Why?!?!?! Damn, this media war is only affecting the consumers and delaying the massive benefits of a superior media for Audio and for Video.

I really Think that the Blu-ray is way superior over the HD-DVD based only on what I've read. It has 20Gb more of capacity and a faster transfer of information.

But in the audio platform I really don't know wich is better based only on what I've read, they seem very similar. Super Audio CD or DVD audio. I've seen in Cduniversea few titles in each media type. Metallica is remastering some titles for DVD-Audio I think, on the other side Peter Gabriel is doing the same thing but with SACD. The thing that makes me angry is that this war will create audio players that have to read both media types increasing the overall cost, plus It would suck if the better media type loses the war just because of bad marketing and bad allies, just like Betamax lost to VHS (I've read that VHS allied with the porn industry and that was the extra push over the hill to beat Betamax).

What do you think about it? I think I would be just fucking amazing to hear your future artist album made on a SACD or DVD-A. Imagine a 5.1 audio system, we could actually hear each instrument on a different speacker, and imagine a surround passage that goes 360 degrees instead of just bouncing form Left to Right like stereo does.

Neither SACD or DVD-A are being supported in any major way here in the States any longer. And what little content there is will continue to decline. Both sound excellent. Best to get a player that plays both, and buy whichever album you want regardless of format. I'm sure this is all hard to get in Peru, but last year was the last time there were many new titles coming out in either. A shame really, but with consumer confusion and retailer apathy, they were doomed. But much work went into most of the available titles in both formats, and for the most part sound fantastic.

One of the biggest reasons for the decline of SACD and DVD-A is rise of bigger capacity media.

Imagine uncompressed hi-rez audio in multichannel. That's what I'm ready for. Screw DD algos and DSD pseudo-science.

I picked up a Sony SACD/DVD-Audio player last year & have about 15 titles.
Stuff like Captain Fantastic, Brain Salad Surgery, Dark Side Of The Moon, etc, amazing.
The Chick Corea 60th Birthday bash at the Blue Note is exquisite. I just ordered a DVD-Audio of Tchaikovsky for $12, so the prices are finally coming down, although probably because the market died before it was ever born.
Oh well, there's always Blu-ray...

Something will be the next big push, like the transistion from cassette to CD, but I'm not sure that SACD or DVD-Audio is it. I think these will fall somewhat by the wayside, much like the MiniDisc. Sure, MD ended up finding its niche as a recording medium, but it certainly wasn't the "next generation."

Unfortunately, it doesn't matter which product is better. Look at the mp3. It has taken over in the audio world, yet it's a step back in sound quality. It's all about convenience and content (as we found out in the VHS/Betamax war).

DSD is no more pseudo-science than PCM.

Bluray has had some issues though here. Toshiba has come out publicly about these issues. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Right now I think most people are concerned with price not performance.

I didn't see this before I posted. I agree and could see the same thing potentially happening with blu-ray.

And wasn't Sony more than a bit too demanding in what it wanted in return for other companies to use Betamax? The result was very few companies willing to manufacture Betamax and lots of companies producing VHS decks.

Thank you all for replying. Wow, I really didn't know all this, I thought that the market for DVD-A and SACD was just born and only taking a while to explode, but it all indicates that it's kind of dead. What a pitty that lower quality compressed formatts are becoming the NEXT massive format, but well it's true. iPods and iTunes are the next generation of music, that sucks!! It's good to have mp3's and iPods but not if that means a drawback in musical quiality. I was very enthusiastic about a next generation Format. Is there really no realistic candidate right now?? Give me Hope.

Let's also not forget that when cassette tapes replaced vinyl, that was also a big step backwards in sound quality.

As for what the next big format will be, who knows? It's all about convenience, though. Digital media (mp3s, IPods, etc.) is taking over, so I would look for the next big breakthrough to come from that area.

SACD and DVD-Audio are great, but that improvement is lost on someone who wants to listen to their iPod. What they need to do is improve digital compression methods (a better mp3) to go along with the better physical formats. People still like buying CDs, but these days I think you have to market it in terms of digital media.

The fact is that CD was a quantum leap--most people had poor quality record players, so the fidelity was quite a bit better--but moreover the format was convenient--it doesn't degrade with repeat playing and even quite bad scratches can be overcome (OK, so at some point the error correction system can't overcome them and interpolation is used, although that's likely to be inaudible; at worse they'll 'skip" to the point of being unplayable--but you really have to treat your discs badly for this)--and you have the advantage of instant track access, etc. It also looked suitably "high tech" and impressive.

