Why have DVD-A, and SACD failed?

[Anderton]

Now, before someone says "Well I have SACD and it's great!" or "Didn't you hear the great surround sound in the Elliot Scheiner-designed car at AES?!? You are an ignorant slug!"...I'm talking mass market. "Traction," as today's purveyors of hip English like to say.

 

There are a lot of surround systems out there in people's homes so they can listen to Raiders of the Lost Ark or whatever. But go into any record store (well, the ones that remain), and the DVD-A/SACD section will be about the same size as the portion of the store dedicated to Croatian Whaling Songs.

 

So what happened? If you don't have surround, why don't you? And if you do...why?

[Slowly]

What's that again, DVD who and SCTV? Kcbass

[Anderton]

My point exactly . Well stated

[not Cereal]

new formats seem to fail often. i think its based in fear of format-abandonment. it was years after cd players came out that i got one, and years after dvd till i bought one.

 

of course we were a beta-vcr family back in the day.

 

besides, for most folks the crunched up bit destruction going on right now is what they think music is. until producers stop creating works that sound like an mp3 high fidelity will never take off.

[djwayne]

I do have a 5.1 surround system and love it, because it sounds great, and I wouldn't want to go back to plain Jane stereo. I've bought more DVD-A's than cd's in the last two years. I have SRS Circle Surround that converts a stereo feed into a 5.1 sound to drive all my speakers and it's great. I can hear streams off the internet or standard cd's in 5.1. I don't think dvd's have failed, but are slowly growing in popularity. I'm even planning to buy another dvd player soon.

 

Using the Discwelder Bronze program along with Adobe's Audition 1.5, I can burn my own music mixed to 5.1 onto dvd's...so I think the dvd and 5.1 format is very cool, once you understand it and get all the hardware and software needed.

[Philter]

Why have they failed?

 

Because the mainstream music audience is not mainly comprised of hifi fans and audio engineers.

 

It's not what people want in a music format. They want convenience, compatibility, portability, and affordability.

 

The two selling points of the new formats are improved fidelity and surround sound.

 

The vast majority of listeners cannot hear the difference in fidelity.

 

To be completely honest, I spent a couple of weeks remixing some earlier projects in surround. I found it to be less than it was built up to be. For me, any improvement in sound quality was not nearly worth the added complexity. I imagine that for Joe Sixpack, that factor is magnified. Have you ever seen the comical ways that people place the little satellite surround speakers? Have you ever noticed that many folks never even get around to setting them up? In fact, the majority of DVD players sold today only have stereo outs. You have to buy a decoder in most cases, which is a step that many people, trained by years and years of stereo systems, never take.

[spokenward]

It's hard to launch a format. DVD-A and SACD were crimes of opportunity. DVD-A was essentially designed by a committee. SACD was designed to extend the life of the Sony-Philips patents. The technology split the record companies into two camps and nobody saw a reason to commit the same kind of resources that they did with the CD launch. If it weren't for Warren Lieberfarb , DVD would have failed too.

 

At rollout, the record companies were all "troubled" and under a corporate microscope. When the CD was launched in the mid 80's you bought hi-fi gear at hi-fi stores. You actually had a chance of hearing the difference. Now you walk into a Best Buy store and hear some of the most godawful audio gear in godawaful surroundings and you say 'maybe I'll just buy the TV this time.'

 

I don't think that it is over yet, and I've got the Pioneer DV-563A

so I can play either DVD-A or SACD. I'm agnostic. I like multi-channel audio because it captures something for me. The first time I heard it in a good room, I was just grinning from ear to ear.

[Gator Wing]

Originally posted by Philter:

It's not what people want in a music format. They want convenience, compatibility, portability, and affordability.

After 17 months at Circuit City selling stereo and surround sound, I'll agree with that statement. Another factor is people don't understand it (the technology); therefore they don't see a need for it.

[Phait]

http://www.nin.com/current/index.html

 

CD/SACD remastered "the downward spiral" also dualdisc DVD audio...

[mdlestat]

As a faithful and die-hard Nine Inch Nails fan, I feel it my duty and obligation to inform you that NIN will be releasing a re-issue of 1994's The Downward Spiral in both DVD-A and SACD this Tuesday (Nov. 23rd)

 

I have pre-ordered both, (because I'm a fanboy)and look forward to hearing then in my theater system. Do I expect to hear anything spectacular in these, my first ever examples of these two formats?

