The beginning of the end of CD?

[luvtolisten]

I was in Walmart today, I went back to the electronics section to check out the CD's. I noticed there were less CD's but next to them on a wall, there were CD's on SD cards (same price as CD's). With them was an SD card player, with ear buds for $20. I was wondering if anyone has heard any of these SD cards, and what their sound quality was like? I have noticed more and more stores carrying less CD's these days. Think this could be the replacement? If not then what?

[02audionoob]

Back when I got my Creative Nomad II music player with a 64MB SD card, I figured that little memory card was destined to replace CDs. I've been amazed the CD has had as much staying power as it has.

[kexodusc]

Given the sheer number of CD sales, I don't think we're in for any radical changes anytime soon, but eventually it will start to slide significantly, giving way to new formats.

I don't get the appeal of the SD cards...seems like you should be able to get the music cheaper without the hardware by downloading from iTunes or somewhere. Unless they're targeting impulse buyers or something? I've seen them, I've never seen anyone buy or use them though.

[Kevio]

Given the sheer number of CD sales, I don't think we're in for any radical changes anytime soon, but eventually it will start to slide significantly, giving way to new formats.Kex, you should bookmark this comment and and come back and have a look at it in 1 year. I guarantee it will look strange. For those who missed any of the latest CD sales figures, we are in the midst of a radical change.

[pixelthis]

I was in Walmart today, I went back to the electronics section to check out the CD's. I noticed there were less CD's but next to them on a wall, there were CD's on SD cards (same price as CD's). With them was an SD card player, with ear buds for $20. I was wondering if anyone has heard any of these SD cards, and what their sound quality was like? I have noticed more and more stores carrying less CD's these days. Think this could be the replacement? If not then what?

The begining of the end for CD was Itunes.
These SD cards are a reusable medium, and you can just plug them into a MP3 player with a SD slot.
And depending on if they are lossless files the ssound should be great.
I have repeatedly said that CD is dead, they don't even have the romantic appeal
of records.
A CD is at most 750 MB, CD is rapidly becoming the 3:5 floppy of the 21st century.:1:

[3db]

The begining of the end for CD was Itunes.
These SD cards are a reusable medium, and you can just plug them into a MP3 player with a SD slot.
And depending on if they are lossless files the ssound should be great.
I have repeatedly said that CD is dead, they don't even have the romantic appeal
of records.
A CD is at most 750 MB, CD is rapidly becoming the 3:5 floppy of the 21st century.:1:

To be replaced by SD cards containing low res music, no cover art what so ever is less appealing and more of a shock then when CD displaced LPs.

[02audionoob]

To be replaced by SD cards containing low res music, no cover art what so ever is less appealing and more of a shock then when CD displaced LPs.

Back when I thought the cards would overtake CDs, I figured we were just waiting for the memory technology to get to where the card could contain lossless music. Now the capacity of these cards has increased by a multiple of 1000 and they come with low res files? Odd.

[luvtolisten]

To be replaced by SD cards containing low res music, no cover art what so ever is less appealing and more of a shock then when CD displaced LPs.

These SD cards do have the cover art. Of course you would need a magnifying glass to read the song titles.:) I wonder what format they used (lostless etc.). I would think they would since the price is the same as CD's. It would cost less I would think to make one of these vs.CD's just for the packaging alone. But then again, CD's were suppose to cost less than LP's, after a year or so, but the cost of the CD never really went down, the LP's went up as they became a specialty item..

[Mr Peabody]

Depending on which articles you read CD may or may not be having sales problems but i can't see CD being replaced by this SD card. As Kex mentioned you can download the album, and cheaper and just load it on your mp3 player so why would any one want this SD card? Potentially, if the storage was there, why couldn't they put liner notes, art and even extra info on the SD card, now that may be some incentive if the SD card offered something you couldn't get any where else. Even with that it wouldn't interest me personally. I was wondering for a moment who would want to add an SD player to their system but I guess if you had a docking system for your mp3 player you would be set. Although I've used the earphone jack to connect my player to a couple different things and I didn't like the results. Maybe an impedance issue or the sound being designed for headphones opposed to a home system. The car the interface isn't as bad but the compression is noticeable. Using lossless would cure that though. This is one issue I'm not going to be an early adopter, it will be CD and vinyl for me until something comes out that really gives me a reason to switch. It would be weird if CD disappeared and I had to go back to buying new releases on vinyl.

[Feanor]

Back when I thought the cards would overtake CDs, I figured we were just waiting for the memory technology to get to where the card could contain lossless music. Now the capacity of these cards has increased by a multiple of 1000 and they come with low res files? Odd.
Not so odd, maybe. It's so idiots can mindlessly copy them to their computers, then copy them back to mobiles, (not necessarily their own).

Of course I'm assuming the files aren't DRM'd which they might be -- I don't know.

[3db]

Back when I thought the cards would overtake CDs, I figured we were just waiting for the memory technology to get to where the card could contain lossless music. Now the capacity of these cards has increased by a multiple of 1000 and they come with low res files? Odd.

The capacity of a SD card plays no relevance of what the music distributors are filling them with. Even if teh capacity is well over the Gig, it doesn't mean that the distributiors are suppling the music in a lossless format. Thats what I'm driving at.

[E-Stat]

The capacity of a SD card plays no relevance of what the music distributors are filling them with.
Agreed and I seriously doubt that they are using 1 GB cards required to provide a Redbook copy.

rw

[Kevio]

Anyone actually know exactly what they're putting on these pre-programmed SD cards?

[nightflier]

Not so odd, maybe. It's so idiots can mindlessly copy them to their computers, then copy them back to mobiles, (not necessarily their own).

Of course I'm assuming the files aren't DRM'd which they might be -- I don't know.

DRM & low-quality compressed? That would be another deal-breaker for a lot of people.

I don't shop at Walfart. Are they available anywhere else? Target maybe? I might just buy one just to check it out.

[Woochifer]

The death of the CD has been pronounced many times, yet they still continue to constitute the vast majority of sales and outsell downloads by a sizable margin. The issue for the music industry has more to do with the simple lack of buzz in the industry. It has been nearly two decades since we've had any transformational transitions with the music itself, and the audience could only take so many derivative acts and repackaged baby boomer albums before sales started to decline. It's new releases that drive the industry, and at the moment, there's not much on the market that's generating excitement or potentially spearheading new musical directions.

From what I've seen of these SD card readers, they are designed to be disposable. This is not a serious effort to dethrone the CD format, but just another way of repackaging low end electronics. Unless these SD cards are sold by themselves without the card reader, it's nothing more than a gimmick to move a bunch of cheap media players that would not have sold much by themselves. I mean, what albums are getting packaged as SD card/reader bundles?

New formats come and go all the time. Just in years since the CD's introduction, you've had the MiniDisc, DCC, DAT, SACD, and DVD-A. All of these formats had varying degrees of support from the record companies, and none of them gained any sizable foothold against the CD format. Every format has its heyday, but the CD has had remarkable staying power.

[agentsteel]

I hope CDs will always be around and artists still release all their stuff on CD, Vinyl is cool but has its hassles...and digital downloads I just can't stand, good for sampling stuff before you buy but thats it. In other words I hope there will always be some kind of a hard copy of music releases with cover art/lyrics etc.

[luvtolisten]

Unless these SD cards are sold by themselves without the card reader, it's nothing more than a gimmick to move a bunch of cheap media players that would not have sold much by themselves. I mean, what albums are getting packaged as SD card/reader bundles?


These SD cards were packaged separately. Right next to the CD's. The ones I saw were the top ten Country, and POP/Rock. Same cover art etc. as a CD, only package in those hard to open clear hard plastic covers which I hate. I doubt it's a threat. But I wouldn't surprised if soon you'll see AVR's coming out with card readers as PC's do. I like CD's, but my gut feeling is they will be hard to find in 3 years. My guess is there soon will be a format of downloading, that everyone will agree is better than CD as far as sound. Then they'll be an "all in one" AVR. You'll be able to order music, either by Internet, cable or satellite, and be able to download it and store it. Order music as you would a movie. Right from your couch. And have the option of ordering a video to go with it for the HT fans. I do think software and music servers with massive memory will be the future. CD's will go the same route as vinyl and SACD's have. The SD card will be a simple way of transporting that music, whether it be to your car, work, or personal device.

