LP's coming back in style.

[Woochifer]

Ohh I think Downloading IS the issue. Peaple here download like mad and run their computer through their stereos. DVD sales and videp games have nothing to do with it. How many MUSIC DVDs are selling perhaps. I'm not saying that DVD and Video games are not sellling better - there is only so mauch a person can purchase. But what SACD has to do with any of this. That is an audio format only. To me SACD they've invested heavily into and are stuck with it - Sony is big enough to FORCE it on the consumer.

Distilling the music industry's woes down to JUST downloading is an overly simplistic view, and it's blindly buying into the RIAA's propaganda. The fact is that they have not been responsive to changes in radio, retailing, and new choices in home entertainment. Plus, since the advent of hip-hop and the rise of alternative in the early-90s, there's has not been anything that has emerged to take up the mantle from those genres, which have grown stale and repetitive. Music sales cannot grow if all that's getting offered up is rehashed versions of stuff from 10 years ago.

If you track the decline in revenue in the music industry and the revenue growth with video games and DVDs, you'll see that they track virtually one for one. Downloading alone cannot account for this kind of shift in consumer preferences. It really comes down to the DVD and video games offering up a new and exciting home entertainment experience that CDs cannot approach. THAT's what SACD and DVD-A have to do with the subject.

DVDs and video games have shifted the market towards multichannel audio. If music cannot keep up, then the CD's perceived value will continue to decline relative to those other entertainment formats. For $15-$20, you can either opt for a CD that has two-channel audio and maybe a few good songs if you're lucky, or you can buy a DVD that's got a pictures and multichannel audio plus interactive features. SACD and DVD-A offer up one avenue towards balancing the value equation, especially since the prices on those discs are roughly equal to what CDs cost.

I never argued that universal players were less popular. Of course the average person would rather spend $89.00 and get a player that plays all formats than spend $400.00 on a NAD cd player. Nothing really new there. And of course if in 2 years EVERY player has SACD in their universal player then naturally SACD will be called an unheralded success. What I'm saying is that the masses didn't ASK and demand that CRAPPY cds be replaced.

Well, the masses didn't ASK and DEMAND that crappy LPs and cassettes be replaced either when Sony/Philips developed the CD. The point with SACD and DVD-A is that the music industry HAS to compete for the entertainment dollar, and having a high quality multichannel audio format is but one part of the solution. The music industry was in its death throes as well in the early-80s, but a combination of new and exciting music plus the growth engine created by the CD led to a decade of double-digit sales growth.

Back in the early-80s, you had the exact same dynamic going on -- tired, recycled music and new competition from VHS movies and video games, and a recording industry that wanted to blame all their problems on cassette taping. The CD and fresh music rescued the music industry once before, because both of those developments added value to the music and persuaded people to spend money in a certain way. A comparable combination of new music and technology that adds value to that music is what will have to ultimately lift the industry out. It may not be SACD or DVD-A, but it certainly won't be the CD that will fuel growth in the music industry any more than the LP's nonexistent role when the music industry got out of its early-80s doldrums.

What happened was that CD sales flattened and started declining so to generate sales and hopefully get people to re-purchase all their cds on SACD so they can make a ton of cash. DVD's keep coming out with lousy first versions and then a second superior edition for the exact same reason - sell the person the same movie twice or more if you're lucky.

You KEEP repeating that "lousy first versions" argument, but still ignore the way that the parallel trend is to put out the superior special editions FIRST and THEN the crappy versions with lower list prices later on as a means of stimulating purchases once the initial sales push dissipates. The studios are testing both approaches to see what consumers respond to more once the new release sales decline -- lower prices for stripped down discs or rereleases with added features.

The verdict is not final, but it would not surprise me one bit if in the future you see more and more megaedition DVDs getting slotted into the initial release, and then stripped down and plunked into the bargain bin a year later. This is actually how the LP market sifted out in the 70s and 80s. The first release was where you got the gatefold jackets with the liner notes and occasional extras, and a lot of the subsequent budget releases eliminated the special album covers and substituted generic album sleeves with no lyrics or liner notes.

Of courese Sony is all about money and they are driving the changes - the consumer isn't asking for SACD - SACD soul purpose is to generate profit because CD sales are falling because of copying(since affordable CDWR came to market so did conveniently SACD and DVD-A). And they need something in order to con everyone into replacing their music with a new more expensive one - give them a reverberation effect out their rear speakers.

Obviously, you haven't heard a good SACD or DVD-A demonstration or checked the prices of high res discs lately, otherwise you wouldn't say something as ridiculous as that. Like I said, high res multichannel audio has been part of the discussion as long as DVD proposals have been out there. PLENTY of audio engineers will tell you that the 44.1/16 resolution of CDs is not the end all in audio quality, and being able to incorporate both higher resolution AND a multichannel carrier is simply allowing music to be reproduced using technology comparable to what studios currently use.

The format war between SACD and DVD-A is about profits, but the development of a high res multichannel format is not some con job like you say. Have you ACTUALLY HEARD a properly setup 5.1 SACD or DVD-A demonstration, and compared it to the two-channel CD version? Listening to Steely Dan's "Two Against Nature" and Pat Metheny's "Imaginary Day" and comparing the 5.1 mixes with the two-channel versions, the experience is not even close. The multichannel versions sound cleaner, more distinct, with far more stable imaging and soundstage as wide as the room can handle. This is about adding value to the listening experience. If customers respond by dumping their CD collections and stocking up on DVD-A and SACD selections, then it's THEIR choice. The industry's not shoving the formats down anybody's throat. It's not like adding SACD and DVD-A capabilities to a disc player suddenly disables the CD capability.

And it's not just adding reverberation out of the rear speakers like you claim, it's actual repurposing of the ORIGINAL multitrack master, which can yield staggering improvements in audio quality because the mixdown no longer has to be done using repetitive passes with older analog tape machines that audibly degrade with each pass. It's a FAR MORE involved process to produce a 5.1 DVD-A or SACD than it is to transfer an old two-track master tape onto CD. A well done mix can produce a huge improvement in the spatiality of the mix, and the sounds are more well defined because they no longer have to get bunched up into two channels and EQ'd with a phantom center. Considering all the strides in digital audio technology that studios have implemented since the early-80s, why would anyone want to stand pat with a listening format that's tied to the stone age of digital audio? Oh gee, I forgot, everything that recording engineers do is driven by profit, everything that's new is about profits, nothing that's new does anything better than the good ole' days. Yeah, and vintage PCs from that era were all that we ever needed -- all this Pentium 4, USB, DVD-ROM, CD-R, LCD screen, GUI, Wi-Fi stuff is nothing but profits. It was all shoved down the consumers' throats because they never DEMANDED it. Right.