Why have DVD-A, and SACD failed?

[Robman2]

I carry no weight, my vote did not count, so by default here's my two cents...

 

SACD, is the superior format, to DVDA...

 

Paul du Gre', who has been into only high end digital...for some time, has migrated from 96k, to 128k, to 2.8Gig.

 

On that path, he has gone with Merging's Pyramix, finds that a better platform for recording and mastering over the other species (PT etc).

 

He's moved from DB conversion to Mietner and now, will be using the Sphynx, which Merging has designed specific to the SACD protacol.

 

Now that said, my ears, have been in the room, for a taster playing a CD, then switching to SACD, on an old Chet Baker set.

 

It was the first time, I could hear what sounded as if it were vinyl.

 

We were in stereo, not 5.1 but Pablo's going down that road now.

 

AS far as acceptance by the masses, the CD's were sold cross market, for the Rolling Stones, as demonstarted a while back at a meeting of local SACD folks, Nancy Matter and her pals.

 

The retailers, don't have to think about a seperate Latvian Bratwurst Cooking sound effects set, because the release, was burned for both mediums.

 

There may be more SACD's out there as far as products, but until the retailers, begin shoveling the difference down the consumers gullet's...nothing much will change.

 

R

[djwayne]

Originally posted by 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.

Not true...lets say you have a clarinet, A cello, violin, and a timpani drum, the sound does not all come from one place, it is spread out, 5.1 can put you right in the middle of it all, and give you the feeling of actually being there. Ambience, 3-d sound, comes to mind.

[miroslav]

Here we go

 

Yes...but that ambience...that 3-D sound...is not created by the clarinet...it is created by the room.

So...a mono or stereo source in the right room will get you there.

 

Also, with a surround setup...if it isn't placed just right...it's not going to provide that extra-special experience, but rather just a lot of disjointed sounds coming from odd directions.

 

You have to wrok real hard to screw up a stereo system setup in most rooms.

[philbo_Tangent]

Ok, here's my take:

 

As a consumer -

I'm getting damn tired of buying playback equipment over and over every time somebody decides that the next standard won't work with the last. You know, there's already a new optical disk (blu-disk) that stores like 50 GB of data per side. So why buy SACD and DVD-A players that will be junkyard fodder in a year or two?

So, what I do is to wait till the equipment drops from 'bleeding edge' to 'commodity' prices. Instead of paying $450 for a Video DVD player 3 years ago, I waited till they cost $35. Instead of paying $150 for a 52x CD writer, I buy one a couple years later at OfficeMax for $12 (free after rebates). And guess what? The cheap ones are ALREADY DEBUGGED! They REALLY WORK!

 

As a music producer:

The authoring tools are few, expensive, and as a result, also likely to be buggy and unreliable.

For example, how many surround-sound editors do you know of that will edit DSD for SACDs? (Though I haven't looked lately, last time I did there was only one.) How many under-$1000 DTS and Dolby surround encoders are available? Not too many.

Now, after paying for acoustic retreatment of mixing/master rooms, new monitors, the expensive toys needed to encode product, I see that nobody wants to sell finished product. In fact, most of the places who'll gladly stock my CDs have never heard of SACD or DVD-A's, and so are not willing to buy stuff that isn't going to sell. Can't blame 'em for that...

 

It would even be a stretch to get them to stock Video DVDs with surround sound - - only about 4% of the population around here has a surround-capable playback system. The rest simple play DVD sound through TV speakers.

 

[W.Cronkite voice] So that's the way it is...

[hard truth]

When I was in college in the seventies I did a paper on why Quadrophonic failed. I think DVD-A and SACD are likely to fail for the many of the same reasons. But surround sound for video applications has been pretty successful,it is music-only applications that are likely to fail.

 

1. Competing formats causing confusion. Actually you could say there are at least four competing surround audio formats-DVD video with Dolby digital, DVD video (or VHS) with Dolby pro logic, DVD video with DST, audio only DST discs, plus DVD-A and SACD. This is plenty confusing for audio professionals, imagine how confused the average consumer would be.