The fact is that properly dithered 16-bit audio for playback is fine (it's better to work with higher resolution for mixing, processing, etc.); the limitation is most people's audio systems, and besides, how many recordings actually have a 96dB (16-bit) signal-to-noise ratio?

Most people don't even know what stereo imaging is, much less know how to set up surround systems properly, and AFAIK no-one's really figured a standard way to mix/pan for surround music, unlike stereo music and surround sound on movies.

(I'm always astonished to see pictures of enthusiasts' home theater systems posted, some of which cost 10000's, yet in almost every case the speakers are not set up properly!)

Anyway, the real limitation on audio quality is the instruments used and the quality of maintenance, or if synths, programming, microphones/acoustics for acoustic instruments, the processing, mixing, etc. In the CD era everyone was busy trying to "show off" the sound quality, so a lot of the best recordings for sound quality are from that time. (Not just synth-pop, though that's fine by me, but also Donald Fagen--"The Nightfly," Dire Straits--"Brothers in Arms", etc.)

As for the "download" era, it's early days yet. Apple upgraded the video quality of iTunes video downloads (so I suppose there's hope that improvements will occur in time) but unfortunately the music is stuck at 128kbit/s AAC which IMHO is unacceptable and I've decided that I won't buy any music from them until it's lossless.

Yes, but they didn't "replace" LPs...

BTW, while mass produced cassettes suck, a high-end cassette recorder (e.g., Nakamichi... hmm, I guess they don't make 'em anymore!... Sony with Dolby S [consumer version of SR]) properly calibrated with good tape media can give quite a remarkable performance, ...if you have 3 heads and skip between the CD and the tape'd version it's almost as good!

Anyway, it's quite true, Joe Sixpack only cares about "good enough" quality and expect high levels of convenience. And frankly, outside of our "pet" interests/hobbies/professions, most us do, too.

The good thing is that the cost of mass-produced digital electronics are so low these days that it's almost a "by default" thing that the next thing comes along. I expect sooner or later "next generation" players from China are sold for spare change prices in petrol stations, as happened with DVD a few years after its launch. They'll be standard on personal computers too.

I guess the question is whether it's expensive to convert DVD duplication facilities to the new formats. IIRC it's not with HD-DVD, I forget about Blu-Ray though.

There is nothing "pseduoscience" about lossy compression systems, they are throughly grounded in psychoacoustics and blind testing. Call that guesswork if you like, and to an extent it is since we do not have absolute knowledge of the human perception system, and "simplified" models have to be used for any practical system, but we know enough about frequency subbands and masking etc.; they didn't pull it out of their as*. However, if the performance is inadequate, that is because it is impossible to throw away 75%-90% of the data alongside the artefacts introduced by the process, and not audibly reduce quality for at least some listeners. (i.e., us!)

Anyway, have you heard of Meridian Lossless Packing (also known as MLP Lossless) developed by high-end audio company Meridian and licensed by Dolby?

http://investor.dolby.com/ReleaseDetail.cfm?ReleaseID=160488

It has to be said, though, the performance of AC-3 or the "original" Dolby Digital (given it's now getting on for 15 years old) with a good professional encoder is really quite good. A lot of the bad name that MP3 gets is due to the total lack of quality control on the encoders.

As for DSD, that IS uncompressed, it's just PWM not PCM.

Sure, cassette tapes didn't literally banish LPs from existance, if that's what you thought I meant. By "replace," I meant that cassette tapes took over as the dominant medium. And by dominant, I mean strictly from a sales perspective. That's a fact.

Well, regardless of the sales figures, at least until CD was dominant LP's were typically available and showed no signs of becoming obsolete. So it was no big deal to the "audiophile". (Except for those who somehow believed digital audio "ruined" the quality, better, even when the recording process, synths and effects, etc. used were digital. ) On the other hand, it's I think it's a legitmate fear that lossless media could give way to lossy online distribution. In fact, that's already a problem for some material (although half the time bad sample libraries of the week, nasty soft synths and sloppy engineering/mixing already makes the material painful to listen to... and I didn't even get to the music per se.) Maybe by the time CD disappears, broadband connectivity and mega storage capacity will make lossless distribution the norm.