[Kevio]

...The SD card will be a simple way of transporting that music, whether it be to your car, work, or personal device.All good up until this last point. Wireless networking and cloud computing/storage will make memory cards unnecessary.

[luvtolisten]

All good up until this last point. Wireless networking and cloud computing/storage will make memory cards unnecessary.

I'm old school, I rather have a format I can play in my car. Anything wireless has fees, which I have a feeling would cost far more downloading to a card.

[Kevio]

How about you park car within range of your WiFi and your car stereo syncs to your home media server. Or would you like to play music or load files from your BlueTooth phone. No charges apply.

[Woochifer]

These SD cards were packaged separately. Right next to the CD's. The ones I saw were the top ten Country, and POP/Rock. Same cover art etc. as a CD, only package in those hard to open clear hard plastic covers which I hate. I doubt it's a threat. But I wouldn't surprised if soon you'll see AVR's coming out with card readers as PC's do. I like CD's, but my gut feeling is they will be hard to find in 3 years. My guess is there soon will be a format of downloading, that everyone will agree is better than CD as far as sound. Then they'll be an "all in one" AVR. You'll be able to order music, either by Internet, cable or satellite, and be able to download it and store it. Order music as you would a movie. Right from your couch. And have the option of ordering a video to go with it for the HT fans. I do think software and music servers with massive memory will be the future. CD's will go the same route as vinyl and SACD's have. The SD card will be a simple way of transporting that music, whether it be to your car, work, or personal device.

The 800 pound gorilla in the audio industry is the iPod, and these SD cards don't fit into that ecosystem. The CD has a spot at the table simply because every computer, every new car, and any one of hundreds of millions of existing devices support the format. The hardware support for SD cards on audio devices is very limited right now.

Where the industry has moved is docking everything to the iPod. iPod sales are currently more than triple the ENTIRE home audio component industry. Most new car audio systems now include an input jack (and those are in response to iPods, not SD card readers). Many receivers now include connections for iPod docks, as do any number of other devices.

I doubt that CDs will be "hard to find" in 3 years. They might no longer constitute the majority of music sales by that time, but I don't see them disappearing from the landscape that quickly. Formats as ubiquitous as the CD don't just disappear overnight, and the erosion of the CD's market is not caused by any new physical formats. Many formats have challenged the CD to no avail, and even with downloading steadily growing in sales, its market share is still way behind the CD's. I don't see anything but a niche market for SD cards. Outside of digital cameras, computers, and HDTVs, device support for SD cards is otherwise minimal.

[luvtolisten]

I don't think blank recordable CD's will go away. I do think prerecorded ones will. It's rare you find a CD that you like ALL the songs. Most people up up making compilation CD's anyway.
So if there was a SD card, with the same sound quality, maybe you or I wouldn't go for it, but I think the younger folks would, and they are the ones who drive the market.

[Woochifer]

I don't think blank recordable CD's will go away. I do think prerecorded ones will. It's rare you find a CD that you like ALL the songs. Most people up up making compilation CD's anyway.

But, you run into the same issue with SD cards, given that they are sold as complete albums.


So if there was a SD card, with the same sound quality, maybe you or I wouldn't go for it, but I think the younger folks would, and they are the ones who drive the market.

Younger folks have begun bypassing physical formats altogether. The SD card is a physical format, and one that does not have any significant marketing push behind it on the hardware side. If you look at all the major format transitions that have already occurred, it took many years before support for the dominant format began to disappear, and the clock doesn't even start ticking until the ascendant format reaches majority status. And a physical format cannot even reach majority status until the hardware adoption reaches majority status first.

Right now, the ascendant format is downloading (in its multiple and often competing/conflicting incarnations, which IMO impedes its adoption as a revenue generating model) and it still has a ways to go before it reaches majority status. But, downloaded media has hardware adoption already in place because of the millions of iPods, iPod-connected devices, and other portable media players already sold. SD cards do not have anywhere near that kind of hardware support on the audio side.

Retail and record company availability for the CDs won't even begin to drop until it loses its majority status.

[luvtolisten]

But, you run into the same issue with SD cards, given that they are sold as complete albums.



Younger folks have begun bypassing physical formats altogether. The SD card is a physical format, and one that does not have any significant marketing push behind it on the hardware side. If you look at all the major format transitions that have already occurred, it took many years before support for the dominant format began to disappear, and the clock doesn't even start ticking until the ascendant format reaches majority status. And a physical format cannot even reach majority status until the hardware adoption reaches majority status first.

Right now, the ascendant format is downloading (in its multiple and often competing/conflicting incarnations, which IMO impedes its adoption as a revenue generating model) and it still has a ways to go before it reaches majority status. But, downloaded media has hardware adoption already in place because of the millions of iPods, iPod-connected devices, and other portable media players already sold. SD cards do not have anywhere near that kind of hardware support on the audio side.

Retail and record company availability for the CDs won't even begin to drop until it loses its majority status.


Good point! Now that you mention it, I hardly see younger folks in the CD section as I once did before the iPod. And the younger folks I do know, all have an iPod or some variation of it .And that younger age range,are the ones spending the most on music and determine which format they want and the market will supply it. If the masses will buy it, the market will sell it. I do hope CD's don't go away, as I said they would 3 years. But the Kmarts, no longer have a CD section, Barnes & Nobles reduced their CD sections as has Walmart and BestBuy (in my area anyway). I may have been a bit hasty by saying in 3 years, but the stores in my area, all have reduced there inventory by at least 30% the last year or so. Have you seen a reduction in your area as well? There just isn't the variety,or number of CD's there once was in stores. This is one case I hope I am wrong. I hope CD's do stay around. Not just for the sound, but also the cover art, as wellas the lists of the supporting artist list, background vocals, songwriters.Some even with the song lyrics as well.

[Woochifer]

Good point! Now that you mention it, I hardly see younger folks in the CD section as I once did before the iPod. And the younger folks I do know, all have an iPod or some variation of it .And that younger age range,are the ones spending the most on music and determine which format they want and the market will supply it. If the masses will buy it, the market will sell it. I do hope CD's don't go away, as I said they would 3 years. But the Kmarts, no longer have a CD section, Barnes & Nobles reduced their CD sections as has Walmart and BestBuy (in my area anyway). I may have been a bit hasty by saying in 3 years, but the stores in my area, all have reduced there inventory by at least 30% the last year or so. Have you seen a reduction in your area as well? There just isn't the variety,or number of CD's there once was in stores. This is one case I hope I am wrong. I hope CD's do stay around. Not just for the sound, but also the cover art, as wellas the lists of the supporting artist list, background vocals, songwriters.Some even with the song lyrics as well.

Yep, the CD sections are indeed shrinking. But, support for the CD format doesn't become an issue until you see stores no longer carrying new releases or record companies no longer issuing CD versions for new releases. CDs were most lucrative when people were still upgrading their music libraries, and buying CDs to replace their LP and cassette collections. Sales peaked in the mid-90s when the CD format finally passed the cassette.

Because CDs can be ripped, there's no similar move to repurchase downloads to replace someone's CD collection.

Retailers will go with whatever product gives them the most revenue for the amount of shelf space they allocate. CDs right now rely primarily on new releases, because everybody who wanted to replace an older title with a CD version has already done so.

The same thing is now happening on the DVD side. I've been noticing a trend in which the DVD sections are also beginning to get pared back. This is no surprise given that DVD sales peaked almost two years ago, and older titles are now getting downgraded to the discount bins as the market is primarily driven solely by new releases. Difference is that the home video market is getting some new life with the Blu-ray format. You won't see a mad rush to upgrade and populate video collections like you saw when the DVD format first came out, but the growth has been enough to at least make up for some of the sales losses with DVDs.

[Kevio]

You won't see a mad rush to upgrade and populate video collections [with Blu-ray] like you saw when the DVD format first came outWhy not. The difference in quality is quite noticeable. Why won't people replace DVDs with Blu-ray like they replaced vinyl with CDs? Is it because Blu-ray players can play DVDs?

[Mr Peabody]

From VHS to DVD was a big step up in quality and convenience, no rewind, random access, 5.1, bonus features (for those who wanted that) etc. VHS was recordable though and i really don't think recording DVD caught on like recording on VHS did but that must not have mattered to the majority. I'm surprised at how many people I talk to really don't know, or don't take advantage of DVR or TiVo. It could be a price factor.