 

Most of the media formats that succeed do so when there is no competing format to cause confusion. DVD-videos were adopted pretty quickly largely because they provided an obvious quality improvement, useful features and there were no competing formats. Quad and first generation video discs failed due to the multiple incompatible formats.

 

I think DVD-A and SACD will succeed only if players playing all formats become readily available at a low price.

 

2. The wife and living room factor-I hate to make sexist gender-based generalizations, I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions to this, but women are encouraged to be very visually oriented in how they design their living spaces. I suspect that you don't see surround sound systems in many home decorating magazines for women. It is difficult to have a surround system in a living room without compromising the decorating scheme. I suspect that many guys are unable to convice their wives to allow them to clutter the home with a surround system. Besides the visual aesthetics, these systems can be awkward tripping hazards.

 

Other factors-few new releases available, too much emphasis on reissuing remastered old content, little content that really takes advantage of the format's potential (surround should be natural for electronica), the myth that small "satellite" speakers are sufficient for the rear channels, few good demonstration environments in retail stores, DVD-video offers visuals plus surround sound for the same price, and people think these systems are more expensive than they actually are. Also most people don't just sit and listen to music, they listen while doing other tasks, so sitting in the sweet spot isn't going to happen. People will only sit in one spot if there are compelling visuals also. That is why I think we will continue to see a growth in music oriented video titles with surround sound, but the audio-only formats will probably fail.

[coyote]

The audience is rarely if ever right in the middle of a performance. Usually, the audience is OVER THERE, beyond the stage we're playing on. Consequently they perceive the music as coming from OVER HERE, not from the place they are standing. And it's a single-location source (though that single location might be somewhat broad) with fixd ambience. A pair of speakers in a room will provide a good enough facsimile of that.

Originally posted by djwayne:

Not true...lets say you have a clarinet, A cello, violin, and a timpani drum, the sound does not all come from one place, it is spread out, 5.1 can put you right in the middle of it all, and give you the feeling of actually being there. Ambience, 3-d sound, comes to mind.

[KenElevenShadows]

Originally posted by philbo_Tangent:

Ok, here's my take:

 

As a consumer -

I'm getting damn tired of buying playback equipment over and over every time somebody decides that the next standard won't work with the last. You know, there's already a new optical disk (blu-disk) that stores like 50 GB of data per side. So why buy SACD and DVD-A players that will be junkyard fodder in a year or two?

So, what I do is to wait till the equipment drops from 'bleeding edge' to 'commodity' prices.

Yes, well, that's usually the smart thing to do anyway unless you have money to burn, or else you'd have a garage full of Elcasets and Digital Cassettes!!

 

I think the consumers that do find out about this stuff:

 

-Don't think that the product is fantastic enough to shell out their hard-earned cash for it

 

-Are confused by the various formats and their permutations

 

-Are, like you, waiting to see which format flies

 

-Are waiting for the prices to come down

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But again, MOST consumers have never heard of DVD-A or SACD before. Just for fun, I asked a few people at the school where I work several months ago if they had heard of DVD-A (my friend and I had a very similar discussion to this thread back then). Every single person said, "No, what is it?" Same thing again today when I asked several more people whether they had heard of SACD or DVD-A.

 

If no one even knows that a product exists, they are not likely to make a purchase!!!!

[doug osborne]

Ah, well, a subject near and dear to my heart and wallet.

 

I have surround, but then again I have had surround since about 1985. I was integrating surround into home systems from the first Hafler kluges to the first Fosgate processors, Yamaha DSP-1, etc. I was involved in setting up some of the first small-room movie surround production, and some of the first surround music production (where the only option was to encode in Dolby Stereo to be decoded by Dolby Pro Logic).