I'm convinced that most consumers want to have something physical when they purchase music, although downloading digital music is popular, it doesn't compare to the amount of physical CD's and DVD's that are purchased.

I personally cannot see a time where the only way to purchase media is online with no physical equivilant.

With regards to blu-ray and HD-DVD, over here the average consumer doesn't have a good enough quality tv to see enough difference to upgrade from DVD, my $0.02 anyway...

And with SACD and DVD-A, most consumers wouldn't sit down and listen to an entire album from start to finish, they put it on while they're doing the housework, while they have guests over, while they're driving to work etc. and thus most wouldn't notice a difference from old 16bit CDs...

My prediction, CD's and DVD's are here for a long while yet.

I do think SACD, DVD-A, HD-DVD, and Blu-Ray although superior media will suffer the same fate as MD, Laserdisc and Betamax.

With HD-DVD and Blu-Ray being in competition with each other, they're both doomed to fail.

Do we really have to reopen the old discussion about the physics of audio and the response range of the human ear?

As fascinating as the fine details are, it was tiresome when GM and Nika used to go at it for weeks on end. It'll be a lot less interesting without the heavyweights...

Do explain 'cause I haven't the faintest clue what you're talking about in relation to DSD.

How bout I just link to the archives and let you make up your own mind on it.

http://www.musicplayer.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?/ubb/get_topic/f/3/t/005833.html
http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/3/t/002225.html#000000

and one granddaddy monstrosity thread that should keep you busy for several weeks over the debate that any super-high samplerate has any merit...

http://www.musicplayer.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php?/ubb/get_topic/f/3/t/000822/p/1.html

Actually, if your point is just that higher sample rates are of little or no benefit, unless there's any original material, it hardly seems worth bothering. I'm quite familar with Nyquist, etc.

As I've stated above, there is nothing wrong with properly dithered 16-bit audio. I'd also add that 44.1kHz or 44kHz sample rates are fine.

So, if by "pseudo-science" you mean that the marketing of higher bit-rate audio carriers than CD has exaggerated or even utterly nonsensical claims that violate the Nyquist _theorem_ (that's theorem, as in proven, not theory!), sure.

That said, this is all good revision and the odd bit of new info, so I'm gonna (gradually) read through it anyway.

Bingo!

This is a bit open to question in my opinion. I think you can play full quality lossless audio files on many of these devices if you are willing to accept the file size increase. I'm not sure about iTunes though and their formats... but certainly you can rip CDs to formats other than mp3.

Right, iTunes and the iPod support the "Apple Lossless" format, you just can't buy music in that format. My CD's are all encoded using lossless compression.

I think the only problem is that hard disk players have has to access the hard drive more frequently as the cache has to be filled more often, making damage more likely.

No offense but in my opinion 5.1 audio and 360 degree sound is unrealistic for music. Why? because when you are at a concert the musicians are in front of you and they usually stay on stage. As far as hearing each instrument on a seprate speaker,while it would be cool it's somewhat novel because for one the musicians onstage don't even get that type of separation :p . And on the other hand all of the instruments and the vocals are all mixed, also the listener would need a fancier pair of headphones unless of course a 2 channel mix is provided on the same disc.

Regarding formats; While I do agree that some people will prefer buying a physical copy of an album others will continue to embrace the alternatives. Higher quailty mixes of songs could become availble online aswell as other formats could become more popular. I for one like open-source formats such as Ogg-vorbis, FLAC etc.

One of the big advantages of publishing your music online and not in a packaged format is that their is less pressure on an artist as far as image and packaging goes, meaning you won't have to make sure you do a nice photo shoot and make sure your wearing the hippist clothes, have your hair done just "right" and put 10 pictures of your self on the album(front cover, insert, back cover, maybe a picture of yourself on the disc) that means you don't have to pay a hair stylist, designer etc.

What the physical disc has become is a great way for big labels to show off their prized pop-artist while ignoring musical content(not in all cases).

I really don't think that it would be unrealistic just beacuse musicians don't get separated. It all gets solved arranging speakers in the concert hall. Besides music is not about trying to be "realistic" all the time, if that would be the case then we would never have had synthesizers and weird sounds that don't exist in nature.
Besides mixing music in 5.1 is nothing new, we get it all the time in movie soundtracks, why would it be so tabu to use it on audio albums??