 

No.

 

I'm a NIN fanboy--- and there's minor, inconsequential add-ons to each version, like demo's and stuff I've probably already heard-- plenty enough reason for me to throw away $40 on two more copies of an album I've owned 4 copies of already.

 

The 5.1 thing should be really nice with this music though, assuming it's not overdone--- I think Mr. Reznor will have made it "fresh" if nothing else, which will be great for me, as it's one of my all-time fav's.

 

Now, back to your regularly scheduled commentary....

[mdlestat]

JINX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

*EDIT--

 

Oh yeah

[Phait]

Well hello MD ...

 

*EDIT*

We're awesome.

[offramp]

mmmmm...."mediocre product to the third power"........

[Valkyrie Sound]

Originally posted by Philter:

It's not what people want in a music format. They want convenience, compatibility, portability, and affordability.

[/QB]

Basically, yes.

 

Portability being the big one... no one wants to go back to having big portable players when they have ipods.

 

Piss poor marketing from both SACD and DVDA. If you have a cool new product you have to CREATE the need for it! Unless you can answer the question: "Why would my mother NEED this" you're not going to have a huge consumer product. My mother doesn't want better audio... she wants an ipod.

 

The film industry did a much better job at creating the NEED for surround. When you went to a theatre you saw previews and ADs for THX and Dolby. Consumers became aware of the technology and then wanted it in their homes. Music DVDs (DVD-V Based) are doing much better.... no thanks to the music industry.

 

Valky

[Anifa]

I've got a Pioneer stereo system that I bought several years ago with quad speaker connections hooked up to Bose 301's. The system set me back some major bucks back when, but it still kicks some major butt. I don't like or believe in the all-in-wonder stereo systems that have multiple functions built into one cracker box that they pump out in todays' market; I like individual componets and expect to hear the sound quality through quality speakers.

 

I've sat in the center of surround sound systems and, other than the circulating sound bouncing around, there is no improvement from that which I already have. The thing is, I know that the production of the music plays as much of a factor in quality sound separation and wholeness combined as does the system the works are played on. To tell the truth; there are just not that many producers that put the effort that's needed into the production to get the enhanced sound quality. Half of the popular artists on the market cannot even give you good STEREO sound quality; why expect anything better from them on surround sound?

 

I own two DVD players, but I'm not incredibly impressed by their functionality; I find myself falling back to my CD players.

[theblue1]

I think there are a number of reasons, most covered above.

 

I'd say a crucial one is that most folks have really bad stereos. Most consumers who've bought a stereo in the last decade or two have had little choice outside those hideous little overgrown boomboxes that pass for home stereos now.

 

Now, there are a lot of surround setups out there -- but those people are watching TV and movies and buying DVD's full of TV and movies.

 

I'm sure that a well-mixed surround album (where the mixer didn't succumb to the updated version of 'stereo-demo' style gimmickry) playing over a well set up high end rig (not just expensive -- some of those multi-thousand dollar Bose setups sound absolutely gawdawful) might well probably sound pretty good. But, gimmickry and theatrics aside, the jump from stereo to surround will never be as startling or compelling as the jump from mono to stereo.

 

Now, about SACD...

 

The bit above about the quality of folks' hi fi's applies in spades here.

 

And, for those with the gear to make the most of something like what the hype promises (I've never actually heard an SACD, myslef) there is often a huge disdain for digital music in general.

 

Every so often I ask my pal with the (probably) $40K stereo (I figure, since his turntable alone cost about 10 g's with a tone arm and cart) if he's heard any SACD yet and he just gives me the fish eye. (Interesting side note: when I met this guy in high school he was listening to everything on a little almost all plastic $40 Radio Shack stereo phonograph. And, though his current pad is worth about a mil, his ride is a 5 year old Honda Accord.)

 

Another huge problem for the adoption of the SACD is Sony, itself. While the consumer giant has its fans, I'd say most of my audio friends think of them as a singularly tin-eared company. Many of their audio products sound terrible. (It's been a couple decades, but the painfully awful sound of the first two generations of Sony CD players still makes me cringe. They simply seemed to have no clue how bad those ear-shredders sounded. I described the sound at the time as "thousands of microscopic fingernails scarping thousands of tiny chalkboards.")

