- ibeetle, on 01/12/2008, -1/+12The reasons why these disc floundered are:
1 You cannot play them back in your car.
2 They cost $30 dollars.
3 Zero retailer support. I remember when these came out. Only one retailer carried them. Sam Goody's. And that was for about 6 months. You could not get them in Wal-mart, Best Buy, Even Tower Records didn't carry the damn things.
You know how you see an ad for a new movie on home video and it says at the end, "Now available on DVD and High Definition DVD". When was the last time you saw an ad for a new CD and it said, "... and SACD?. Even the record companies did not support this.
People say this format will not win because there is no Porn... or this format will win because it is cheaper. No X format will win, and only will win when it has retailer support.
Why would people not buy a high definition audio format. Because we live in a time when standard definition is... good enough and joe blow sitting in his lazy-z-boy cannot tell the difference in the subtle nuances 2 minutes into the 3rd track of side B of Hotel California. - merdiesel, on 01/12/2008, -1/+10The logo for Super Audio CD looks like a frat boy tattoo.
- cyberpear, on 01/12/2008, -0/+9If I could choose, I'd pick DVD Audio
- banmaster, on 01/12/2008, -5/+14No, just MP3.
- edwartica, on 01/12/2008, -2/+11Bring back the Edison cylinder!
- JordanM85, on 01/12/2008, -8/+17We'll be seeing this same story next year about Blu Ray and HD DVD when that nonsense finally passes.
- adventis, on 01/12/2008, -2/+10Why what a good looking question.
- shawnanigans, on 01/12/2008, -2/+10Lesson: When Toshiba and Sony fight everyone loses. Hardly seems fair.
Solution: Digital file formats so that the physical media are merely storage. I wish. - diggymow, on 01/12/2008, -2/+10Very perceivable in fact, the difference is quite large.
- quomen, on 01/12/2008, -1/+9But you have to admit, Sony has the cooler names.
- AlexanderBlue, on 01/12/2008, -0/+8Agreed. When SACD came out in 1999, I really wanted to buy into the format. I read reviews, decided on a player, and put dozens of SACD discs on my Amazon.com wishlist... and waited for a good car SACD player to be released. And I waited, and waited... CES came and went a couple of times. Nothing. My dot.com dollars shriveled. Still willing, but still nothing. Nobody produced one. Not even Sony. Since many SACDs weren't dual format, that meant I'd only be able to play them at home. Screw that. So despite being a bit of an audiophile, I never bought into the format.
Fast forward to 2007 - eight years later - and Sony has FINALLY released a car SACD player. But I don't care anymore. I've ripped high resolution VBR MP3s from all of my over 600 CDs (I never got into file sharing), and I've discovered the iPod. Now I can have my entire music collection in my car, or wherever I go. Not only that, but a lot of today's music is so over-produced and compressed that it sounds terrible no matter the format.
Oh, SACD - how I lusted for thee. How you disappointed me by not wanting to go everywhere with me. You big tease. - cyssero, on 04/18/2009, -1/+8I did some basic research into the two and SACD was probably a technically superior format (by a whisker), however DVD Audio had the advantage of being played back in relatively cheap DVD players. The first SACD player that came to market was a Sony unit which cost over $5,000 USD and weighed over 57 pounds. DVD players on the other hand, were obviously no where near this price (or weight). In addition, copyright protection has been broken on DVD Audio where as to the best of my knowledge no practical way of breaking SACD's protection has been found (apart from the analogue hole).
I guess at the end of the day CDDA was and still is more than enough for consumers. - profingersk8er, on 01/12/2008, -8/+15oh grow up!
- saisumimen, on 01/12/2008, -1/+7Gee, I wonder if "Jewboy" is a troll.... nah.
- notlenny2, on 01/12/2008, -0/+6Forget the high sampling rates and bit depth. Once you go to well mixed surround sound everything else seems trite and bland by comparison.
- Breepee, on 01/12/2008, -3/+9Indeed. DVD is good enough, that's why almost nobody is really interested in these new formats. HDDVD may be somewhere in the middle between DVD and BluRay, but just like BluRay is offers something not many of us care about.
- svartgotik, on 01/12/2008, -1/+7Yeah but you can still get SACD and DVD-A discs. It's really a true audiophile format and not many would be as into hi res sounds as they are able to see clear video.