I'm not saying it's entirely unfruitful, I do realize that not everything about music is realistic. As a concept album or anything therefore realted to that idea, yes 5.1 could be interesting but is it entirely practical? No, when you hear a band play whether they play jazz, classical etc. you hear a blend of them playing together. If they are an acoustic band part of their skill would be each of them playing at just the right volume so you hear them as one entity a band.

Sure you could use a 5.1 system and take a stereo recording and pump the same mix out of each speaker but what I gather from what your saying is using 5.1 audio in such a way that for example, you hear the piano from the front left speaker, the guitar from the front right, the bass guitar from the rear left, a B3 from the rear right, the vocals from the center channel and the drums would be underlying the whole mix and come from all of the speakers. If what I just stated is similar to what you imagine I can understand as I stated before how this could be usefull for concept albums but I don't think this would be usefull for say a jazz trio because when you go to a concert you don't sit in the middle of all of the musicians. I do understand the use of 5.1,6.1 and 7.1 in movies and television but movies and music are two diffrent things.

Maybe there's a misunderstanding about what each of us is trying to explain either way it's all in a friendly context as I said before I mean no offense.

Regardless of medium, a great peformance will cut through.

The proof is in folks who own every generation of their favorite recordings i.e. vinyl, cassette, CD, digital download, etc.

LOL, the majority of recordings have so much processing on them, the presentation is absolutely not "realistic." (Multi-mic'd, EQ'd and compressed drum kit, for instance.) Often "instruments" are synthetic, sample-based, or electro-acoustic. Even when there is an acoustic analog, why assume that's the ultimate presentation?

So I'd start from what makes a good listening experience, and in general, that's having most stuff panned towards the front. However, this doesn't make the surrounds irrelevant--indeed, in most movies the surrounds are mostly providing "ambience"--that's why if you go to a movie theatre you'll find a rear _array_ of maybe 16 speakers, specifically designed to create a "diffuse" soundfield; home THX-spec systems use dipole surrounds for the same reason. Shut off the surrounds, though, and listen how the sound just "collapses" right into the screen.

However, there are perfectly good processors (e.g. Lexicon's Logic 7 processing) that extract the "ambience" of a stereo source.

What's an "open-source" format? The format itself don't comprise source code, does it?

The words "open" and "closed" are value-laden, so I'd sooner use the term non-proprietary. But it's not this that most people really care about, anyway. What's important is that the format is a de-facto standard which, if it is proprietary, has favourable licensing terms. MP3 is a proprietary format, but unless you agree with the Richard Stallman's doctrine, you probably don't care. (In fact, quite a few people seem to think MP3 is a non-proprietary standard.)

Anyway, I would like to see lossless distribution of music online as a standard option.

No need for a press pack and photoshot images suitable for use in publications (online or offline)? Adverts? The music video isn't going anywhere, nor are promotional appearances--at least not yet. Sure, for small time stuff you don't need that stuff--although I don't think you ever did.

Pop music isn't so popular today, hip-hop is. Whether you care to consider that "musical" or not is another matter--I'm certainly not a big fan--but it's clear that considerable resources are spent on the production of the big time material.

Quite... music is entirely "artifical," and the construction of acoustic spaces and instruments is specifically intended to make everything sound as good as possible. Even taking the piano, the three strings used for most notes can be likened to a "chorus" effect and the lack of damping on the upper strings is a sort of "harmonic excitation."

The only goal should be the best possible sound, and it is silly to assume that the possibilities of "real" acoustics are the only ones that would achieve it. (Otherwise, write to Eventide and let 'em know how much their processors stink. )

Nothing wrong with it, but I'm not sure anyone has really settled on a way to use it for music--rather like how it took a while to reach the usual standard for stereo (e.g., centre lead vocals, kick and snare drums centre, other drums panned, etc.) I think it's a lot more sensitive than movies to the set-up--e.g., the centre speaker and left/right must be the same distance from the listener's ears, or with accurate time-delay compensation. With a movie, the visual cues compensate for this somewhat--and then (with music) you're chained to sitting in one location. The vast majority of listeners don't even know what stereo is for, and almost certainly don't want the trouble of a 5.1 system just for music.

Meanwhile, many of the "limitations" of stereo have been compensated through many mixing tricks--e.g., use of pre-delay on reverbs to achieve "depth" in otherwise pan-potted stereo.

