Guardian: HD Audio - nobody cares!

[Godstar]

No taste for high-quality audio

A confusing array of CD and DVD audio formats has failed to take off in a market that doesn't care about sound and is increasingly downloading anyway, says Jack Schofield
The Guardian Thursday August 2 2007

Bjork: multiple formats, tough sell.

Today, we live in a world where poor-quality audio is becoming the norm. From portable MP3 players and DAB radio to mobile phones, selling a higher-quality audio format to consumers who don't seem to care was never going to be easy. Such a format - Super Audio CD (SACD) - has been out there since September 1999. And now, it's dying.

You may have an SACD without knowing it, as a "hybrid" CD (a normal audio CD and SACD in one disc). It'll play fine as a CD in a CD player; if you own a universal DVD player, it might play the "super" audio part. Or you could play them on a Sony PlayStation 3 videogames console. That assumes that you've heard of SACD, or its extinct rival DVD-Audio, two audio formats which came along to boost the music and hi-fi industries and instead sank.

Technically, SACD is better than CD, or MP3 or AAC. The disc can store almost 8GB of data compared with 703MB for an ordinary CD. SACD captures more detail while extending the top of the frequency range from CD's 22kHz up to a possible 100kHz - far beyond the range of human hearing - and providing greater dynamic range (from soft to loud).

But it appears to be a format enjoyed by only a small number of audio enthusiasts. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) says only 2m SACDs were sold last year, compared to 1.7bn CDs. (This may understate sales, because IFPI doesn't track hybrids separately, and almost all SACDs are now hybrids. But how would we know if buyers were going to play the SACD layer?)

Downloadable content

Eric Kingdom, Sony's European technical marketing manager and a hi-fi enthusiast, insists that "SACD is doing fine". He says: "The range of SACD titles continues to grow steadily" - 4,651 titles have been released since 1999 - and Sony is still launching new players. "There is always a premium sector of the market that will pay for the best quality," he says.

True - but the money's in the mass market, where 26,000 CDs are released in the UK in a single year, and 4 million tracks are available for (lower-quality) paid-for digital download right now. Yet the aim was always to make SACD a mass-market format, wasn't it? "But the mass market has changed with the arrival of downloadable content," Kingdom says.

Read the full content……

And how. Back in 1999, Napster and broadband were unfamiliar and PC users were just getting the hang of ripping and sharing CDs. The Apple iPod was still three years from launch. With no obvious signs of impending doom, the record and hi-fi industries turned their eyes to the sunlit uplands of a new format.

With SACD, the music industry envisaged people rebuying higher-quality versions of all their favourite albums - the ones they'd already bought on vinyl and CD - and in copy-protected form. But as Carl Gressum, an analyst at Ovum points out: "Just because technology permits us to move forwards with new products does not mean that there is a viable business model to support it."

James McQuivey, an analyst with Forrester Research in Boston, takes a similar line. "The desire of the music industry to have things out in a protected format is obvious. Customer desire to pay for higher audio quality is not obvious," he says. "They think they can take back the music industry from the pirates. I'm afraid that train has already left the station."

So where do we go from here? Well, if the music industry can't establish a new audio disc, it can still piggyback on a video format. Both Blu-ray and HD DVD provide storage far beyond the needs of traditional CDs, and could carry a range of stereo and surround sound mixes.

This isn't a new idea. SACD had to fight a standards war against DVD-Audio, which delivered music on a DVD-compatible disc. DVD-A flopped. Another attempt was illustrated by Björk's Surrounded boxed set, which includes all her studio albums in DualDisc format. These have CD on one side and DVD on the other. The DVD sides provide the same albums remastered in multi-channel Dolby 5.1 and DTS (Digital Theater System) surround sound.

Connected experience

More recently, Warner Music has launched a new DVD-based format called Music Video Interactive. MVI discs will play on any DVD player, but they are also intended for use in PCs and Macs. As well as better-than-CD audio, MVIs can include MP3 files, videos, booklets and applications such as mixers and UrTone, which is Warner's ringtone editor.