I get both formats whenever possible, I almost never buy anything in stereo unless i really have to. - an0nymous, on 01/12/2008, -1/+6Pedantry alert:
Acura TL supports DVD audio. Go figure. - rjosal, on 01/12/2008, -2/+7Sure you can have 5.1 channel mp3's... but they have to come from somewhere. Please let me know where I can buy 5.1 channel audio files with better fidelity than cd's, because, man, dvd-audio is sometimes quite hard to find at the local store.
- Dwebtron, on 01/12/2008, -6/+11can't beat the truth! :)
- quakerboy2, on 01/12/2008, -0/+5I have precisely one SACD, and it happens to be Dark Side of the Moon. It sounds AMAZING.
- ManOfCube, on 01/12/2008, -1/+6Music listening is mostly dead.
Playlist culture is what caused these formats to be failures. Music is no longer appreciated by the masses for what it is, instead people listen to the few tracks that their friends are listening to at the time as a way of fitting in. Sure, some hits are good and interesting, for a little while. Songs in the mainstream are no longer works of art but beats and chord progressions that create one single mood and then mostly rely on the lyrical content for any further development. You practically have to make a playlist with many different songs from different artists because if you just listen to one album or artist in a session you'll get sick of it. - banmaster, on 01/12/2008, -2/+6I just think it looks kind of silly. It bears NO resemblance to the actual product/standard at all.
- an0nymous, on 01/12/2008, -0/+4There is some incorrect nformation here:
"At this time, you can only listen to SACDs if you’re using an HDMI connection to your receiver."
Not true. It is the only way to listen to multichannel SACD. Two channel works just fine using the analog outputs.
"The format war is now at a stalemate as combo DVD-A/SACD players are becoming more common."
Really? Name two besides the Oppo.
Also: no mention of DTS cd's? - mardraum, on 01/12/2008, -3/+7It almost seems to have been inevitable that both formats would die, unless you count DVD-A getting the occasional Porcupine Tree album or something. BR and HD-DVD cater to HDTVs, which have been selling. SACD and DVD-A catered to listening at home on a great speaker setup, when the popular trend was going in the completely opposite direction with iPods and mp3 gaining so much ground. Not that many people really wanted to just sit down and listen to albums even if they did happen to sound great in 5.1
The other part of that happens to be that unlike hardcore A/V folks being sold on HD formats, not even many audio geeks cared about higher quality audio formats. If anything, CD's major problem is that so many people try to master things as loud as possible to get them on the radio. It can sound damn good if you appropriately use all of its dynamic range, whereas nobody would really argue that a DVD looks damn good compared to its HD counterpart. I also agree with the guy who said stereo is the most fitting for music. 5.1 is gimmicky and fake. - haydesigner, on 01/12/2008, -4/+8"illegal immigrants are crushing our culture"
Excuse me? Which culture is that? The culture that the British immigrants brought here? Or was it the Irish? Or maybe those damn Polish people in Chicago (largest polish population in the *world* after Warsaw)? Or those damn slavics? Or Egyptians? Filipinos? Kenyans? Pakistanis? Brazilians? Chinese? One of the Scandinavian cultures?
Wait, what were you saying again? - svartgotik, on 01/12/2008, -1/+5I don't think 5.1 is gimmicky and fake at all. I think albums that are mixed well (have to digg you for Porcupine Tree) for the format blow the 2 channel out of the water. You have a nicer, more natural soundstage because you can record an instrument at more of a full range, dedicate a speaker or group of speakers to it, and not have to worry about phase cancellation in a stereo mix. The only phase cancellation you'll get would be real and would change based on your physical placement, just like listening to a real band with multiple instruments.
- phaedrusiszen, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3Yeah, they do. I've got a few DVD-As. But since I can't play them back in my computer. Gentoo Linux, which is my entertainment hub. So they're worthless to me and consequently I stopped buying them. If there was no DRM, I'd be buying them as quickly as I could.
- pixelate, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3It's not just about stereo vs multi-channel sound. SACD and DVD Audio use a lot more bandwidth for each channel of sound. The sampling rate of these formats is many times higher than that of CD's. Even with plain stereo sound there will be much more detail and nuance.