BTW, talking of movies, in the film Terminator 2 sound designer Gary Rydstrom said in an interview that for the gun sounds... well, this is from memory... but it's a composite sound with a cannon in there. A "real" gun doesn't sound "big" enough! The point is, movies are "larger than life" and we do the same thing with music. If I want to see/hear the "real world," I can just look/listen out of my window...

Oh damn! My wife's just got me an iPod, which I'd been bleating about for a while. Is there no way to increase the capacity (and quality) of iTunes mp3s to that of, say, WMA files? Oh, and I suppose the Zune takes all formats?! (Amazing how one starts to research things ex post facto )

You can convert your CD's to any AAC (.M4A file) or MP3 bit-rate you like (say 192 or 256kbit/s is reasonable), or to Apple Lossless (or WAV) if you don't want any quality loss. But the downloads from the iTunes Music Store are all 128kbit/s... which is OK, but not CD quality. But if you're not too impatient, you might as well buy most stuff on CD from Amazon marketplace or eBay...

I haven't really looked too much into Zune yet but it certainly won't play tracks from the iTunes Store.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zune

"Supports unprotected MP3, WMA, WMA Pro (2-channel),WMV, JPEG and AAC"

I guess that means it will play AAC files encoded in iTunes, but not those bought from the iTunes store.

"The European release date is tentatively set for late 2007 or early 2008. There has been no official word on Zune launch outside the US."

WTF? Well, that rules it out as an option for us right now, I suppose.


Does anyone know what bit-rate content is offered on, er, Zune music stores (or whatever they're called)?

Thanks for this. I'm a bit of a technophobe so please bear with me: are you saying that if I want to put tunes from my cd collection onto my iPod, I can retain that (cd) sonic quality?

Exactly. Just select "Apple Lossless" in the preferences.

Brilliant - thanks, man.

I guess none of the musicians danced (or moved) while performing in most of the concerts you've attended or performed in.

Marching bands--like the LSU marching band--dance while they play. Horn sections in R&B, Jazz, and Rock groups move/dance while they play. Actually so do pianists like Keith Jarret, Brian Culbertson, Liberace (when he was alive), etc. Don't forget about Prince sliding across the stage while belting lyrics and/or going off on guitar, and everybody danced--including the musicians--in The Time.

My point is some of us would like to also capture that part of the performance, and we're willing to pay for it. Additionally, 5.1 audio and 360 degree sound will enable musicians and sound engineers alike to do new things to help transform the experience of listening to music into something out of this world.

Yes... but that doesn't mean it's desirable for the sound to pan around in a recording. Except for the odd special effect, it's mostly annoying and fatiguing.

For similar reasons, I plan to resist Blu-ray and to support other non-proprietary technologies. I suspect Phillips (or another competitor) is already working on an answer to Blu-ray, and I suspect that newer technology will be released more openly.

Besides, the price per GB of storage keeps dropping so fast, that I suspect the market for Blu-ray will erode in a year (or two)--unless Sony opens up Blu-ray more.

Well, the media per se is one thing, but all current video standards (MPEG-2, H.264) are proprietary.

We're a while away from an "iPod" that supports HD-video, I'd imagine. (And even there, I'm not sure how much is strictly non-proprietary.)

The thing is that with any consumer format too much flexibility isn't really a good thing. You just want the damn thing to be plug-n'-play.

Annoying and fatiguing for some; yet, highly desirable for some like myself.

Furthermore, this technology is growing in popularity for game audio, and I'll help to do my part to make it less annoying and fatiguing in that context. Nevertheless, I also plan to incorporate some of the relevent technology in my other recordings--not on every beat of every track of every song. The point is to tastefully engineer--not to over-engineer--the audio.

LOL, that was an objective statement. Seriously, what's the point in having micro-adjustments of instruments panning around? With no visual cues? What would it relate to in the case of a studio recording? How about on headphones? And if there are visual cues (as in a concert DVD), then the poor mix engineer has to constantly match the panning to every cut from camera to camera, which would also result in the sound suddenly "jumping" around.

You've also got the problem of equalizing and compressing everything so it fits in, etc., which is going to be a disaster area if lots of parts are constantly moving around.

If you really enjoy that, then just listen to a worn out tape or a bad LP/record player where the image constantly "jumps around."

Yes, but that's more like a movie where the the sounds (of objects) are often panned to match visual location. And even movies don't necessarily jump the sounds around on every cut, while almost all dialog is centrally panned.