Blu-ray basically only offers better picture and sound. You first have to have an HDTV to notice the picture and second a HT system that will allow you to take advantage of HD audio formats to get the largest gain in sound. Actually, Blu-ray discs are less user friendly than DVD, most players will not remember where in the movie you left off when left on pause too long or turned off, the menus for some reason you have more steps to set up and get back to main menu, as far as I know there's none that will start on their own like Disney's "Fast Play" and although there are a few that are getting close Blu is still slower to load and skip through. Whether these are things that really matter, I'm not sure. I was very disappointed my Samsung didn't remember where the movie left off, it seems like as soon as I start a movie no matter time of day or night my mom calls. My current Marantz does have the memory feature and that was a big plus. Of course, I didn't give up on Blu over the issues but they could be a hesitation for some.

[luvtolisten]

Speaking only for myself, I know of all the great features DVR and TiVo have, but I'd rather own than rent (pay monthly fees). I compromise between a VCR and DVR by using a DVD recorder. Not all the features of DVR's, but no monthly fees either.

As far as Blu-Ray goes, I read an article in Sound and Vision (about a year ago) that Blu-Ray players weren't exactly flying off the shelves. Reason being the economy, and that the average Joe didn't think difference between what they had and Blu-Ray justified the cost. Their feeling was the market wouldn't pick up until the economy stabilizes, the price comes down, or the old DVD player dies.

[Kevio]

Mr. P, good point about requiring a new TV to enjoy Blu-ray. That was not the case with VHS to DVD or vinyl to CD.

Do you think that once people have the HDTV (which people are buying for reasons other than blu-ray) and surround sound system (which many already have), you'd want to upgrade your movie collection too?

Why the hell do they keep making home entertainment electronics more difficult to use?

[Woochifer]

Why not. The difference in quality is quite noticeable. Why won't people replace DVDs with Blu-ray like they replaced vinyl with CDs? Is it because Blu-ray players can play DVDs?

For some of the same reasons you didn't see a mass movement over to SACD and DVD-A. SACD and DVD-A, aside from higher resolution, also offered up 5.1 audio for music releases. Those upgrades were not compelling enough for the buying public to line up behind those formats. Granted, this analogy is not a perfect fit because the studio support for Blu-ray is much greater than it ever was for SACD and DVD-A, and the widespread adoption of HDMI has minimized the copy protection headaches that plagued SACD and DVD-A. The studio support is the main reason why Blu-ray stands a much better chance than SACD and DVD-A did.

I think that people won't be upgrading their DVD collections en masse for a couple of simple reasons. First off, HDTV adoption is right now between 33% and 40%. Gotta have HDTV to get the upgrade in video quality from Blu-ray.

Second, people who've amassed huge DVD libraries aren't going to replace every single title. For one thing, not every title is worth buying twice (or even worth buying the first time around). The DVD format fundamentally changed the home video industry by shifting the market away from rentals and towards purchases. But, no matter if the industry is rental or purchase-based, it has always been driven by new releases. Even when the DVD format was creating a brand new generation of video collectors, the top selling titles remained new releases.

The way that I see the market evolving, Blu-ray will make gradual inroads. As DVD players break down, people will replace them with Blu-ray players. As people buy Blu-ray players, they will stop buying new releases on DVD and buy them on Blu-ray instead. It's an evolutionary improvement, but still a significant one. I think Blu-ray will do well, but it won't set new records the way that the DVD format did.

[Woochifer]

Actually, Blu-ray discs are less user friendly than DVD, most players will not remember where in the movie you left off when left on pause too long or turned off, the menus for some reason you have more steps to set up and get back to main menu, as far as I know there's none that will start on their own like Disney's "Fast Play" and although there are a few that are getting close Blu is still slower to load and skip through. Whether these are things that really matter, I'm not sure.

Most of the Warner BD titles (Blade Runner, The Road Warrior, The Matrix, Batman Begins, and 2001: A Space Odyssey) I own will go directly to the feature without a menu screen. The popup menu is much quicker at accessing the menu options than most DVDs. It's only those discs with BD Live features that make you jump through a bunch of hoops before the movie comes up. The load times will vary significantly from player to player.


As far as Blu-Ray goes, I read an article in Sound and Vision (about a year ago) that Blu-Ray players weren't exactly flying off the shelves. Reason being the economy, and that the average Joe didn't think difference between what they had and Blu-Ray justified the cost. Their feeling was the market wouldn't pick up until the economy stabilizes, the price comes down, or the old DVD player dies.

A year ago, the Blu-ray/HD-DVD format war had barely ended. BD players still cost over $400, and the fastest selling BD title had sold 200,000 copies.

This year, the industry has rallied around Blu-ray. BD player sales are running more than double their sales from a year ago. The Dark Knight has sold over 2 million BD copies. Basically, the market conditions are much better for Blu-ray for the simple reason that consumers know about the format, and more households now own HDTVs.

By the time the holidays roll around, you'll likely see the first sub-$100 Blu-ray players and a new round of BD sales records from the summer movie slate.

Despite (or perhaps because of) the recession, this year's movie box office is on a recordbreaking pace. Box office performance will usually translate into strong home video sales as well. Many of the stongest titles from this summer such as Star Trek will drive Blu-ray player and disc sales when the holidays roll around. Last year, more than half of the BD players were sold during the holiday season, and analysts expect a similar push this year especially with the price points on off-brand players moving below $100 and the name brand players expected to dip below $200.

[Mr Peabody]

Mr. P, good point about requiring a new TV to enjoy Blu-ray. That was not the case with VHS to DVD or vinyl to CD.

Do you think that once people have the HDTV (which people are buying for reasons other than blu-ray) and surround sound system (which many already have), you'd want to upgrade your movie collection too?

Why the hell do they keep making home entertainment electronics more difficult to use?

I personally have just been buying new releases on BR. I did buy the Underworld trilogy which I already owned one of the three on DVD so there could be an occasional replacement.

I believe Blu was rushed to market to be able to compete with HD-DVD and small details were left out or forgotten. It seems the "industry" unfortunately is not all of one mind any more either which leads to problems like the Java issues. And, I don't even want to begin talking about the moron/criminals at HDMI LLC. Or, what about Blu coming out with all the decoding was first going to be done by the player and then the big switch to going ahead and putting HD audio decoding and allowing bitstream to a receiver. There's a laundry list of craziness that happened with this format. I personally believe if it wasn't for the war and the buzz it created neither HD format may not have gotten off the ground. Another reason I think products continue to become more difficult to use, a company may have several departments working on the one product and if you have ever been on the inside of a large corporation the various departments don't communicate with each other very well or may feed information to a head person who don't put it all together in as nice a package as it could be.

Wooch, With Disney's "Fast Play" a kid can put a DVD in the player and it will automatically play with no buttons to push. When going into the BR menu to check audio settings or whatever there are more steps you have to select to get in, make your selection and get out than there is on DVD. Maybe small things bug me more or you just won't allow anything bad to be said about Blu but the menus are not as user friendly as they are on DVD.

[Woochifer]

Wooch, With Disney's "Fast Play" a kid can put a DVD in the player and it will automatically play with no buttons to push.

So do those Warner titles that I cited. If you need to make any changes, just push the button for the pop up menu and you can change any of the options on the fly. A lot more convenient than a lot of DVDs that are authored such that the audio and video buttons are locked out and setup changes must go through the menu screen. I've yet to encounter a BD that requires going back to the menu screen to change the audio options


When going into the BR menu to check audio settings or whatever there are more steps you have to select to get in, make your selection and get out than there is on DVD. Maybe small things bug me more or you just won't allow anything bad to be said about Blu but the menus are not as user friendly as they are on DVD.

You're not making any sense here, given that DVD menus can be every bit as convoluted. The pop up menu on those Warner titles is about as simple as it gets. The issues you cite have nothing to do with the format itself, and everything to do with the disc authoring. A disc producer can make a given title as simple or as complicated as they see fit, and with Blu-ray I've seen both.

