I'm in the midst of a serious bout of upgraditis, the subject of which currently is merging a stereo and home cinema setup. What's driven this? Surround sound audio, which IMO if done properly sounds phenomenal, or at least shows serious potential.
Anyway, back to the point. surround sound formats are getting somewhat stupid it seems. We have at least four types to somehow try and accomodate. These are to my knowledge DVD Audio, SACD and then two flavours of DVD Video, Dolby Digital and DTS. (DTS then has two subtypes, normal 5.1 DTS and DTS 24/96, compressed but otherwise the same rate as multichannel DVD-A.)
I don't particularly care about the subtle technical differences between DVD-A and SACD which may or may not give one the edge over the other. What I do care about is being able to hear source material at potentially much higher quality than CD, which both have more than enough potential to achieve.
I understand why Arcam have decided not to implement SACD on their DVD players. My own thinking behind judging that decision is based on looking at what's happened on PC's. PC's have had DVD drives for some time, and none initially came out of the box with DVD Audio support. However, clearly the ability to read a DVD audio discs doesn't require additional hardware. My PC was suddenly enabled for DVD audio by a DVD player software upgrade. So, I can see why DVD-A might be a lot easier to add into existing DVD player design as the hardware and data path to get the info off the disc doesn't seem to need to change.
Sticking with the PC analogy, let's switch to SACD. I may be wrong but I don't think there's a single PC drive that can read SACD's... Certainly NONE of the existing DVD players/recorders in PC's can suddenly see SACD's with a simple upgrade in any kind of media player software. If it were possible I can't imagine for one second that someone would not have done it. So, to read a SACD you need a new drive transport and no doubt new associated transport chipset to output the new DSD datastream to whatever is chosen to decode it into something more recognisable... not exactly a modular thing as if you change the transport chipset, this will almost certainly have downstream consequences.
So we're seemingly stuck. Enter Dolby and DTS. In an effort to enable people without dedicated DVD-A players to enjoy the surround mix and broaden the scope for people wanting it, we get hybrid discs with either a DD or DTS 5.1 track that just about any DVD video player can understand. DTS take it a little further by inventing the DTS 24/96 format to inch quality that little bit further towards DVD-A.
It gets worse, we now have hybrid SACD's (CD layer one side, SACD the other) and what seems to a be the rather awful DualDisc (which Linn say may even damage your CD transport due to the increased thickness of the disc) containg CD one side and DVD the other... And unbelievably on the horizon are yet more combinations with Blu-ray and DVD-HD where both Dolby and DTS are planning HD formats with increased sound fidelity...
Aaaaaargghhhh!!!!!!!!! Has the industry (Both recording and hardware) taken leave of it's senses?? What we, the customer (Hello!! Remember us??) want is a format that gives us higher quality 2 channel, and surround sound capability that can be played with the convenience of a CD... We don't necessarily want that with video, but sometimes for concerts for example it can be nice!!
Now I know ARCAM are a small company without infinite R&D resources, but it seems to me that they do have the potential to actually start a trend here. Most people seem to assume that the SACD support should go into the DVD player along the lines of Denon/Pioneer et al. I think that's wrong, as described above with PC's, it's not straight forward as a retrofit and a a complete re-design is expensive.
However, on the CD player front it might make more sense. Arcam already use Sony and Philips transports (so I believe), and given that these two are the main proponents of SACD, I'd be stunned if there were not transport mechanisms available from them that did just CD and SACD extraction, no DVD. Arcam then presumably have a choice, include in the CD player the SACD decoding and then a 5.1 pre-out, or perhaps more cheaply, only include a digital-out for the DSD stream. I personally would prefer the latter, why? Well none of the current Arcam AV processors have more than one set of analogue 5.1 inputs, so connecting both a DVD audio player and a SACD player isn't possible, which in itself is quite frustrating!! Now Arcam could do what some of the Japanese players have done and hijack digital interfaces such as firewire or create their own Denon link, but why bother? The newer HDMI standard will cater for SACD DSD streams so for SACD support simply add a DSD capable HDMI out on the CD player and a normal Arcam analogue stereo out for CD reproduction... Then on the higher end AV processors and I'm thinking AVP700, AV8/9, produce an upgrade board that takes an HDMI DSD stream and decodes it to a 5.1 analogue signal internally and finds its way to the pre-outs...
To me, that way SACD is sorted period, without needing to worry about what on earth the new high definition video discs get up to. It also means people can continue to enjoy their existing high quality Arcam DVD players while we wait to see who wins the format war... Perhaps for the top end FMJ line, Arcam could even provide built in SACD 5.1 decoding with 5.1 analogue outs on the CD player...
In the meantime everyone is losing business. There's no way I'm buying a new DVD video player until they sort out HD. I'd love an Arcam DVD player that does DVD Audio, but if I do that I can't have SACD as I only have one set of Analogue 5.1 inputs, so once I've sorted out the amplification end (for which the AVP700 is looking highly likely after demoing at home this weekend) then I'm knackered. On top of hardware, because I'm not totally happy with how to get the best multi-channel source, I'm less likely to buy as many DVD-A's or SACDs. I'm thoroughly frustrated with this whole mess. It's almost enough to make you wish that the only thing you needed was an iPod and that the quality it gave was enough. Anyne would think that people don't want our hard earned money. You couldn't make things more difficult if you tried!!!