Ultimately, it may be better to distribute recordings using game-like technology with a number of channels which contain positional ifnormation and mixed in real time with respect to the current speaker configuration. Whether the record industry would ever want to do this is another matter.

As for "over-engineer," I think this (and "over-produce") is a misnomer. More engineering means a *better* result. Bad and tasteless engineering is *not* over-engineering!

You're correct. What I meant is an open standard like MPEG-2, which although it technically is privately owned, is also developed and governed collectively.

I wrote non-proprietary--for the lack of a better word--hoping to circumvent the flames I know I'd have received had I used "open".

Well, to me it doesn't really matter how it's developed. It just matters that it's a de-facto (or becomes a de-facto) standard with reasonable licensing terms, etc. AC-3 (i.e., Dolby Digital as used in movie theatres, DVDs, etc.), for instance, is a throughly proprietary standard, but it's been very successful and the proprietary nature is no problem. Unlike MP3, Dolby enforce quality control on the encoders, too, so AC-3 audio is, in my experience at least, always free of super-obvious artifacts.

If you ask Richard Stallman, the term "proprietary" and "non-proprietary" have very specific meanings. If you ask the open-source guys... well, as often as not whole thing reeks of a bandwagon movement that's not really sure what it's about. Open is better... right? Who'd possibly support closed?

In reality, there are examples of good and bad open standards, e.g., HTML is an example of a pile of cr*p open standard. MPEG-2 is not a strictly non-proprietary standard, but it's been very successful, and as far as I'm aware, H.264 is the best video encoding standard on the planet.

BTW... I would definitely like to explore large arrays of speakers with many channels of audio. There was one using 50 speakers or something that I read about. Not quite sure how it would have a practical application outside of large installations, though. And unless I used Bose Acoustimass "cube" speakers, where would they all fit?

Also, if you've never heard of it, Ambisonics should be of interest.

However, at the moment I'm more concerned with the poor fidelity of music with bad mixing and sample library/soft-synth of the week, which pale by the standards of 15 years ago.

While I respect RMS, his work, and opinions, I and others in the open source community don't necessarily agree with all of his ideas. I take more of a pragmatic approach more like that of Bruce Perens and Linus Torvalds: I use whatever works best. Nevertheless, I also believe that open technologies tend--and have repeatedly shown themselves--to be better over time.

This, again, is why I believe that Blu-ray already has a leg in the coffin.

So far open-source has worked pretty well with "boring," mature and standardized but hard and expensive to develop technologies that are, somewhat paradoxically, almost worthless commodity parts--as in many of the "hidden" parts of an operating system/platform. I'm not sure that at the application level so much it's the case, though.

As we've seen, many standards are not "closed" in the sense of being developed/ratified by "public" bodies, yet are full of proprietary/patented technologies... and this isn't a new situation. So at some point I think it's more than a little misleading to talk about some sort of "open" standards movement or whatever, it's just business as usual. As is usual with any "buzzword," it's applied to all manor of things. There's no way any standard is going to emerge without various political and market forces pulling in different directions, the best you can hope for is that the licensing is favourable and it's a robust/high quality standard. Process X or Y (open, proprietary, non-proprietary, etc.) is not a panacea. There are good and bad examples of both, and situations where one or the other tends to be more or less appropriate.

As for Blu-Ray, maybe you'd like to elaborate on what makes it more "closed" than anything else?

Rather than trying to fill up a room with lots of speakers, I'm more interested in solving problems to help project the sound such that it can be heard in 3D with whatever number of speakers an arbitrary system has.

No, I haven't heard of it, but I'll definitely google it.

As for the soft-synths and sample libraries, are you inferring (or implying) that they generate sounds more inferior in quality than the hardware 15 years ago? If so, then I'd have to disagree.

On the other hand, if you're inferring (or implying) that quite a bit of music today is being recorded and distributed more often by players/engineers who spend increasingly less time to craft and perfect the sound, then I'd have to agree.

While system software (OS, etc) is boring for you, it's exciting stuff for others (like me).