[pixelthis]

The fast play is nice, and makes sense sense since you have a pop-up menu system .
But then you can't put 30 min of previews on the front...
BLU will be implemented a lot faster than DVD since its just an improved version
of that format, with a few gee-gaws and increased storage, and its backward compatible.
As for replacing DVD with blu, I finally gave in and rented Valkyrie on DVD.
The pic was okay but not great, blu just has DVD beat, and I probably wont waste money on another, save one that wont be on BLU.
However I saw empire strikes back playing on a Blu player in Blockbuster today
and was so amazed at the quality that I asked if they had snuck a Starwars Blu disc out.
The up-conversion q was amazing, really.:1:

[pixelthis]

DVD is dead BTW.
(HEE HEE:1:

[audio amateur]

Why not. The difference in quality is quite noticeable.
Only on HDTV. Even then DVD can look pretty darn good on a not too big HDTV.

[luvtolisten]

Why the hell do they keep making home entertainment electronics more difficult to use?
Boy, I hear you on that. Some features are useful, some are bells and whistles. I think some companies believe the more complicated it is, the higher tech people will think it is. As far as features go, give me quality, not quantity.I have yet to use the "angle" feature on my DVD player. I never found a DVD that offered that feature. Another reason why I went back to being a 2 channel guy. It's easier.

[emesbee]

Boy, I hear you on that. Some features are useful, some are bells and whistles. I think some companies believe the more complicated it is, the higher tech people will think it is. As far as features go, give me quality, not quantity.I have yet to use the "angle" feature on my DVD player. I never found a DVD that offered that feature. Another reason why I went back to being a 2 channel guy. It's easier.

Some DVDs do make use of the 'angle' feature, but its usually not worth bothering with. The player is usually too slow to respond anyway.

[luvtolisten]

Some DVDs do make use of the 'angle' feature, but its usually not worth bothering with. The player is usually too slow to respond anyway.

Well, whadda know! Thanks for posting!

PS Let's not only "give peas a chance", but mashed potatoes and gravy too!

[Auricauricle]

Man! First Pixie comes out in song about lettuce and Luvto sallies forth with peas, potatoes and gravy! Mebbe y'all should eat before you post!

[luvtolisten]

Man! First Pixie comes out in song about lettuce and Luvto sallies forth with peas, potatoes and gravy! Mebbe y'all should eat before you post!
5642
Eat before post...............................mmmmmmmmmmmm. Eat after post.....mmmmm Eat during post..mmmmmmmmmmmmm..Eat post....mmmmmmmmmmmm

[Mr Peabody]

[QUOTE=webkid90]I was wondering for a moment who would want to add an SD player to their system but I guess if you had a docking system for your mp3 player you would be set. Although I've used the earphone jack to connect my player to a couple different things and I didn't like the results.

I'm glad some else said something, I haven't liked using the earphone jack either.

[StevenSurprenant]

I just installed two Solid State Hard Drives in my computer and will never go back to standard hard drives. They are very fast, use very little power and make no noise.

As solid state memory declines in price, they will replace mechanical drives, i.e. Cd's and DVD's. Gone will be jitter and scrached disks.

Taking this one step further...

Solid state central music/video servers will replace our DVD and CD players. Movies and Music will be bought and downloaded from the Internet. In time, we will subscribe to Movie and Music servers online and not really own the software. However, we will be able to pick and choose what we keep in our favorites folder and even download them to our portable devices.

As we all know, the D/A converter is what differentiates a really good player from an average player. This can be done in software.

In addition to this, a highend music server will allow us to modify the output much like athe DEQX does and help our lower priced speakers sound like a highend speaker system.

Mechanical devices like the CD and DVD players are going away and probably very soon.

[Mr Peabody]

From what I understand U-verse does a similar thing with their DVR service, there's no built in hard drive in the box, the saved programming must be stored for customers online or some where. When some one else has what you want though you are at their mercy. Any one notice gas prices lately? I can see this as an option but not stamping out CD.

Also, internet has a lot of growing to do to get this to every one. Many still don't even use the internet. I have it but I am at the end of my line and my DSL is much slower than it should be. I can't even watch a Youtube video without drop out. A friend of mine can't even get DSL via phone line. Cable is an option if you are lucky enough to have a cable company that you can get along with. Once this fiber optic gets off the ground more depending on how much more bandwidth they offer it could possibly make something similar to what you describe happen.

[StevenSurprenant]

Also, internet has a lot of growing to do to get this to every one. Many still don't even use the internet. I have it but I am at the end of my line and my DSL is much slower than it should be. I can't even watch a Youtube video without drop out. A friend of mine can't even get DSL via phone line. Cable is an option if you are lucky enough to have a cable company that you can get along with. Once this fiber optic gets off the ground more depending on how much more bandwidth they offer it could possibly make something similar to what you describe happen.

Yes, you are right, this isn't going to happen next week, but soon enough.

...It only seemed like yesterday...

While television was invented somewhat earlier... From a consumer perspective, TV came out in the late 1940's. It was about then that TV's began proliferating into the homes of American consumers. That was just before I was born.

I saw my first color television when I was in my middle teens and they were horrible and wonderful at the same time. It was about then that I heard stereo for the first time.

That was in the middle sixties!

Even in the late fifties - early sixties, we had a phone that did not have a dial. We had to turn a crank to call an operator who patched us into the party we were trying to call. It was a party line. To be fair, at the same time and in different locations, we had dial service too.

To show you how fast things have changed...
When I was 30 years old, I worked with an older gentleman (he was a biochemist) that worked as a lab boy for Thomas Edison. In case you don't know, Mr. Edison invented the phonograph and the first practical light bulb among other major advances in technology.

On September 4 1882, Edison switched on the world's first electrical power distribution system.

The first gasoline powered car was invented in 1893. Henry Ford sold his first car in 1896.

The Z1 originally created by Germany's Konrad Zuse in his parents living room in 1936 to 1938 is considered to be the first electrical binary programmable computer.

In 1947, the first commercial microwave oven hit the market.

The Internet began in about 1990.

According to wikipedia, the oldest person living was born in 1894.

The point is that this technology that is such an integral part of our lives has come about relatively recently. Most of what we consider modern technology has come about in a liitle more that one human life span. AMAZING!

What we consider as normal today was inconcievable when I was a child.

Back to the subject...

Yes, CD's and DVD's will go the way of records and soon enough.

Technology marches on in an ever increasing speed.

When the children of today become senior citzens, the world they live in will be nothing like the world they grew up in.

We can only imagine what the future holds and with what we know now, it can only give us a minut glimpse of what it possible.

All we can really do is sit back and go with the flow...

For the near future...

Imagine that each home that has a central server that handles all in coming and outgoing data (Audio, Video, and Data).

TV's and computers will be wirelessly connected to this server. There will be no wire except maybe a power cord.

Your computer will consist of a monitor and wireless keyboard and mouse. The keyboard and mouse link to the monitor and the monitor links to the server.

Wouldn't that be nice? No more boxes and no more wires.

Now take this one step further. The computer that actually runs your programs is located at your ISP. The video and audio is transmitted via the Internet bidirectionally to this ISP. The advantage of this is that the ISP could provide the lastest and greatest software and you wouldn't have to upgrade your computer every five years or so.

Since this is an audio site...

Imagine having access to every recording ever made at the touch of a button...

Or... Having access to every new audio or video format piped directly to your amplifiers and monitors. This would end having to upgrade our surround receivers and TVs everytime the industry gets a new idea.

Just let your imagine run wild! Chances are that if you thought it, someone else is already working on it.

One final thought...

TV commercials are one of the most distracting and time wasting conceptions of the modern age. It takes an hour to watch a 40 minute show. If we watch 3 shows a night, that's an hour out of our day. That's 365 hours a year. Assuming we work 8 hours a day and sleep 8 hours a day that means that we have only 8 hours a day to pursue personal interests. If we save one hour a day by getting rid of commercials, that gives us about 45 more 8 hour days a year that we can use for ourselves. What would this be worth to you to get rid of the commercials? Would paying an extra $10 per month to your TV provider be worth the time saved? How about $20 or $30? Well, it's something to think about...

[Kevio]

TV commercials are one of the most distracting and time wasting conceptions of the modern age. It takes an hour to watch a 40 minute show. If we watch 3 shows a night, that's an hour out of our day. That's 365 hours a year. Assuming we work 8 hours a day and sleep 8 hours a day that means that we have only 8 hours a day to pursue personal interests. If we save one hour a day by getting rid of commercials, that gives us about 45 more 8 hour days a year that we can use for ourselves. What would this be worth to you to get rid of the commercials? Would paying an extra $10 per month to your TV provider be worth the time saved? How about $20 or $30? Well, it's something to think about...I was interested. I did some research. It looks like your numbers are about right. Advertisers will pay at least 1 cent per minute per viewer. (Watching television commercials pays as low as $0.60/hr.) If you're watching the national average 4 hours of television per day, you're helping broadcasters earn at least $20/month in ad revenue.