 

And, though I know my way around digital audio technology fairly well (I got my formal training before the digital era had really kicked in but we did the book learning thing to make up for it. And I started building my digital studio in '89 and really kicked it into gear with my first ADAT in '92), when I read Sony's white paper on SACD that they had on their website for years -- and read it a couple times, no less -- I was almost as cluesless going out as going in.

 

It was only after reading an article on a small audio website by a regular joe that I even grasped the basics of 1 bit delta encoding. For crying out loud -- it's an easy concept to grasp but the bozos at Sony couldn't seem to negotiate the first hurdle.

[G. Ratte]

A whole lot of people would have to do lots of really stunningly creative work w/surround sound for albums mixed in it to create any sort of buzz. "Killer apps," eh.

 

You go see a band, and they're lined up from left to right. Go to a dance club and you usually hear a mono mix over the PA. So this would have to be something else, something new.

 

As for sound quality... that's pretty much a non-issue, at least for me I think. After 10 years of playing in garage bands, 128k MP3s sound just fine. Cassettes sound just fine. Hell, 8-tracks sound a-ok!

 

I don't even have a regular CD/DVD player connected to anything these days. Everything gets played via the computer or iPod.

[flyscots]

Lots of very good points here, but I have one to add.

 

Forget the sound, the physicality of DVD-A & SACD does not grab the attention of the general public.

 

Think about it. There was a big physical difference between LPs & cassettes, cassettes & CDs. There was a big physical difference between VHS tapes & DVDs.

 

Mr & Mrs General Public see no difference between a CD and an SACD, so it's hard to convince them there is one.

 

I don't know the facts but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more MiniDiscs sold in the early stages than there has been DVD-As & SACDs, again due to the physical difference.

 

John Scott

[Kendrix]

I agree with many of the factors mentioned above.

 

I have a DVD-A player and have bought about as many DVD-A's as CD's since I purchased this several months back. 24 bit audio is noticeably superior. I listen to the stereo mixes- I dont bother with the surround.

 

One factor that others have not mentioned is that folks do allot of listening in the car.

Every DVD I buy is one I am unable to listen to in the car (or on my boom box or on my secondary cheapo stereo in my back room).

 

So, unless/until folks have multiple DVD-A or SACD players including in their cars I expect this will continue to be a signicant barrier to adoption.

[sign]

There is hardly any SACD you can get in the Netherlands' music store.

 

Asking the shopkeeper: do you have any SACD? Answer: sorry, but we don't have any SACD sir.

 

Then you walk to de CD's and the SACD versions just can be found in between the CD's.

 

What about THIS thread?

[Hendmik]

I know it's been touched on already but I still had to chime in.

 

The real question that should be asked, is "Why is the music industry so out of touch with its comsumers?"

 

Music listeners, for over 5 years now have been screaming, "We don't care about fidelity, give us ease of delivery." To which the industry responded, "You DO care about fidelity, and we'll tell you how you like your music delivered."

 

Only Steve Jobs was listening. Why? How did this happen? It can only be either arrogance or ignorance. Either option is an unacceptable business model. There won't always be a Steve Jobs around to save the industry from ourselves.

[jpmiii]

What passes for a surround system is pretty bad. Those little bandwidth limited speakers and a sub; it just sounds awful. Only a handful of people know how to mix for it. A whole generation of listeners brought up on mp3 (ear buds, computer and car speakers) who have never heard how good things can sound. Most major releases compressed to death. In essence we've got bunch of listeners who only know lowfi music. I have heard good systems set up properly and it can be a wonderful experience but few people have and as stated before if your total exposure is a few minutes in a Circuit City type store, you are not going to be impressed.

[Kris]

Originally posted by Kendrix:

One factor that others have not mentioned is that folks do allot of listening in the car.

Every DVD I buy is one I am unable to listen to in the car (or on my boom box or on my secondary cheapo stereo in my back room).

 

So, unless/until folks have multiple DVD-A or SACD players including in their cars I expect this will continue to be a signicant barrier to adoption.

I second this point. The typical place for a surround setup is in the living room. Dominated by the TV.

[Duddits]

I know I may just be a cat, but I think there are a number of reasons why DVD-A and SACD have failed.

 

The biggest reason is probably the internet. The internet boosted the popularity of low-resolution formats, and the internet, with convenience and low or no prices, is where the action is. MP3s reflect preference for quantity over quality.