For that matter: what's the point of developing new synths, samplers, mixing consoles, etc? After all, they are "mature and standardized but hard and expensive to develop technologies" which consist of many "'hidden' parts. . . ." The point, IMHO, is because one can.
Check out:
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/Section-14029/Section-14033/Section-14038/Article-14856.html

Pay special attention to phrases like: "content protection renewability," "ROM Mark" (which is basically an embedded watermark), "his ROM Mark can only be mastered with equipment available to licensed BD-ROM manufacturers," etc. Also take a look at how Sony is marketing this technology to the MPAA and RIAA.

Heard of region-less and region-encoded DVDs and players? That will be a thing of the past if Blu-Ray becomes more dominant.

Perhaps, this doesn't mean anything to you, but it means a lot to me, because I like to purchase DVDs domestically and abroad. I shouldn't have to purchase a separate player for units encoded for a specific region. I don't know about you, but that region encoding nonsense doesn't sound like fair play to me--perhaps it might to you.

I never said I found them boring--just that they are a "boring" (as in non-novel) technology. That's roughly the words of Andrew Morton (Linux developer/Kernel maintainer) too. I mean, tons of this stuff is just standard textbook theory and the research was way back in the 60's... no doubt Dijkstra could have told you how build a good "modern" OS 35 years ago. (Probably combined with a long and entertaining polemic on various subjects. )

These are more at the application level but sure, of course, I love new developments.

However many of the new plug-ins aren't anything new, or even as good as the old stuff--maybe sometimes they gain from the generic hardware improvements (more memory,) but at the same time many of them seem to use CPU cycles like no tomorrow with poor polyphony as well.


Personally I believe that DVD got it right--the regional coding system was good enough to cause confusion for the average consumer such that bulk imports of DVD's from other regions doesn't make sense, yet enables the enthusiast to import material. I believe that many of the companies--especially those who are *not* in the consumer electronics business (e.g., media companies)--simply do not understand that often to get a format off the ground you start by selling to enthusiasts--and they generally aren't pleased by handcuffs.

And yes, I too import DVD's.

Well, there are two-channel or headphone-based systems that use HRTF's (head related transfer functions) which work to a lesser or greater extent... in my experience with headphones, they can get a sound to feel like it's tickling me on the back.


Oh no, I'm saying the average stuff is worse! JD-800 or average soft-synth... I'll take the JD. And believe me, I've tried out enough of them.

(Don't forget a good studio 15 years ago may well have had MKS-80, Oberheim, Fairlight, Emulator, etc. lying around.)

Sure, that's another problem. I was listening to a recent UK "hit" using the iTunes preview feature, and I applied a 200Hz low-pass filter. A good engineer will often high-pass filter many of the sounds so that the bass-end doesn't get muddy, but that didn't appear to be the case on this track... which, BTW, also seemed to have that horrid "fake analog" sound about it--as though someone had gone way overboard with PSP VintageWarmer or something. I mean, a range of different aims in sound are valid (from sugary and sweet to more gritty) from an "artistic" standpoint but, regardless of intent, it is possible to achieve a bad result.

Haha very funny , but seriously I don't fully agree with your opinion on open-source, I myself feel that open-source and "copyleft" will co-exist with everything else in the universe.

There's too much to quote but I do agree with some of the statements you made about 5.1 music, I understand 5.1 for movies(I think I was misunderstood on that) as far as 5.1 music goes I agree with it being odd to listen to a recording without any video to tie it down and it sounding like the singer is in front, behind you etc.

I think as far as a wider stereo field goes would be this: Why not take a page from 5.1 and improve upon stereo with 3.1 sound (left spkr right and center channel) the center channel might be a nice addition but as far hearing the same thing on a pair of headphones I don't know?

No I don't really listen to marching bands, and as far as anyone dancing onstage, what's the realation between that and 5.1, I mean if it was possible to get that much detail it would be in front of you therefore more so in relation to stereo. I don't think it's such a good idea to expect the same advancements out of music that we get from movies.

Edit: Originally posted by dp2:
My point is some of us would like to also capture that part of the performance, and we're willing to pay for it. Additionally, 5.1 audio and 360 degree sound will enable musicians and sound engineers alike to do new things to help transform the experience of listening to music into something out of this world.

I don't agree with your view because that calls for more of a focus on engineering and audio tech, The focus needs to stay on the music itself, I'm tired of hearing all of the crystal clear, polished songs on the radio that IMHO have very little If any musical content.