[Auricauricle]

Very nice post, Steven! Definitely food for thought and well-phrased! Thanks for the morsels!

[3db]

Vinyl never vanished. Diminshed greatly yes buts its very much alive and growing. There is also a trend now where people want something tangeable to smell, feel, hold, read, sonmething you can't do with hard drives. People don't want to turn on the computer just to listen to music.

[mlsstl]

People don't want to turn on the computer just to listen to music.
This depends on the person. I listen to far more music these days than when I was spinning LPs or dropping CDs in a tray. Having a music server gives fast access to my 40,000 tune collection in a way that cannot be duplicated when one has to go hunting for a album sitting on a shelf.

I'll admit there is a certain charm to the 12" X 12" album artwork of an LP, but a lot of that was lost with the advent of the CD small jewel case. In any event, once the music starts playing, the only thing that matters to me is what comes out of the speakers.

As far as LP sales, here are the 2008 numbers from Nielsen Soundscan surveys.

There were 1.9 million LPs sold in 2008. This was 0.13% of the total 1.5 billion music units sold (CDs, downloads, etc). CD sales were 363 million units, or 191 times the LP sales.

The biggest selling LP in 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows" which sold 25,800 copies. They sold more tickets for two nights at Hollywood Bowl than LPs.

So, yes, the LP sales gains look impressive when expressed as a percentage against itself, but the real sales winner in this has been the growth of downloaded tracks which broke the one billion mark.

[Auricauricle]

Seems that the LP movement is still in the cottage industry phase; too early to say whether it'll gain much ground as it did back in the day. I find the renewed interest facinating and tend to think that while the newbies' zeal is noteworthy, they represent a different population than oldtimers (myself included). As far as the "charm" goes, I still dig 'em. The art, the way they smell and even the snaps, crackles and pops is all pretty heady for me. Somebody here once voiced some frustration over the inconvenience of having to get up and flip them, but that's part of the appeal in my book, and just one more reason I get...so...emotional talking about this stuff! (Sniff!)

[Mr Peabody]

What's amazing is how long computer took to reach the people from the Z1, or short, depending on perspective. I remember the Commodores just coming out in the early 80's. But after that it steam rolled into our life. I'm shocked at how early the microwave was around, it was maybe mid 80's before my family got one.

The real thing is once my CD is purchased, it's mine, I can listen when I want with no further charge. What you are describing is like attaching a leach to my pocket book. I know there are leaches now but I don't need any more. It's scary to think about all that being in some one else's hands, or control.

[Auricauricle]

That truly is a scary concept....That ownership is fast yielding into rentership! Thanks, Mr. P. I won't sleep well tonight...

[StevenSurprenant]

That truly is a scary concept....That ownership is fast yielding into rentership! Thanks, Mr. P. I won't sleep well tonight...

Many years ago we all had antennas on our homes and TV was free.

When cable was just coming out, I remember like it was yesterday my mom saying, "That doesn't make any sense, why would people pay for something they are already getting for free."

She still had an antenna, but eventually she bought cable. Ironic, isn't it?

Mr. P...

What would make you change your mind?

Access to all the music ever made, any time, anywhere?

How about being able to watch the video of the performances along with the music?

Maybe you could get a list of all the music made by your favorite performer through their entire career and listen to your hearts content.

Or how about getting the raw feed before mixing and so that you could compose your own version?

Maybe you're listening to a song on the radio that really puts a smile on your face and all you have to do is hit the save button to get a copy. This would sure beat trying to find out who the performer is and then trying to find it in a store.

Let's say that you could keep all music you saved with this service, even if you terminated the service. Wouldn't you still want to have access to new music with all the bennies the service provides?

There are many ways to entice and all it takes is give you something that owning CD's doesn't offer, something that you just can't resist.

If you could answer my mom's question, "why would people pay for something they are already getting for free.", I think you will know why someday we will all be renting our music.

[3db]

This depends on the person. I listen to far more music these days than when I was spinning LPs or dropping CDs in a tray. Having a music server gives fast access to my 40,000 tune collection in a way that cannot be duplicated when one has to go hunting for a album sitting on a shelf.

I'll admit there is a certain charm to the 12" X 12" album artwork of an LP, but a lot of that was lost with the advent of the CD small jewel case. In any event, once the music starts playing, the only thing that matters to me is what comes out of the speakers.

As far as LP sales, here are the 2008 numbers from Nielsen Soundscan surveys.

There were 1.9 million LPs sold in 2008. This was 0.13% of the total 1.5 billion music units sold (CDs, downloads, etc). CD sales were 363 million units, or 191 times the LP sales.

The biggest selling LP in 2008 was Radiohead's "In Rainbows" which sold 25,800 copies. They sold more tickets for two nights at Hollywood Bowl than LPs.

So, yes, the LP sales gains look impressive when expressed as a percentage against itself, but the real sales winner in this has been the growth of downloaded tracks which broke the one billion mark.

I admit to have a hughe download collection my self but sincie I purchased a new TT, I've been spending much more energy buying albums. For critical listening, I immerse byself into vinyl and enjoy all of its mrerrits. While commuting to work via public transportation, I plug myself into an mp3 player and lsiten there.

I seriously doubt vinyl will make teh resurgance back to its' heyday but I'm certain that it will eventually surplant CDs. As far as going to SACD or DVD-A, studies have been shown that most people cannot tell the difference in sound quality between CD and the high rez audio formats. Thats oneof teh reasons why these two formats never took off.

[Feanor]

Vinyl never vanished. Diminshed greatly yes buts its very much alive and growing. There is also a trend now where people want something tangeable to smell, feel, hold, read, sonmething you can't do with hard drives. People don't want to turn on the computer just to listen to music.

I agree with people who say that LP will remain a small niche market. Of course, it could grow a lot and still remain a niche.

As a medium it is meaningless to me; (despite that I still own a couple of hundred LPs). For one thing, of the music I mostly listen to, exactly none is produced today on LP. Some people love to fondle those 12" discs; I never did, and I go 'way back before CD was even conceived of.

CDs were a big ergonomic improvement over LPs. Bigger still is the ability to search and select from your entire collection from the computer. I do 99% of my listening from computer. It seems to me that it is easier to turn on the computer, select and play music, than it is to locate a single CD and load it.

[mlsstl]

3db wrote: "I seriously doubt vinyl will make teh resurgance back to its' heyday but I'm certain that it will eventually surplant CDs."
Only time will tell.

My guess is that LPs will remain a presence at the niche market level with a small but loyal following. There are plenty of examples in the world of consumer products that once ruled their territory but, while still available, are a pale ghost of their former dominance.

I think the death announcement of CDs has been premature. It is still a pretty handy way of distributing music. While broadband internet connections have made great strides the past decade, they still aren't really fast enough to conveniently support wide scale downloads for lossless music at true CD bit rates.

While that will improve with time, there is also the issue of portability. You can pick up a CD and play it in your car, in a friend's car, or take it to a party and so on. iPods and similar players offer portability, but you're not assured of inter-connectability with other people's systems.

You can also trade and sell CDs in the open market, even on Amazon and eBay. Try listing a download for sale on Amazon and you'll likely get a call from the RIAA police.

I do expect CD sells to continue to drop, and the download market continue to expand. That said, CDs are going to continue to be around for many years. If nothing else, think of the size of the already installed base of players. While they will eventually age, break and be replaced with something else down the road, that's not going to happen overnight.

[Woochifer]

As far as going to SACD or DVD-A, studies have been shown that most people cannot tell the difference in sound quality between CD and the high rez audio formats. Thats oneof teh reasons why these two formats never took off.

What studies would those be? And what sources did they use to come up with those conclusions?

I'm not aware of any CD, SACD, and/or DVD-A sources available to consumers that were mastered using identical board feeds and identical settings. That shortcoming alone makes valid comparisons between the formats almost impossible outside of a studio setting.