MVI also delivers what Warner calls a "connected experience". Every MVI has an online component that lets fans download extra content when it becomes available. So far there are only two MVI titles, with Linkin Park's Minutes To Midnight being first out on May 15. But a Warner Music PR says "fans really appreciated it" and there will be more.

Of course, high-quality audio is also arriving on hi-def movie discs. But again there's a format war between Sony's Blu-ray and Toshiba's HD DVD, which will probably put consumers off buying either until one of them wins. And although some people like the idea of a Blu-ray audio format, that doesn't seem to include Sony. Kingdom says: "There is no plan for a dedicated BD-Audio format."

Still, Blu-ray and HD DVD players support uncompressed audio, Dolby Digital AC-3 and DTS, and they can support two lossless formats: Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD. We could therefore get an upgrade from CD's 16-bit/44.1kHz sound to 24-bit/96kHz. Even people who are not audio buffs could find that attractive.

But do people still want to own silver discs? CD sales are falling. IFPI's chairman John Kennedy says: "By 2010 we expect at least one quarter of all music sales worldwide to be digital." As Forrester's McQuivey notes, the trend indicates a decreasing need for discs "because the album, as a format for delivering music, is gradually giving way to the track". We have become the audio version of a fast food nation, consuming low-quality music on the run never sitting down to savour a higher-quality experience. In retrospect, SACD and DVD-A never had a chance.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology...n.digitalmusic

[ElevatorHappyFun]

Wait, are you saying nobody cares about "HD" audio? It seems the article is in favor of better audio. If you are stating that no one cares, your are sorely mistaken. MANY people for years have been wanting this. Joe Sixpack does not hold influence like he used to.

If i am mistaken on your topic title please correct me. You actually didn't post any comments agreeing or disagreeing with the article.

[Godstar]

Originally Posted by ElevatorHappyFun

Wait, are you saying nobody cares about "HD" audio? It seems the article is in favor of better audio. If you are stating that no one cares, your are sorely mistaken. MANY people for years have been wanting this. Joe Sixpack does not hold influence like he used to.

If i am mistaken on your topic title please correct me. You actually didn't post any comments agreeing or disagreeing with the article.

Did I say that I'm saying this? No. I just posted the article from Jack Schofield stating such. I don't actually agree or disagree. It was more an interesting read than anything else for people who might be interested.

A confusing array of CD and DVD audio formats has failed to take off in a market that doesn't care about sound and is increasingly downloading anyway, says Jack Schofield

[monsieurgadget]

Sure, downloading is popular among the younger generation. But the 30 or 40 plus age group might prefer to listen to albums rather than crappy MP3 downloads and may thus appreciate higher quality audio.

With more buying power, this is a force to be reckoned with.

[CaptainCanuck]

It's true that most people aren't embracing the new high quality music formats .I have 800 or so cd's and really don't feel like replacing them with another format.
I see the sacd's in stores but cd is enough for me.
It's very niche.
Overall though i think that average quality of music played,whether it be with cd players or mp3 players is far ahead of what it was 30 years ago .
Back then it was just crappy multi disc 33 rpm/45 rpm record players and tape machines.
As for him stating that people have become 'track oriented' as opposed to album oriented well that's likely because many so-called artists today make albums with 1 or 2 decent songs that they payola the radio stations to flog mercilessly and the rest of the cds are filler.
Who can blame people for only wanting to pay for the 'hits' if they can pay a buck each for them and the rest of the album is crap.

[flinx1241]

As an avid SACD supporter (and DVD-A to a lesser extent), this just makes me sad.
I might be persuaded to be a full-fledged Sony fanboy instead of a casual owner if they would just rethink their shitty decision to stop supporting the best Audio format ever released (IMO, of course). C'mon Sony. Put out some more SACDs!