And as far as being "natural" what I meant was misunderstood, I do realize that audio is processed, tweaked etc. I just think that it would be odd to sit down and listen to music that was all around me, when has the audience sat in the middle of the performers while they "danced" around them playing music? but don't get me wrong if an artist want's their music mixed in such a way it's their choice. I'm concerned that it might become a gimmick that the big record labels would love.
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My view on audio formats is that I feel whether anybody agrees they are open-source or not is just arguing over the "name" and ignoring the underlying fact that they are, but the main thing is that I'd like to be able to buy a media player(avoiding saying "I-pod" or MP3 player") that supports more formats then MP3,AAC, WAV, and WMA.

Sorry... seriously though, why use the terminology sloppily? As we've seen in this thread, there are so many definitions of "open". I mean, it seems sometimes people mean by "open" that there is no DRM... NOT that there are no patents on the format per se (e.g., MP3)... these are completely different issues... and unless you're of the exact views of Richard Stallman trying to build a "FREE" (in his (confusing) terminology) Operating System/platform etc. you probably don't give a damn whether MP3 is "FREE" or not 'cause we all have an encoder or two and a player or two! (Besides which a DRM scheme could be open-source.)


The problem with 3 front channels, I think, is that the centre speaker needs to be very accurately positioned or time-delayed (e.g., if it's nearer to the listener, which is often the case) with respect to the stereo pair... and although there are theoretical problems with a centre "phantom" image (and the issue of cross-channel comb filtering) engineers have gotten very good at using EQ, reverb etc. to position a voice nicely between a stereo pair. It's less bothersome with movies where the picture distracts from these issues and/or provides spatial cues.

And yes, I agree that there isn't much scope for blatant rear-panning with music... but like I say, this isn't used much with movies anyway, just for a plane fly-over or something--the rest is just ambient. It *might* be interesting to have a background pad part panned or "chorused" all the way around a surround system.

Anyway, I'm not saying, of course, that it can't be done well... just that there are certain challenges and I'm not aware that any kind of "standard" has emerged in the same way that exists for stereo music or 5.1 sound on movies.

Music comes first but in my experience "crystal clear" songs are often good top to bottom... a lot of the stuff today is not as good as 15+ years ago!

Oh sure, that's cool. The whole situation with the iTunes/iPod "Fairplay" DRM and "vendor lock-in" (e.g., you can't play music bought from the iTunes store on any other portable media player than an iPod) is a disaster area too. (However, I'd have no problem with, say, Dolby creating an online music distribution standard and licensing it for use on various portable players, in the same way that Dolby Noise Reduction is/was standard on cassette players, Dolby Digital on DVD players and A/V amps, etc. Dolby are paid royalities but there is a healthy and competitive market in both cases.)

Easy - wall and ceiling-mount systems. I used to be a dealer for one really great manufacturer - can't remember the badge (sheesh, I'm getting old) that did high-quality sealed in-wall systems including in-wall subwoofers (better have some stout studs!)

Hmm... Boston Acoustics and KEF used to (still do?) do some reasonable in-wall speakers.

(I guess you really don't like the idea of 50 Acousti-mess (as you call them) cubes, huh? )

Triad was the company - I just finally remembered.

They're one of the only companies out there that make fully-sealed-enclosure in-wall speakers.

Advantage being that open-backs in your wall turns the whole gap between the studs into the speaker enclosure - not a good thing for accuracy.

As to the Acousti-mess speakers, if you're up for listening to surround stuff through 50 alarm-clock speakers, be my guest. You'll be needing a hella lot of subwoofer and woofer to support them, though, unless you like no lower mids in your program...



LINK

Bump. Soundscape, while you're still good-naturedly dispensing ipod function tips, could I pick your brain once more?

Apparently, if you want to update your ipod library, any songs you've stored on it will be deleted if these songs have been deleted from your itunes library, once you sync up these 2 devices.

Now, I'd thought that once I'd transferred songs from itunes to ipod, I could delete those in my itunes library, as they'd be taking up a whole lot of hard-disk space. Please tell me this is possible.

My iPod's hard drive crapped out, so I can't answer that question with certainty. Here's my guess: no, not if you delete them within iTunes. However, if you delete the respective files manually (e.g., Using Windows Explorer or Mac OS X Finder) this should "con" iTunes into thinking they're still there, and they'll still show up in iTunes (being stored in its database) and you should then be fine. Try it with one song or something.

And I'm always willing to give out tips and help.

Thanks; I'll try it with one song.