 

I now have a Denon mid-level AV receiver powering M&K speakers with a Blue Sky sub; sources include discrete-decoded DVD-A MLP, SA-CD DSD, and DVD-V Dolby Digital and DTS from my Pioneer DV-45a disc player, DD from my Comcast/Motorola Digital HD DVR cable box, DD from my computer via SPDIF from my RME MultiFace. There are some great DSP algorithms which take two-channel mixes and distribute them around a 5.1- or- more-channel system (djwayne's Circle Surround, Dolby PLII, Lexicon Logic 7, etc.), but I don't have any of these fine systems so I tend to listen to 2-channel stereo stuff in 2-channel

 

I have surround because most movies and some music is mixed this way, and I want to hear is as close to the way the producer intended. Even though it is a slammin' system, I still consider it mid-fi. Someday, after I hit the lottery, I will use my evil knowlege to spend 90% more to get the 10% improvement - but for now, I can be extremely happy with what I hear.

 

spokenward had the first good answer:

 

DVD-A was essentially designed by a committee. SACD was designed to extend the life of the Sony-Philips patents.

and valky:

 

Piss poor marketing from both SACD and DVDA. If you have a cool new product you have to CREATE the need for it!

It seems to have been a choice - one of those confusing, self-defeating ones. DSD was developed as an archival medium, and Sony/Philips figured out late in the game how to develop a consumer delivery medium for it, SA-CD; the saving grace for SA-CD is that it is backwards compatible with CD players in general, and in time would cost no more to replicate than current CD, all on S/P-owned technology in S/P owned facilites. What does S/P do? They don't include SA-CD capability on affordable players, make production equipment available only to the elite, release few titles, and generally shoot themselves in the foot as they have done in the past with consumer DAT, MD, etc.

 

DVD-A has the advantage of being playable in every one of the fastest-adapted consumer electronics product in history: the DVD player. Every DVD-A disc will play in every DVD player, in either high resolution, DD or DTS, or two-channel. The mechanism and DSP needed to make every home, portable, and car player DVD-compatible is here and affordable, adding pennies per unit at manufacturing cost, so it can be baffling why every player doesn't have this capability; Sony's unique position as an important consumer electronics manufacuter and content provider might present a clue.

 

Interestingly, 300,000 each SA-CD and DVD-A discs are sold yearly, and this number hasn't increased much since their introduction. Boy, I wish I had a product that had an intitial market demand of 300,000 with tremendous growth capabilities - I would do my best to sustain and grow this, but both camps have decided to throw away revenue. Most of the SA-CD sales were dual layer discs that people bought for the CD layer - Rolling Stones titles (you had to get a magnifying glass to find the printing on the case telling you that it was an SA-CD as well as a regular CD) and Pink Floyd DSOTM.

 

There was also a recent survey by the RIAA that showed consumer support for DVD-A far ahead, 90% better, of SA-CD. Like just about everything the RIAA does, this survey was just plain wrong, and has been discredited. Few people surveyed had any clue what an SA-CD or DVD-A is, and most confused plain DVD-V containing music content with DVD-A.

 

As has been said above, familiar form-factor and installed-base of players has stalled acceptance or understanding of the new formats, but these are just details that can be neutralized through marketing.

 

Coyote, I have to disagree with you here. That same forlorn clarinet played in five different rooms will sound different in each. Even a mono acquisition/playback system will convey many of these differences, but 5.1 will plainly deliver the differences more accurately than 2-channel. For a long time, I had the definition of 'stereo' in my signature, and it has nothing to do with 'two'. Stereo is from the Greek sterios for solid. Stereo sound from its infancy included three front speakers.

 

We also can't whine, or meow, about consumers just wanting low-rez audio, or about how poorly they set up their speaker systems. For the last 100 years or so, we have had low-rez/convenient formats competing with hi-rez/particular formats and instead of crippling the industry, this competition has advanced it. Radio vs. record, AM vs. FM, CD vs. cassette, MP3 vs. CD...each has filled a marketing need, delivered music, and been replaced by something better. Hi-fi nuts have always driven the industry while pocket transistor radios have been the convenient mass-market distribution medium. Consumers have never, ever set up their speakers properly, yet they have still heard the difference when properly presented.

 

From my experience, just the fact that a home theater system has a center channel speaker drives any consumer to spend much more time, thought, and effort into the setup of a 5.1 system than they ever did with two-speakers.

