Popester
20-03-2001, 3:27 PM
DVDA/SACD/ Music Surround
This week I’m going to a series of lectures and demonstrations at Abbey Road Studios with topic titles such as ‘Does the consumer want surround sound’, ‘Using Surround Sound’, ‘Recording for Surround’, ‘making the most of old stereo assets’, ‘CD/DVDA/SACD’ etc etc.
It’s important to note here that these are aimed at MUSIC people and about music not surround in film, and it’s got me thinking. My conclusion is that DVD-Audio / SACD & surround in music is destined to fail or at best become either a pure (expensive) audiophile hobby or an additional ‘extra take it or leave it feature’ on top end players like the various surround effects you can currently get on amps. Here’s why:-
Firstly let’s look at Surround in Music generally:
Do we actually want this? What are we actually looking for from this? Do you want to here a band mixed in 5.1 with a bass guitar coming out of one rear, guitar front left, and vocalist centre speaker. How would this sound? Surely the idea of stereo was to try and actually present a sound stage via panning and delay of you sitting in front of a band. If that is the case then are we not only asking that surround sound should be used less as an instrument mixing tool but just a method of adding extra ambience? This would in particular suit live recordings and music such as jazz or classical, possibly rock, but definitely not pop or dance. In dance music’s case it would not work in clubs due to the nature of speaker systems and of course the non-central positioning of the listeners. Likewise in general pop use discrete formats would be useless as they could not be played via radio without some sort of ability to be matrixed down to stereo which brings us back to what we have now.
In order to appreciate say discrete 5.1 music would we not need a completely new type of music or is it therefore purely a nice addition to live recordings and certain genres? Roll on those old ambience settings on the amps......
Do we need SACD or DVD Audio?
For any format to be successful I would suggest that we need a large proportion of the general consumers to pick up on it, as with CD, VHS, and now DVD. I don’t believe this will happen with the above formats. Each of the above when it came out added something totally new that we had never had before: CD brought the ‘perfect sound quality’, VHS the ability to finally record TV and watch films at home, and DVD ‘perfect picture quality’ and home cinema. What do SACD and DVD Audio bring?
Better quality sound? For the last 20 years the consumer was told that CD was as near perfect as it was going to get are we now telling him/her it isn’t and that they now have to throw away all there old CDs and players? People are still happy with the quality of vinyl, cassettes, MP3, and MD. Many people listen to music on the radio, in the car, on a boombox, or with a £150 Alba all-in-one hi-fi with the speakers on top of each other in the corner of the room. Does this person really care? I certainly doubt they will add an extra box to their set up at £500+. So who is this aimed at? I would suggest that it will solely remain for the few genuine audiophiles left with expensive set ups in specialist listening rooms for their favourite recordings of Celine Dion, The Eagles, and Beethoven’s Fifth. I believe that record companies will be resigned to releasing DVDAudio discs solely as premium priced products on a limited line aimed at such people.
Why is it being foisted upon us? One might suggest several reasons. Firstly manufacturers want to sell more equipment and what better than to come up with a new format (witness DVD). Secondly, Record companies have seen how seen film studio’s catalogues revitalised through DVD and want to sell the catalogues to us all over again - though didn’t they do that to us with CD? Finally, many music mastering and recording studios invested heavily in expensive surround processing equipment some years back and need to find a way to recoup investment. Once again I emphasise the word ‘music’. I have heard ‘security’ as a passing issue with the extra bandwidth allowing the possibility of non-interferring encoding or watermarking but that alone is not a good enough reason.
For me MP3 and, ironically, home cinema are the killers of surround in music and new formats. MP3 is important because it allows new players the size of a CD Walkman to store 100Hours+ of music - an entire CD collection for some - that can be used in the car, in the home, or personally. CDs will be ripped and stuck in the loft, music stored on hard drive and downloaded on to MD, MP3 players, piped around the house, or onto your car stereos ‘memory stick’ and off you go. No? It’s happening already. In a few years time (not yet) the main means of purchasing music, like software is also becoming, will be via broadband in one form or another. CD will still be around as a storage or transport medium as new CD/DVD players will also decode MP3 CD disks. The consumer will be happy with this, will he trash it all for a new box? Can the average consumer really tell the audio difference, does he care?
Finally Home Cinema as a killer. Confused? Well think about it. Sure many people have DVD boxes now but what do they do with them? Do they connect them up to a super duper AVCA1X with £5k speaker systems and play CDs as well as films through their system? Or does their home entertainment environment consist of a hi-fi in one corner for music and the DVD player sitting on top or next to the VCR plugged directly into the TV? I would plump for the later. In fact there has been a trend in TV manufacturers to include surround of one form or another in their TV sets so most people will not have a separate audio system for films. Surely though they can put a CD into their DVD player and listen to music through the TV though right? Yeah, on your planet maybe!