If you're comparing a CD version of an album with the SACD or DVD-A version, it's very easy to tell differences with many of them. Whether those differences are due to the higher resolution or due to differences in the mastering process, it's impossible to know without having access to the master source.

SACD and DVD-A failed because you had competing formats and because the music industry never embraced the formats. If you want SACD to succeed, all the record companies had to do was transition their releases over to the hybrid disc format and ensure that their new releases were made available in the format. That never happened.

FWIW, I always saw SACD and DVD-A's primary value in their multichannel capability. A well done 5.1 music mix lends a sense of "you are there" more impressively than just about high end two-channel setup I've ever heard, and it can give that sense even with a modest midrange setup.
FWIW,

[luvtolisten]

I think it all comes down to, the majority of people just didn't think the difference was worth it, for whatever reason.Supply and demand. It drives the industry. If the demand was there, you'd see SACD's all over. Apparently the interest of the masses just wasn't there.

[Woochifer]

I think it all comes down to, the majority of people just didn't think the difference was worth it, for whatever reason.Supply and demand. It drives the industry. If the demand was there, you'd see SACD's all over. Apparently the interest of the masses just wasn't there.

I think the problem is that the industry could never figure out what to do with SACD and DVD-A. Is it a premium two-channel format for audiophiles, or a multichannel format that people can play on their new home theater systems? Is it a successor to the CD or is it simply an enhancement to the CD? Does it go into only high end audio equipment, or does it go into entry level equipment like HTIBs and video game consoles?

Sony alone answered yes to all of those questions, even though those answers sent inherently contradictory messages to the market. And Sony was a case where one hand was not speaking to the other, as their music and hardware divisions often pursued completely different agendas with SACD.

SACD's issues with copy protection and analog-only output hampered its appeal with higher end consumers, while the lack of inclusion with newer releases and initially with lower priced hardware limited its appeal with entry level consumers. Ironically, with HDMI and the availability of lower priced components that can deliver/receive SACD signals, many of those issues have been resolved, but only after much of the industry has abandoned the format.

[pixelthis]

The two primary problems with both SACD and DVD-A was marketing meltdown.
A multichannel format sold to audiophiles, a lot of the source material "remixed"
so that the experience is anything but what an audiophile would want.
And joe six couldn't care less, of course.
Record companies made a tenative foray into these formats, about as much as could be expected, considering both were a horse designed by a bunch that couldn't even agree amongst themselves as to what direction to go in.:1:

[texlle]

I figured the next generation home audio source after the death of the CD would've been a hard drive in a box with a usb slot. Say you buy a source with a 20GB hard drive and upload your music via a jump drive, or even better, your laptop/desktop, iphone, whathave you. With a computer, you can access your home stereo HD source and arrange your files however your want them.

Why isn't this available? The technology is there, we just need a few good companies to step up and put it into production.

[Mr Peabody]

Why would you need another hard drive component? If it's already on a hard drive just send the signal wireless to yur amp. That's available now, check with Feanor, Ajani and I forget who all, but several here do that already.

[3db]

What studies would those be? And what sources did they use to come up with those conclusions?

.
FWIW,

http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/explanation.htm

[Kevio]

No one is going to freak out about 3db's link? Come on, I need some entertainment over here.

[RGA]

SACD and DVD Audio has a few problems - one there is a mistake in the belief that the masses will pay more money for higher quality when what the masses want is mp3 to load as much low bit version onto an ipod as possible. The fact is the vast majority want cheap cheap cheap with the most storage and features as possible. And the sound isn't THAT bad. I have recorded in lossless to ipod and the sound is respectable - not hi-fi but most people have never heard hi-fi and frankly they don't any better and even if they did the price is out of reach of most.

Secondly it 1 is not not bad enough the high end niche and mostly (2 channel) market has certainly not decided that SACD is superior to top flight Redbook players - or for that matter even better than vinyl - a large segment of the audiophiles have not adopted that CD is better than vinyl despite technical measurements and they are not on board with SACD - though many may like SACD better than CD.

Listening to a CD in two channel on Audio Note's DAC 4 and CD Two transport directly against the same albums on a $10k SACD machines in two channel and the AN system was vastly superior to my ear (bias maybe but several people listening who don't own any AN agreed). All of them agreed not just one or two. Granted these were both way up their price scale - and good vinyl beat them both. I preferred the two channel vinyl and CD to the multi channel Martin Logan /BAT and Bryston set-ups of SACD.

But the fact is that if the niche market 2 channel guys don't jump on the SACD bandwagon then the niche becomes a niche within the niche. High SACD machine sales are skewed because the format was tossed in with cheap DVD players with many consumers not even knowing it was part of the machine. I know a Sony manager who sold hundreds of these machines and he told me that maybe 1 in a hundred specifically asked about whether the machine could play SACD. And I was one in the hundred and I didn't buy one!

This is not to dump on SACD - because I have heard very good sounds from it bettering a lot of other CD players - superior recording quality on some discs - all else being equal - will sound better - and some of the machines have good SACD playback with abysmal CD playback skewing the results considerably - people will say listen to how much better the SACD sounds compared the same machine's redbook but this is a problem if the maker deliberately makes the redbook sound like crap to make the SACD portion sound so much better in direct comparison. Certainly it would be nice to have one - but after hearing the top Sony - it's not really better than the better CD players - or even a $799 Dac1 with a cheap transport. But for the usual mainstream - the cheap end of the market I would take one over average Redbook.

Apparently there is a new OPPO player that is really good - it is $499 and is a Blue Ray player as well as a "good" SACD player and a "good" cd player. Certainly worth getting into SACD if you don't already have Blue Ray and for balance - a fellow poster who loves SACD wrote a very good review just the other day of the new OPPO 83

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hirez/messages/25/259031.html

The labyrinth menus would drive me bonkers but some folks love screwing around with the remotes. Personally I want to set the settings and then when the disc goes in it should remember the settings forever.

My DVD player always goes tot he 5.1 track and with two speakers I get no voices - so I have to hunt throught he menus to get it back to 2.1 stereo which is the setting and the only one I want to use. Royal pain in the arse. The OPPO looks not to have improved that in the slightest but on sound and for the money it may be worth going to this format for my next video player/Blue Ray/SACD.

I am not in the loop - but it seems to do virtually anything you could possibly want it to do.

http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/

[Mr Peabody]

RGA, I haven't seen Audio Note jump on SACD, do they offer anything?

[Woochifer]

SACD and DVD Audio has a few problems - one there is a mistake in the belief that the masses will pay more money for higher quality when what the masses want is mp3 to load as much low bit version onto an ipod as possible. The fact is the vast majority want cheap cheap cheap with the most storage and features as possible.

Yep. I think that the record companies had incentive to go along with SACD at the very least because here was a copy protected format that was backwards compatible with CDs. SACD was introduced just as multichannel was beginning to gain traction, and it could have easily ridden the coattails of home theater as people added 5.1 DD and DTS to their systems.

But, the politics of the format war took hold, as Warner had a vested financial interest in DVD-A (due to their patent holdings in the DVD format) and Sony had its stake in SACD. And of course, using a hybrid disc format added costs to each disc, and CD sales had not yet tanked when SACD first came out. Plus, the record companies restrictions on digital output further limited its appeal.


And if that were not bad enough the high end niche and mostly (2 channel) market has certainly not decided that SACD is superior to top flight Redbook players - or for that matter vinyl.

I've mentioned this before, but I think in the audiophile world, a lot of people have invested big time sums in their CD setups. The last thing they want to hear is that a lower cost disc player can match or surpass the sound quality of their investment, so there's an ingrained bias against the format from the outset. Kind of ironic, given how the CD format was the scourge of the audiophile community for years, before the advent of pricey DAC and transport separates.

At the very least, the DSD remastering that was done in conjunction with the SACD releases greatly improved the sound quality on many releases, and on many hybrid releases that improvement did not always transfer over to the CD layer.


But the fact is that if the niche market 2 channel guys don't jump on the SACD bandwagon then the niche becomes a niche within the niche. High SACD machine sales are skewed because the format was tossed in with cheap DVD players with many consumers not even knowing it was part of the machine. I know a Sony manager who sold hundreds of these machines and he told me that maybe 1 in a hundred specifically asked about whether the machine could play SACD.

For those $150 players that Best Buy carried, I would agree. But, for the ES models, I doubt that anyone bought those without knowing about the SACD capability.