 

From a global perspective, we content providers have always made our product with the highest possible standards, but we have checked it for compatibility with the average and lowest common playback systems. Things aren't so different now. As content providers, we have to continue to deliver the highest-quality product we can - I recommend that we make all of our music in high resolution 5.1 and make a 2-channel compatible mix for delivery (and leave the loudness wars to the end-user - when are Sony/Kenwood/etc. going to put a squash button on their receivers?). This future-proofs our work.

 

Content providers and consumer audio manufacturers have to get together and provide an easily-understandable software and hardware upgrade path for consumers. The lifespan of any major consumer audio delivery format historically is about 15 years, so we really are ready for a new format. The key here is choice, and SA-CD and DVD-A have both given appropriate choices; DualDisc might deliver this better if Sony can stop blocking what people want. Consumers have spoken here and the industry has not followed - it isn't low-rez or MP3 or iPod in particular, but it is availability and portability that they have chosen.

 

We now have the capability to give them the portable and readily available music they want, supplying the choice of hi-rez and surround to those who want it, and it is the industry that has failed to deliver.

[Robman2]

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

I now have a Denon mid-level AV receiver powering M&K speakers with a Blue Sky sub; sources include discrete-decoded DVD-A MLP, SA-CD DSD, and DVD-V Dolby Digital and DTS from my Pioneer DV-45a disc player, DD from my Comcast/Motorola Digital HD DVR cable box, DD from my computer via SPDIF from my RME MultiFace."

 

DOug I'm jealous, so I'm gonna call your rig spam...(joke).

 

R

[doug osborne]

Originally posted by Robman2:

...

 

DOug I'm jealous, so I'm gonna call your rig spam...(joke).

 

R...QUOTE]

 

Yeah, but some of you have cars that work, and houses, and...

[TheFunkman]

"The Cult of Moving Parts." That's what Sony, Phillips, et al, are...Coupled with an old stand-by: Planned Obsolescence, under the new name: "Non-Backward Compatibility."

 

A while back, I stopped myself from investing in "The Ultimate DVD Movie Collection," knowing that a high-definition alternative would sooner-or-later turn them all into coasters.

 

Meanwhile, here I sit, typing with one hand as I hold a USB Stick in the other. How soon before these little buggers have the capacity and throughput to handle a hi-def movie?

 

http://images.art.com/images/products/small/10100000/10100881.jpg

[miroslav]

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

it has nothing to do with 'two'. Stereo is from the Greek sterios for solid. Stereo sound from its infancy included three front speakers.

Well yes, "stereo" is about providing a solid, 3-D playback from two speakers...the center space has sound even though there is no speaker there.

And you could say that 5.1/surround is an extension of that stereo/"solid"/3-D way of delivering playback.

 

But...maybe if you record a live performance in 5.1/surround...and then just provide that for playback...

...then the information you have is accurate.

However, when you record single tracks and then create a 5.1/surround mix...

...why is that anymore "accurate" then when you pan tracks left/right for a conventional stereo mix?

 

Its not.

 

And it's that implication/suggestionthat 5.1 is more "accurate" and provides some "enhanced" listening experience just because of the extra speakers...that I see as mostly false.

In most cases...you are creating an "artificial" 5.1 mix that is just different...not really more accurate or enhanced.

So, stereo can be as good....and quite frankly, I find preferable for many types of music.

You know...for TV I really hate listening to it in that "surround mode"...even in stereo.

I kinda' like my TV mostly in mono.

 

But...as I said earlier...for amb/techno/electronic (which I see as "artificial" music anyway)...

the surround thing can be a lot of fun.

 

From my experience, just the fact that a home theater system has a center channel speaker drives any consumer to spend much more time, thought, and effort into the setup of a 5.1 system than they ever did with two-speakers.

I think only very few actually take the time...and even then, few get it somewhat right.

The majority of consumers (and that IS who we are talking about, yes?) do not get 5.1 right.

 

But in the studio worldwe hear things a lot differently than the mass consumer does.

Many of us may hear the benefits of new technologybut if it doesnt generate profits for the manufacturerstheyll move on to some other format down the roadonly to piss off more of the mass consumers, for once again forcing changes that are usually perceived as purely profit-driven.and rarely as audiophile.