In conclusion.....let’s discuss.
This week I’m going to a series of lectures and demonstrations at Abbey Road Studios with topic titles such as ‘Does the consumer want surround sound’, ‘Using Surround Sound’, ‘Recording for Surround’, ‘making the most of old stereo assets’, ‘CD/DVDA/SACD’ etc etc.
It’s important to note here that these are aimed at MUSIC people and about music not surround in film, and it’s got me thinking. My conclusion is that DVD-Audio / SACD & surround in music is destined to fail or at best become either a pure (expensive) audiophile hobby or an additional ‘extra take it or leave it feature’ on top end players like the various surround effects you can currently get on amps. Here’s why:-
Firstly let’s look at Surround in Music generally:
Do we actually want this? What are we actually looking for from this? Do you want to here a band mixed in 5.1 with a bass guitar coming out of one rear, guitar front left, and vocalist centre speaker. How would this sound? Surely the idea of stereo was to try and actually present a sound stage via panning and delay of you sitting in front of a band. If that is the case then are we not only asking that surround sound should be used less as an instrument mixing tool but just a method of adding extra ambience? This would in particular suit live recordings and music such as jazz or classical, possibly rock, but definitely not pop or dance. In dance music’s case it would not work in clubs due to the nature of speaker systems and of course the non-central positioning of the listeners. Likewise in general pop use discrete formats would be useless as they could not be played via radio without some sort of ability to be matrixed down to stereo which brings us back to what we have now.
In order to appreciate say discrete 5.1 music would we not need a completely new type of music or is it therefore purely a nice addition to live recordings and certain genres? Roll on those old ambience settings on the amps......
Do we need SACD or DVD Audio?
For any format to be successful I would suggest that we need a large proportion of the general consumers to pick up on it, as with CD, VHS, and now DVD. I don’t believe this will happen with the above formats. Each of the above when it came out added something totally new that we had never had before: CD brought the ‘perfect sound quality’, VHS the ability to finally record TV and watch films at home, and DVD ‘perfect picture quality’ and home cinema. What do SACD and DVD Audio bring?
Better quality sound? For the last 20 years the consumer was told that CD was as near perfect as it was going to get are we now telling him/her it isn’t and that they now have to throw away all there old CDs and players? People are still happy with the quality of vinyl, cassettes, MP3, and MD. Many people listen to music on the radio, in the car, on a boombox, or with a £150 Alba all-in-one hi-fi with the speakers on top of each other in the corner of the room. Does this person really care? I certainly doubt they will add an extra box to their set up at £500+. So who is this aimed at? I would suggest that it will solely remain for the few genuine audiophiles left with expensive set ups in specialist listening rooms for their favourite recordings of Celine Dion, The Eagles, and Beethoven’s Fifth. I believe that record companies will be resigned to releasing DVDAudio discs solely as premium priced products on a limited line aimed at such people.
Why is it being foisted upon us? One might suggest several reasons. Firstly manufacturers want to sell more equipment and what better than to come up with a new format (witness DVD). Secondly, Record companies have seen how seen film studio’s catalogues revitalised through DVD and want to sell the catalogues to us all over again - though didn’t they do that to us with CD? Finally, many music mastering and recording studios invested heavily in expensive surround processing equipment some years back and need to find a way to recoup investment. Once again I emphasise the word ‘music’. I have heard ‘security’ as a passing issue with the extra bandwidth allowing the possibility of non-interferring encoding or watermarking but that alone is not a good enough reason.
For me MP3 and, ironically, home cinema are the killers of surround in music and new formats. MP3 is important because it allows new players the size of a CD Walkman to store 100Hours+ of music - an entire CD collection for some - that can be used in the car, in the home, or personally. CDs will be ripped and stuck in the loft, music stored on hard drive and downloaded on to MD, MP3 players, piped around the house, or onto your car stereos ‘memory stick’ and off you go. No? It’s happening already. In a few years time (not yet) the main means of purchasing music, like software is also becoming, will be via broadband in one form or another. CD will still be around as a storage or transport medium as new CD/DVD players will also decode MP3 CD disks. The consumer will be happy with this, will he trash it all for a new box? Can the average consumer really tell the audio difference, does he care?
Finally Home Cinema as a killer. Confused? Well think about it. Sure many people have DVD boxes now but what do they do with them? Do they connect them up to a super duper AVCA1X with £5k speaker systems and play CDs as well as films through their system? Or does their home entertainment environment consist of a hi-fi in one corner for music and the DVD player sitting on top or next to the VCR plugged directly into the TV? I would plump for the later. In fact there has been a trend in TV manufacturers to include surround of one form or another in their TV sets so most people will not have a separate audio system for films. Surely though they can put a CD into their DVD player and listen to music through the TV though right? Yeah, on your planet maybe!
In conclusion.....let’s discuss.