Quote Originally Posted by Quagmire
"As long as SACD continues to offer jazz and classical music, that is where I am spending my money. DD for music? yeck!"

I am willing to hold out hope that SACD will stay around as a niche format for those of us who do want something better than Dolby Digital music and RBCD. But I'm afraid that they will simply abandon it altogether. If they're not going to make content available to us while they're introducing the technology, what can we expect when they are no longer trying to establish it as a mainstream format? Perhaps if DualDisc comes along and displaces DVD-A completely it will clear the way for SACD to finally be accepted as the standard Hi Rez musical format and that will be enough for studios to get behind it. One good thing DualDisc might accompish, should this happen, would be to firmly establish multichannel mixes as a defacto standard for music. Maybe the same mixes can be used for both DualDisc and SACD, just at different resolutions. Can you speak to the possibility of this scenario, Sir TT?

Q
I'm with you on this. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that widespead adoption of DualDisc does not spell the end for high res multichannel.

The problem with SACD is that 1) it requires a new player and six-channel analog inputs, and 2) Warner and Toshiba will never go along with it because they developed the DVD and DVD-A formats and supporting SACD means shelling out royalties to Sony and Philips, and rewarding them for sustaining a format war that to a large degree impeded the growth of DVD-A.

I think that with DualDisc, multichannel music will finally get a chance. Terrence has indicated in the past that 5.1 mixing is now common practice, and the CD mixes are downmixed from those multichannel sources. This means that there's a lot of material out there just waiting for release.

The problem that I see with DualDisc is that there's currently no rhyme or reason to what goes on that DVD side. Not all DualDiscs include video content, not all of them include a multichannel mix, not all of them include a high res soundtrack, and not all of them include other supplemental materials. As things shake out, I have a feeling that DualDiscs, especially with new releases, will include a 5.1 soundtrack in DD, some kind of documentary/interview, music videos and concert footage, and probably some online links. I think the "enhanced stereo" tracks will only come with older albums that don't have multichannel mixes available, and increasingly the DVD-A tracks will be limited to only a few select artists who demand it or whose recording quality clearly justifies it.

All in all, a mixed picture. I like the expansion of multichannel, but it takes a step backwards to Dolby Digital in order to make it happen.