[djwayne]

I've got WinDVD 6 Platinum, dvd software player on my computer, which can play High Resolution DVD-A's thru 5.1 and it sounds great.

[sign]

What about the Bose home theatre system 'surround with only two speakers and a bass module'?

 

How does that work, is it the Q sound we used to have in the eighties?

 

Here in the Netherland we see it every evening in nice looking commercials on TV, it looks great but I guess it sounds like.......er......Bose?

[coyote]

You're probably correct about this. The problem is that most folks don't care enough about the accuracy to turn over their entire home entertainment system every time there's an incremental advance (or even a revolutionary one). Besides, it's quite obvious to me that you sorta have to have a room dedicated to a theater experience for surround to make a significant difference in your auditory experience.

 

In my house the stereo is rarely the focus of life. For my wife it provides background while she's in the kitchen or it provides loud dance music. Never is she sitting and listening, so a huge investment in surround would be wasted on her. I will sit & listen but given the odd-shaped living room I have I'm content with simple stereo.

 

It's funny that even as we have the ability to have perfect suround fidelity, the content providers are busy giving us brickwall-limited garbage to play on it. And the vast popularity of mp3s proves that stereo really is enough for most folks....

 

Surround is a mass-market failure. If it can live with being a high-end niche product, it may do quite nicely.

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

That same forlorn clarinet played in five different rooms will sound different in each. Even a mono acquisition/playback system will convey many of these differences, but 5.1 will plainly deliver the differences more accurately than 2-channel.

[Kendrix]

Originally posted by miroslav:

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

But...maybe if you record a live performance in 5.1/surround...and then just provide that for playback...

...then the information you have is accurate.

However, when you record single tracks and then create a 5.1/surround mix...

...why is that anymore "accurate" then when you pan tracks left/right for a conventional stereo mix?

 

Its not.

.

Even if you record for surround when you playback in your room the recorded room ambience now fills your living room and bounces off those walls- so it aint accurate at all. Its like adding reverb to a drum kit that already has lots of room ambience already on it. The results are usually not pretty.

 

Also, many folks are focusing on the surround features of DVD-A.

I agree that surround is facing a great challenge to be accepted.

 

However, high resolution stereo is of much more interest to me. Most DVD-A and SACD discs provide stereo mixes. So I think we need to separate these two points.

Perhaps this is another aspect of this that is just too confusing for the average consumer.

[doug osborne]

Originally posted by miroslav:

...Well yes, "stereo" is about providing a solid, 3-D playback from two speakers...the center space has sound even though there is no speaker there.

I, and many engineers with far more experience and depth of knowlege than me, have significant problems with common usage of phantom center to deliver a solid sonic image: the listener must be sitting squarely between the two speakers, the phantom image can wander with small changes in R-L levels, and a phantom image by its nature will have a dip in its frequency response. A discrete center channel IMO will always be a better way to deliver a solid image (of course, not every center channel speaker is the same as the next in design or implementation). Phantom center, as well as any DSP-based quasi-surround delivery via two speakers, will always be a second cousin, again IMO.

 

And you could say that 5.1/surround is an extension of that stereo/"solid"/3-D way of delivering playback.

 

But...maybe if you record a live performance in 5.1/surround...and then just provide that for playback...

...then the information you have is accurate.

However, when you record single tracks and then create a 5.1/surround mix...

...why is that anymore "accurate" then when you pan tracks left/right for a conventional stereo mix?

 

Its not.

 

And it's that implication/suggestionthat 5.1 is more "accurate" and provides some "enhanced" listening experience just because of the extra speakers...that I see as mostly false.

In most cases...you are creating an "artificial" 5.1 mix that is just different...not really more accurate or enhanced.

So, stereo can be as good....and quite frankly, I find preferable for many types of music.

You know...for TV I really hate listening to it in that "surround mode"...even in stereo.

I kinda' like my TV mostly in mono.

 

But...as I said earlier...for amb/techno/electronic (which I see as "artificial" music anyway)...

the surround thing can be a lot of fun.