This is not to dump on SACD - because I have heard very good sounds from it bettering a lot of other CD players. Certainly it would be nice to have one - but after hearing the top Sony - it's not really better than the better CD players. But at the cheap end of the market I would take one over average Redbook.

For me, the reason to go with SACD or DVD-A is the lossless multichannel audio. People can quibble about whether or not it's possible to detect a difference in the resolution, but the benefits of a good multichannel mix are quite clearcut. The solidity of the side imaging, the depth perception, and the spaciousness with a good 5.1 track go beyond anything I've heard from any high end two-channel system.

The SACD releases have slowed to a trickle, but there's a good body of works out there to mine through. The SF Symphony's Mahler releases were the reason I got a SACD player in the first place, and so long as the final release in that series (their monumental performance of the 8th Symphony) comes out as scheduled next year, I'll be happy.


Apparently there is a new OPPO player that is really good - it is $499 and is a Blue Ray player as well as a "good" SACD player and a "good" cd player. Certainly worth getting into SACD if you don't already have Blue Ray and for balance - a fellow poster who loves SACD wrote a very good review just the other day of the new OPPO 83

http://www.audioasylum.com/forums/hi...25/259031.html

The labyrinth menus would drive me bonkers but some folks love screwing around with the remotes. Personally I want to set the settings and then when the disc goes in it should remember the settings forever.

My DVD player always goes tot he 5.1 track and with two speakers I get no voices - so I have to hunt throught he menus to get it back to 2.1 stereo which is the setting and the only one I want to use. Royal pain in the arse. The OPPO looks not to have improved that in the slightest but on sound and for the money it may be worth going to this format for my next video player/Blue Ray/SACD.

I am not in the loop - but it seems to do virtually anything you could possibly want it to do.

http://www.oppodigital.com/blu-ray-bdp-83/

Another avenue would be Oppo's $140 universal DVD player, which has been cited as a very good multichannel music player, and even better than the BDP-83's predecessor, which placed more emphasis on the video processing. Another advantage of the Oppo is that it can send the DSD signal via HDMI, one of the few that can do this without transcoding the DSD signal to PCM first. A handful of receivers and processors can natively handle a DSD signal, but anytime you do any kind of delay, bass management, or other signal processing beyond simple leveling will be transcoded to PCM.

That Oppo BD player though is the first truly universal player now that high def has arrived in earnest, and the processor they use in that player is purportedly one of the best around. Remains to be seen if its audio performance is up to the task.

I know that with my Sony SACD player, the setup allows for changes to the default layers read, as well as how you have the speakers aligned. I'm surprised that a DVD player would not save the speaker setup options. Anything with a 5.1 analog output would need to allow for playback using fewer than five speakers.

[RGA]

RGA, I haven't seen Audio Note jump on SACD, do they offer anything?

Peter bought all of the competitors top of the line SACD machines has hired some of the top guys to pull it apart and get it to sound "decent" to him and he hasn't found it yet. This is his opinion he's entitled to it. I like some of the SACD machines and the disc - my last post seemed harsher that I meant it to be. I am considering a machine - I have not been impressed with any of the multi-channel mixes - and these were set up by professionals - but I am not a big fan of Martin Logan speakers or Bryston amplifiers so I am willing to give it another go with gear I like at the outset. I don't want to blame the SACD technology when it could have been the hardware.

The OPPO if it lives up to billing - and Layman is pretty solid over at AA - it will be worth it. I am a huge movie fan and I do not have Blue Ray so ....

Again I hop I didn't sound too harsh on SACD - I know lots of people swear by it but I have to go with what I heard in my own auditions and Bob Neil and I hear it the same way when we compared SACD to the AN combination of redbook. But I have not compared inexpensive SACD for example to inexpensive CD - I may very much think a $500 SACD blows the doors off every $1500 CD player on the market. So I apologize for poor writing.

Bob Neil is probably a little more balanced on the topic - I found a very similar set-up to be significantly better than the SACD machine I heard - but Bob's machine was one of the best available at the time he did the comparison - http://www.positive-feedback.com/Issue8/audionote.htm

[Mr Peabody]

In hearing some of The Blu-ray 5.1 mixs even I have become a fan of a good recording. When listening to the 5.1 and then switching to 2.0 you definitely seem to lose something.

Mahler is out on BR by the way. Check www.bluray.com for releases.

[Feanor]

...
For me, the reason to go with SACD or DVD-A is the lossless multichannel audio. People can quibble about whether or not it's possible to detect a difference in the resolution, but the benefits of a good multichannel mix are quite clearcut. The solidity of the side imaging, the depth perception, and the spaciousness with a good 5.1 track go beyond anything I've heard from any high end two-channel system.
...

Yep: I've been saying this for quite a while. M/C is the biggest advantage of SACD (& DVD-A). If you heard a well produced recording played on even a half-decent setup, you will know that M/C can convey a sense of ambience, of concert hall presence, that 2-ch simply cannot.

It's unfortunate that audiophiles have resisted investing in M/C setups otherwise more would understand this. Of course, the cost of M/C is a big problem -- many 'philes invested their last dimes in their 2-ch equipment and just can afford the strain of extending these to M/C. Also, the practical difficulties of configuring a M/C listening room are not trivial: rooms that are great for 2-ch often can't be made to accomodate M/C.

[Woochifer]

Peter bought all of the competitors top of the line SACD machines has hired some of the top guys to pull it apart and get it to sound "decent" to him and he hasn't found it yet. This is his opinion he's entitled to it. I like some of the SACD machines and the disc - my last post seemed harsher that I meant it to be. I am considering a machine - I have not been impressed with any of the multi-channel mixes - and these were set up by professionals - but I am not a big fan of Martin Logan speakers or Bryston amplifiers so I am willing to give it another go with gear I like at the outset. I don't want to blame the SACD technology when it could have been the hardware.

I think at a certain point, it becomes more about creating a certain type of sound signature. The whole reasoning behind DSD/SACD is that it brings the consumer closer to the resolution of the original source. Remember that Sony created the DSD format as an archiving tool for their analog tape library, which has many recordings approaching the point where the tapes have begun deteriorating.


The OPPO if it lives up to billing - and Layman is pretty solid over at AA - it will be worth it. I am a huge movie fan and I do not have Blue Ray so ....

Blu-ray's a must, especially if you've already upgraded to a HDTV. Broadcast HDTV look very good, but a decent BD can look jaw-droppingly great.


Again I hop I didn't sound too harsh on SACD - I know lots of people swear by it but I have to go with what I heard in my own auditions and Bob Neil and I hear it the same way when we compared SACD to the AN combination of redbook. But I have not compared inexpensive SACD for example to inexpensive CD - I may very much think a $500 SACD blows the doors off every $1500 CD player on the market. So I apologize for poor writing.

I caught what you were getting at. I think that the larger point is that the SACD releases themselves afforded an opportunity to revisit a lot of recordings and make improvements over the CD versions. When comparing a CD with a SACD, it's not just the resolution that changes, it's the mastering, the processing used during the transfer, etc. Comparing the two-channel CD and SACD tracks, some of them sound very similar, and others sound very different.

Concord Jazz in particular did a lot of reworking when they put out the CD/SACD hybrid versions of their recordings. But, in creating the 5.1 mixes, they also cleaned up the sound considerably by eliminating a lot of the processing that was clearly used when mixing the original two-channel tracks.

Even the highest end of high end CD rigs remains limited to the quality of the CD transfer. With most of the SACDs I've heard, it seems that the transfer was done well. No excessively high levels, no evidence of heavy dynamic range compression, etc. With SACD, you generally start with a clean transfer. The trend with CD transfers unfortunately is to bump up the levels as high as possible, and use compression to keep it from using all the bits. In years past, remastered CD issues were all about fixing the harsh edge that accompanied many early CD releases. But, some the more recent CD remasters I've heard are now bumping the levels higher and getting closer to distortion levels.

[Woochifer]

Yep: I've been saying this for quite a while. M/C is the biggest advantage of SACD (& DVD-A). If you heard a well produced recording played on even a half-decent setup, you will know that M/C can convey a sense of ambience, oF concert hall presence, that 2-ch simply cannot.