Studio masters are not limited to the 16-bit quality you hear from CD's, so it's kind of stupid to say what the music is "meant" to sound like. Musicians produce surround mixes and higher-definition mixes for a reason-- the only goal here is to get sound as close as possible to a live performance (higher bitrates certainly help) and/or as close as possible to an artist's conception of the album.
Listen to the 5.1 release of Queen's "A Night at the Opera" and see if you still think music is only "meant" to be heard in stereo. - carpespasm, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3the fact you just used trite just shows that you're not part of the usual music consuming audience. Most people don't care how terrible "souja boi" sounds when it blares from their cell phone. You can tell, they could tell too if they cared, but most people don't care enough to notice. The fact that you have to seek out and work harder to play dvd-a or sacd means most people won't bother.
- superkendall, on 01/12/2008, -1/+4We would have, had HD-DVD not been killed by Warner. That was exactly the whole point behind Warner trying to get behind a single format, and also the point why Microsoft tried to prop up a second format in an attempt to kill both of them.
- Mothrog, on 01/12/2008, -1/+4Why the hell should Congress investigate because two companies entered into a mutually beneficial agreement?
- Mothrog, on 01/12/2008, -1/+4Do tell, how exactly is an exclusivity agreement fraud? This ought to be good.
- spaceman84, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3This isn't a valid comparison to HD video. The proliferation of MP3 players and ***** $10 earbuds makes it very obvious that audio fidelity isn't a high priority for people. Most don't know what high quality sound IS. They just buy whatever has the greatest bass and treble response, accuracy be damned. But then again, hearing is the least precise of our senses. Video on the other hand, is easily quantifiable and the differences between SD and HD are readily apparent.
- TonyTones, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3> I can only hope that the future brings some of these properties to a lossless download format like FLAC
A FLAC file from a 96/24 PCM would be incredible! I would have no problem with downloading iTunes if they had that.
Here's how that looks:
PCM @ 44.1/16 = 10.6Mb per minute
PCM @ 96/24 = 34.6Mb per minute
FLAC from a 96/24 original = ~15Mb per minute
96/24 Has a noticeably better quality than 44.1/16 - picka, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3I wouldn't say the difference is quite that large provided you have really good AD and DA converters. The thing is with 44.1 is that the nyquist frequency comes very close to the upper range of audible frequencies. Since we don't live in an ideal world, the anti-aliasing filters in sampling, and the reconstruction filters used in going from D to A aren't ideal. If they are 'inexpensively' realized, as with a lot of consumer goods, they may have roll-off and ripple within the audible range. Using a much higher sample rate lets you very cheaply realize these filters with flat responses well above the audible range.
- an0nymous, on 01/12/2008, -1/+4Regular cd quality kind of blows. Listen to a SACD on good speakers sometime.
Faugh. - mikecaines, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3- Remember that HD-DVD and BluRay are just the physical media. There are two new audio format technologies being offered by HD-DVD and BluRay, Dolby-True HD and DTS Master Audio. Both discs can store audio in either format.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Theater_Syste ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolby_Digital#Dolby_T ...
- I think we have a better chance of Dolby TrueHD or DTS Master Audio catching on this time, simply because we will all end up with either a BluRay or HD-DVD *player*. Most people will be buying the player for movie playback, but will be potentially getting a new music playback device also. I suppose it depends on whether the industry can come up with a good standard for how to organize a disc to be played back as *audio only* mode (no video required). This time around it is also more worthwhile for artists/publishers because there will now be a significantly superior format to take advantage of, *and* people will have the players. The original DVD only had one of these advantages (most people had the players), the audio quality of a DVD is not that much better than a CD, most are still 16-bit, but 48000Khz (instead of 44000). - phaedrusiszen, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3MP3 are horrible. Any music that's complexly layered they'll destroy.
I dig this whole no DRM thing, but I won't buy an MP3. I want something that's lossless. Give me FLAC, APE, or even Apple Lossless. - Swift2, on 01/12/2008, -1/+4Thing is, the people spoke. They want mp3s and such, because most don't have the expensive systems where you can actually hear the difference. They want portability, not high fidelity.
- briansalo, on 01/12/2008, -0/+3I had a few DVD-A discs that I got for free, and they were worth it for a sound system that could take advantage of it... plus the special features on the discs were nice.. it was a step in the right direction that most people couldn't really pick up on unfortunately :( I'd personally like to see more
If they were marketed right, there could be gold in them hills. -
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