 

Another reason, often overlooked, is the success of DVD. The success of DVD has contributed to the failure of DVD-A and SACD due to the public's acceptance of early DVD technology early on. I believe that DVD has been the most successful launch of a consumer electronics technology in history, with the public buying DVD players at a far faster rate than they bought TVs or computers.

 

Therefore, early generation DVD players saturated the market, and both defined and limited the format for the public. Because early generation players lacked high-resolution audio capability, but made their way into millions of homes, it eliminated potental early adopters of high resolution audio from the picture. Those people with early DVD players might have favored high resolution audio, but not enough to buy yet another DVD player.

 

Those millions of entrenched owners of non-high-resolution DVD players wont upgrade their machines until they conk out, so it will be several more years before they become players in the demand column of the supply and demand dynamic. And without them, potential users (the 7 people who subscribe to "Stereophile" and Tom Jung) aren't enough to influence standards.

 

Therefore, the SACD and DVD-A folks essentially have to sit around and wait for all those early DVD players to brake down before they can re-seed the market with the more robust hardware that will fuel demand for high-rez software.

[KenElevenShadows]

There's some good points made here.

 

I think a large part of the reason is that most non-musicians have no idea what a DVD-A or an SACD is. Most have never heard of them and have no idea what they are. When you explain it to them, they still get them confused with other formats.

 

Many consumers don't know that you can save data on a DVD-R, much less distinguish between the various formats of DVD and DVD-A.

 

For many consumers, they simply know that you rent movies on DVD at Blockbuster and you can listen to CDs in the car if you don't have an iPod, and that even though DVDs and CDs are the same size they're not quite the same thing.

[Duddits]

I think Ken11shadows makes a good point in that the public needs a less incremental improvement in order to jump in.

 

Sony's Blu-Ray technology may provide the bigger, sexier step that will push consumers into higher resolution audio land.

 

"Blu-Ray": it even sounds cool

[ryst]

Don't forget about society in general. People work more now than they ever have. Everyone is on the move. People are in major debt more than ever. So they are working more. Taking longer to graduate from college. HAVING MORE KIDS! Do you really think these people have the time and money to invest in good surround equipment and sit at home and listen to music???? They want convenience and nothing more.

[coyote]

I'm a musician who KNOWS what these formats are.

Originally posted by Ken/Eleven Shadows:

There's some good points made here.

I think a large part of the reason is that most non-musicians have no idea what a DVD-A or an SACD is.

You know what? I have no desire to upgrade. Why? Because of basic, obvious physics. If I play a clarinet, the sound of the clarinet does not emanate from all corners of the room. It emanates from the clarinet!

 

Unless you are recording visual action sequences and some accompanying audio, any application of surround sound will be inherently false.

[spokenward]

excerpted

Originally posted by Duddits:

Therefore, early generation DVD players saturated the market, and both defined and limited the format for the public. Because early generation players lacked high-resolution audio capability, but made their way into millions of homes, it eliminated potental early adopters of high resolution audio from the picture. Those people with early DVD players might have favored high resolution audio, but not enough to buy yet another DVD player.

I understand the argument. But DVD is coming up on its 6th birthday, and the early adopters have several players by now. There is however a real scarcity of an upmarket choice to be found and bought at retail. The only expensive players that you will find are the upconverted HD output players.

 

As far as Blu-ray goes, Sony is the last company that I want to have managing a format, hostile to the external world and inscrutable within.

[miroslav]

Originally posted by coyote:

If I play a clarinet, the sound of the clarinet does not emanate from all corners of the room. It emanates from the clarinet!

 

Unless you are recording visual action sequences and some accompanying audio, any application of surround sound will be inherently false.

Yup...argued similar point several times...but most of the surround nuts won't buy it!

 

I think for some music...amb/techno/electronica...

...surround is valid, and can provide a new experience.

But for band/ensemble/orchestra music...I think stereo still rules, and is still the prevalent choice of most mixes.

 

The whole DVD-A/SACD "un-experience"...well, juts goes to show you that even Sony/Phillips can't always jam something new down the consumers throats!!!

 

In the near future...I plan on doing some DVD stuff...including basic 5.1 mixes...

...but for me, they are just "supplemental"...with stereo still the main focus of the mixing process.