It's unfortunate that audiophiles have resisted investing in M/C setups otherwise more would understand this. Of course, the cost of M/C is a big problem -- many 'philes invested their last dimes in their 2-ch equipment and just can afford the strain of extending these to M/C. Also, the practical difficulties of configuring a M/C listening room are also not trivial: rooms that are great for 2-ch often can't be made to accomodate M/C.

Well said, Bill! :thumbsup:

[Feanor]

...

Even the highest end of high end CD rigs remains limited to the quality of the CD transfer. With most of the SACDs I've heard, it seems that the transfer was done well. No excessively high levels, no evidence of heavy dynamic range compression, etc. With SACD, you generally start with a clean transfer. The trend with CD transfers unfortunately is to bump up the levels as high as possible, and use compression to keep it from using all the bits. In years past, remastered CD issues were all about fixing the harsh edge that accompanied many early CD releases. But, some the more recent CD remasters I've heard are now bumping the levels higher and getting closer to distortion levels.

When it comes to classical, CD remasters, new CDs, and CD layers on hybrid SACDs have all gotten better and better (in general). There is no evidence at all of an increase in the use of compression by the industry. Oh, well, just a fringe benefit of listening to classical music.

If there is any trend back to LPs there is no evidence of it in case of the classical genre. Meanwhile about half of all SACDs are classical. Basically LP is irrelevant to classical listeners, (apart from the collections of old vinyl that some people have).

[E-Stat]

No one is going to freak out about 3db's link? Come on, I need some entertainment over here.
Freak out? The test proves what it proves based upon its methodology. This is yet another example of what may be entirely an earnest attempt to test the difference, but takes the usual convoluted path by using a test setup that is not at all representative of the way we use our systems, much less representative of what a given medium can do.

Here are a couple of flawed examples. Over at AA, a poster proposed a cable comparison by inserting a Y adapter into the output of a CD player, attaching the two cables under consideration to the adapter and to separate inputs on a preamp. Then one could switch inputs to compare the cables. While this arrangement works, it has a fatal unintended flaw: the input of the amplifier would end up "seeing" the summed metrics of both cables. Thus the comparison would be "both" to "both". Some time ago, a former poster named Skeptic (or Soundmind over at AA) proposed his so called "shunt" test for comparing cables. Place a cable between the tape out / tape input jacks and simply switch the tape monitor to compare whether or not that cable was sonically "perfect". There are multiple flaws with his approach. First of all, it is the source components and amplifiers which can respond to different cable metrics. Placing a cable in a buffered tape loop isolates the cable from those interactions. Secondly, the test involves circular reasoning. In his case, the operating assumption is that inexpensive, unshielded, high capacitance cables are the full equivalent of higher performance cables used in real world situations. Yet, he crippled the test from the outset. He used high cap cable from the source to the preamp, from the preamp to his equalizer, and from the equalizer to his amplifier. Then, he would add a fourth cable into the tape loop vs a higher performance model and not surprisingly, never heard a difference. That's like trying to determine the opacity of two different qualities of glass panes by stacking three dirty panes and seeing if you could tell the difference between adding yet another dirty pane or a single clear pane. The only valid test would be to use only the number of cables required and to replace all of them at the same time.

Similarly, Meyer's test make a number of assumptions. First of all, one of the players he used was an inexpensive Pioneer deck that has no better S/N that CD players. Quite a few recordings were simply SACD or DVD-A versions of recordings that were also released on lower resolution formats. Even in the days of LPs and cassettes, the quality of a recording was determined by the lowest common denominator. As with my first cable story, a box is wired that either switched in or out the additional loop via another cable through a CD recorder. So, regardless of setting, additional cable and box loading effects are inflicted on the test gear.

The only valid test has been conducted by many a recording engineer: make simultaneous recordings of the same performance without compromising the performance envelope of the high resolution format. There is no need to add cables, boxes, additional loading factors never used in home systems. Simply compare what each medium is capable of doing. Admittedly, because of the commercial needs for delivery on multiple mediums, frequently the high rez version is crippled from the outset. Do you really think that a high-rez re-master of "Dark Side of the Moon"Pink is going to explore the dynamic range capability of the medium? There are good reasons why virtually all recordings today are mastered at 24/192 or better. And fortunately for those of us who still listen to CDs, the result is better performance. The filtering can be more gradual with fewer phase issues and a few lost bits here and there in the mixing process don't have the same negative effect on the result.

rw

[Kevio]

Given all the fuss over DACs as a critical element in a reproduction system, I was quite surprised that subjects could not hear an extra set of 44.1 kHz AD and DA conversion inserted into the signal path. I think you're claiming this can be explained by the fact that the source material was not of high enough quality to illuminate the additional stages. And yet people claim to hear stark differences in different DACs even when the source is conventional 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sources.

[3db]

Given all the fuss over DACs as a critical element in a reproduction system, I was quite surprised that subjects could not hear an extra set of 44.1 kHz AD and DA conversion inserted into the signal path. I think you're claiming this can be explained by the fact that the source material was not of high enough quality to illuminate the additional stages. And yet people claim to hear stark differences in different DACs even when the source is conventional 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sources.

*nods* Didn't ya know theres huge dramatic differences in sound between lamp cord and megabuck speaker wire? :) Placebo affect. I've paid big bucks so it must sound better mentality. I'll stick with either CD or vinyl as my main sources for music as SACD and DVD-A add nothing more in terms of sound quaility and is much more costly.

I

[E-Stat]

And yet people claim to hear stark differences in different DACs even when the source is conventional 44.1 kHz, 16-bit sources.
I aver that most of the difference lies not with the D/A process itself, but the requisite analog stage following it. I added a Manley DAC/linestage to a Pioneer PD-54 (now used as transport only) which is definitely better. The Manley has a simple class A tube line stage which also obviates the need for a separate preamp. It drives the power amp directly. Huge difference? No, but a meaningful one, especially with wide dynamic range material.


I've paid big bucks so it must sound better mentality
Do you actually know someone who purchased cables without trying them out in their own system first? I've always put the horse before the cart. When I worked in audio back in the 70s, we allowed folks to borrow demo units of various components for the same reason. Some cables have made improvements while others have not. I purchase only the ones that do. :)

rw

[RGA]

Woochifer

I think the biggest drawback for the consumer is the set-up - people are just not knowledgable enough to set these things up properly by themselves - even experience audiophiles and numerous dealers won't go anywhere near a feedback destroyer or even room treatments. Audiophiles generally don't like EQ's because some feel frequency is not the most important aspect (biggest measurable change but not most important impact). Unfortunate but I used to be like that as well - but I will not judge it until I hear it because several times lately my beliefs about a given technology proved to be incorrect.

I don't want to fall into old school dogma touting 2 channel - or vinyl or CD or whatever. If several of your favorite pieces of music sounds better to you on Viny,l then if you love music you should invest in quality vinyl replay, if certain music you love is on CD and not on vinyl or sounds better on CD then same thing, you should invest in quality CD replay. And as you can tell where I am going - if music is available on SACD and to you sounds way better than the other formats you should invest in quality SACD. My view is whatever gets you enjoying the music - and hey why not own all three formats?

People always argue about the formats as to which is better but the fact is there are recordings on all three not available on the other two.

Another posted noted though that the investment becomes ridiculous for people who have good two channel rigs. Consider that if you owned a top flight vinyl rig - then CD comes out and you decide you need one because your favorite bands don't put out music on Vinyl anymore - so all you had to do was invest in ONE player and the software.

For SACD and M/C - If an audiophile like me who has a 2 channel rig and wants to go to M/C The investment required is staggering. I need two more pairs of AN J speakers, stands and a processor and an SACD capable machine. Alternatively, and cheaply, I could buy a budget second system but five lesser speakers (like the AX Two staying in brand) is not going to leap ahead of the tonaility timbre dynamics beauty and the dreaded word musicality of the AN J and spatial cues and soundstage just do not make up the difference to my ears. And off brand - well if I really thought offbrand sounded good I would have bought those. No way does 6 B&W 602's suddently trumpt a much better sounding speaker no matter what is done with mixing or even the source discs. The choke will be at the speaker's end.

Granted some people won't care that much - but it's a real expensive proposition for 2 channel guys.

That said - I am in a "luckier" position because I have been holding off on the surround sound system through choice and circumstance and I will pull the trigger on a second system down the line for movies and I will have an eye on SACD when I do it. But man those Tannoy Westminster owners trying to SACD perfectly are in for problems :)