I don't believe there is, or will be, any standard for 5.1 acquisition. Multiple-mono, Dedicated mics, like a Soundfield mic, five spaced omnis, two stereo pairs with Jecklin discs, etc., will always be useful tools that will be appropriate for acquisition according to the requirements of the original source. It is in the mixing that these acquired sounds will be conformed for delivery in 5.1, 6.1, 7.1, 2-channel, mono, etc., formats. Let's hope that the acquisition methods and delivery formats will be chosen appropriately for each project, not generalized for all use.

 

My point is that 5.1 is absolutely a better tool to deliver a solid stereo image than 2-channel. Even a single instrument playing in a room will sound more like that instrument in that room in properly implemented 5.1 than in best-implemented 2-channel. For fantastic artificial soundscapes, 5.1 obviously will be a better tool. A 5.1 system is the best way to deliver a mono mix, too, since it by nature has a full-range mono speaker in the center.

 

From my experience, just the fact that a home theater system has a center channel speaker drives any consumer to spend much more time, thought, and effort into the setup of a 5.1 system than they ever did with two-speakers.

I think only very few actually take the time...and even then, few get it somewhat right.

The majority of consumers (and that IS who we are talking about, yes?) do not get 5.1 right.

From my experience, they screw it up no more, and usually less, since their brain is engaged when the choose a 5.1 system. But, they will screw up as much as murphy lets them!

 

But in the studio worldwe hear things a lot differently than the mass consumer does.

Many of us may hear the benefits of new technologybut if it doesnt generate profits for the manufacturerstheyll move on to some other format down the roadonly to piss off more of the mass consumers, for once again forcing changes that are usually perceived as purely profit-driven.and rarely as audiophile.

I don't consider 5.1 (or surround in general) as a format. I just consider it a better way to deliver realistic sound. At best, DVD-A and SA-CD are transitional delivery formats, as will be Blu-Ray (so far, no Blu-Ray-A format has been presented, but standard Blu-Ray carries eight channels of 24/192 audio, so they probably won't have to go very far).

[Philter]

Originally posted by miroslav:

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

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

I wouldn't even go that far. The time I spent mixing in surround led me to the conclusion that the overall fidelity was not improved, and the only possible "benefit" came from gimmicky placements. Although I suppose electronica is all about gimmicks, so maybe you do have a point there.

[g.]

I'd just like to hear good deep music at decent prices. I'll take that over superlative technology and overengineered overproduced (overbudgeted) candyfloss-assed favored artists anyday. The industy has got it all back-asswards. Fuck 'em.

[theblue1]

Originally posted by 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?

Which is pretty droll, considering I once went in an indie record store in Amsterdam and they had a section of Long Beach punk vinyl that would put to shame a lot of the Southern California stores.

 

I've only seen SACD's once or twice, anywhere. I think they usually keep them in a special case in the back. Way in the back, next to the trash and the table where they pack things up to ship them back.

[Anderton]

The good news: There are some really great points being made here.

 

The bad news: I bet not one record company executive will read them.

[miroslav]

Originally posted by Doug Osborne:

My point is that 5.1 is absolutely a better tool to deliver a solid stereo image than 2-channel.

This may be true...with a perfect setup.

But I think when you combine the extra complexity and cost of a good 5.1 playback system...

...add to that the room variables...

...add to that the format variables...

the mass consumers will bail in most cases...and only the "hi-fi" nuts will go the distance.

 

I think Sony/Phillips and others are looking to target the mass consumers, and not just the audiophile bunch.

They are failing.

 

So...stereo, which is quite common and works quite well...is why it will continue to be the bread & butter choice for that hi-fi experience.

Somight as well mix for that bunchand not the quite small Surround/DVD-A/SACD bunch.

 

Maybe if surround, along with DVD-A and SACD "quality" is offered in a very easy, simple, downloadable format (one of these days)...then, mass consumers might start to take an inters in the "hi-fi"...but right now, it all about "quick & dirty/MP3 stuff...

...and with that in mind...conventional/existing stereo technology is still a such huge step up...that very few bother going to that even higher level, that surround/DVD-A/SACD promises.

Just too much hassle for the mass consumer.