Rant over......... if you fell asleep you can wake up now!!
Ian.
Anyway, back to the point. surround sound formats are getting somewhat stupid it seems. We have at least four types to somehow try and accomodate. These are to my knowledge DVD Audio, SACD and then two flavours of DVD Video, Dolby Digital and DTS. (DTS then has two subtypes, normal 5.1 DTS and DTS 24/96, compressed but otherwise the same rate as multichannel DVD-A.)
I don't particularly care about the subtle technical differences between DVD-A and SACD which may or may not give one the edge over the other. What I do care about is being able to hear source material at potentially much higher quality than CD, which both have more than enough potential to achieve.
I understand why Arcam have decided not to implement SACD on their DVD players. My own thinking behind judging that decision is based on looking at what's happened on PC's. PC's have had DVD drives for some time, and none initially came out of the box with DVD Audio support. However, clearly the ability to read a DVD audio discs doesn't require additional hardware. My PC was suddenly enabled for DVD audio by a DVD player software upgrade. So, I can see why DVD-A might be a lot easier to add into existing DVD player design as the hardware and data path to get the info off the disc doesn't seem to need to change.
Sticking with the PC analogy, let's switch to SACD. I may be wrong but I don't think there's a single PC drive that can read SACD's... Certainly NONE of the existing DVD players/recorders in PC's can suddenly see SACD's with a simple upgrade in any kind of media player software. If it were possible I can't imagine for one second that someone would not have done it. So, to read a SACD you need a new drive transport and no doubt new associated transport chipset to output the new DSD datastream to whatever is chosen to decode it into something more recognisable... not exactly a modular thing as if you change the transport chipset, this will almost certainly have downstream consequences.
So we're seemingly stuck. Enter Dolby and DTS. In an effort to enable people without dedicated DVD-A players to enjoy the surround mix and broaden the scope for people wanting it, we get hybrid discs with either a DD or DTS 5.1 track that just about any DVD video player can understand. DTS take it a little further by inventing the DTS 24/96 format to inch quality that little bit further towards DVD-A.
It gets worse, we now have hybrid SACD's (CD layer one side, SACD the other) and what seems to a be the rather awful DualDisc (which Linn say may even damage your CD transport due to the increased thickness of the disc) containg CD one side and DVD the other... And unbelievably on the horizon are yet more combinations with Blu-ray and DVD-HD where both Dolby and DTS are planning HD formats with increased sound fidelity...
Aaaaaargghhhh!!!!!!!!! Has the industry (Both recording and hardware) taken leave of it's senses?? What we, the customer (Hello!! Remember us??) want is a format that gives us higher quality 2 channel, and surround sound capability that can be played with the convenience of a CD... We don't necessarily want that with video, but sometimes for concerts for example it can be nice!!
Now I know ARCAM are a small company without infinite R&D resources, but it seems to me that they do have the potential to actually start a trend here. Most people seem to assume that the SACD support should go into the DVD player along the lines of Denon/Pioneer et al. I think that's wrong, as described above with PC's, it's not straight forward as a retrofit and a a complete re-design is expensive.
However, on the CD player front it might make more sense. Arcam already use Sony and Philips transports (so I believe), and given that these two are the main proponents of SACD, I'd be stunned if there were not transport mechanisms available from them that did just CD and SACD extraction, no DVD. Arcam then presumably have a choice, include in the CD player the SACD decoding and then a 5.1 pre-out, or perhaps more cheaply, only include a digital-out for the DSD stream. I personally would prefer the latter, why? Well none of the current Arcam AV processors have more than one set of analogue 5.1 inputs, so connecting both a DVD audio player and a SACD player isn't possible, which in itself is quite frustrating!! Now Arcam could do what some of the Japanese players have done and hijack digital interfaces such as firewire or create their own Denon link, but why bother? The newer HDMI standard will cater for SACD DSD streams so for SACD support simply add a DSD capable HDMI out on the CD player and a normal Arcam analogue stereo out for CD reproduction... Then on the higher end AV processors and I'm thinking AVP700, AV8/9, produce an upgrade board that takes an HDMI DSD stream and decodes it to a 5.1 analogue signal internally and finds its way to the pre-outs...
To me, that way SACD is sorted period, without needing to worry about what on earth the new high definition video discs get up to. It also means people can continue to enjoy their existing high quality Arcam DVD players while we wait to see who wins the format war... Perhaps for the top end FMJ line, Arcam could even provide built in SACD 5.1 decoding with 5.1 analogue outs on the CD player...
In the meantime everyone is losing business. There's no way I'm buying a new DVD video player until they sort out HD. I'd love an Arcam DVD player that does DVD Audio, but if I do that I can't have SACD as I only have one set of Analogue 5.1 inputs, so once I've sorted out the amplification end (for which the AVP700 is looking highly likely after demoing at home this weekend) then I'm knackered. On top of hardware, because I'm not totally happy with how to get the best multi-channel source, I'm less likely to buy as many DVD-A's or SACDs. I'm thoroughly frustrated with this whole mess. It's almost enough to make you wish that the only thing you needed was an iPod and that the quality it gave was enough. Anyne would think that people don't want our hard earned money. You couldn't make things more difficult if you tried!!!
Rant over......... if you fell asleep you can wake up now!!
Ian.