 

Shit...I have a 80's vintage Techincs "hi-fi" system (turntable included)....that puts all that "quick & dirty/MP3 stuff to shame!!!...

...and still gives me a very enjoyable listening experience.

And I'm one of those people that will actually LISTEN...rather than just use the music as a backdrop while I surf the net or do my laundry.

[Angelo Clematide]

Originally posted by Anderton:

The good news: There are some really great points being made here.

 

The bad news: I bet not one record company executive will read them.

One did.

[KenElevenShadows]

For anyone who's interested in attempts at realistic "surround sound", there's an article in the current issue of Electronic Musician. It's something that begins with an "I" and is apparently much more realistic at creating acoustic spaces than 5.1 sound.

[Angelo Clematide]

The DVD-Audio has not failed, it has not started till now.

 

At our company we handle the DVD-Audio/SA-CD as a highclass high fidelity product for the high end consumer (45+ age).

 

http://www.sric-bi.com/DF/DFnews/2002-07-16b.gif

[Philip OKeefe]

I have been impressed with some surround sound recordings I've heard, and I'd really like to get into experimenting with that... but at this time, there is just ZERO demand for it from my clients. IOW, I don't think the consumers, labels, record stores and gear manufacturers are solely to blame - I think that if the people who create the content aren't pushing for it, it's not going to take off as rapidly as if they were doing so.

 

I still think it's a bit of a "chicken and the egg" scenario. If content is available that people want, they'll buy the gear. Without a customer base, the people behid the music are hesitant to push the stuff and spend the money on developing it. And of course, cars come into the equation, and since people spend most of their listening time inside of cars these days, that's got to be addressed in a way that Joe Average can afford. And finally, price vs perceived benefits to the consumers needs to be there... if they don't see the benefits, then most people are not going to "buy in".

 

Excellent comments from eveyone in this thread - well done!

[djwayne]

DVD-A's haven't failed. They're great. It's the stores that failed....have you tried buying a 5.1 package deal at Best Buy ?? They look so chinsy and cheap. If you put together a system with some balls, it rocks.

[Duddits]

Originally posted by Angelo Clematide:

Originally posted by Anderton:

The good news: There are some really great points being made here.

 

The bad news: I bet not one record company executive will read them.

One did.

But is that really the issue? I've met some record execs (e.g. Warner Bros.) who are trying to push these newer formats. It's in their interest since they could generate new money from old music. But even companies like Sony that control both software and hardware haven't been able to successfully steer the public into SACD.

[Duddits]

Originally posted by Ken/Eleven Shadows:

For anyone who's interested in attempts at realistic "surround sound", there's an article in the current issue of Electronic Musician. It's something that begins with an "I" and is apparently much more realistic at creating acoustic spaces than 5.1 sound.

It's an interesting development and a harbinger of things to come. The technology in the article involves panels with mutliple drivers (16 per panel) that are placed around a room, with each driver treated as a seperate sound-producing point. Therefore, two panels wouldn't equal 2 sound sources (left and right) but 2 X 16 sources = 32 points -- each driver acting like a different speaker. According to the article, many drivers bathing the room in sound enables the system to more accurately reconstruct natural sound, grow the "sweet spot" so the whole room is a sweet spot, and generate cool, new, 3-D sound effects.

 

The weak links in the system are 1) computer horsepower -- it currently requires mutliple powerful computers to divvy up the sound to the various drivers, and 2) drivers that are still relatively expensive and bulky.

 

However, the writing's on the wall, literally:

 

In the future, realistic sound will be reproduced by hanging thousands of mini-drivers in rooms (speaker wallpaper), with powerful computers (faster cheaper better) dividing and distributing audio streams into thousands of interrelated packets.

 

Mono (the past) -> Stereo (the present) -> 5.1 surround (a transition period) -> True surround (thousands of mini speakers working together to reproduce realistic soundfields.

[Odyssian]

(edited) posted by hard truth:

I think DVD-A...

I couldn't agree more with your post. The only thing that differs (in which I'm happy to say) is that my girlfriend is more than happy with the extra equipment that comprises my surround system. That is, until she picks up a remote.