DVD Audio

[tech rep]

Has anyone on this BB gotten a DVD Audio, or SACD player.Was it worth the $$$$$ ? Would

you reccomend it? If so , what model ? I have been reading about the new formats but have seen very few reveiws.

[jdm56]

I can't see spending big bucks for 2 channel SACD, when multi-channel is coming.

I can't see spending fairly big bucks for DVD-A when there is very little out there to listen to and most of that has music mixed into the back channels. PUH-LEEZE! Didn't anybody learn from the quad fiasco?

I can't see buying into either format when one or the other or even both could be commercial failures.

-Blind Melon McCall

[rowooo]

Say no to DVD audio! It will be a marketing flop. SACD has potential and can succeed if everyone can agree on what steps need to be taken to increase releases and more importantly lower unit prices. From every review I've seen SACD just cleans DVD-a's clock in every important aspect. But more importantly DVD-Audio will require the listener with dramatic increases in investments. New processing and loudspeakers would just be the beginning. The compatibility with exsisting systems and Sony's massive inventory of titles, should, in the long run, spell success for SACD.

[Ray Garrison]

Blind Melon McCall,

Speaking up from the peanut gallery on the other side of the fence...

I can't see spending any bucks for a multi-channel setup. I have over 1500 CDs, all of which are 2 channel. I've tried multi-channel systems for playback using psuedo soundfield encoding a la Yamaha, and while the effects are, well, sorta cool, I'm not willing to put up with having all the extra speakers I'd need to accomplish what, to me, are fairly unimportant garniches to the basic two channel soundfield. With my La Scalas and decent source material, I get a very good impression of depth and space with the setup I have.

I would ABSOLUTELY pay for a better front end. I've not purchased an SACD-1 or the Marantz unit yet simply because there's not enough software out there for me to justify the expense. As soon as there's enough music on SACD to make it worth getting the unit (say, maybe by tax refund time ) I am definately going to get one.

I occationally watch movies, by the way, and do have a DVD player & 35" TeeVee hooked into the same system with the La Scalas, and I'm perfectly happy with the way movies sound. My wife and I are lucky if we get a chance to watch maybe one movie every two or three weeks - we're both just to busy to sit around doing nothing for a few hours at a time more than very occationally. We love the stereo, but it's a lot easier to spend 45 minutes before dinner listening to some tunes that it is to find a two hour uninterrupted block of time.

Ray

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Music is art

Audio is engineering

[decibel man]

You guys should check out the Neil Young article in the latest Sound & Vision. He hits some excellant issues right on the nose. He is a big fan of DVD-A. He is not a fan of CD. This is not because of multichannel capabilities, but because of the 24 bit 192kHz convertion compared to 16 bit 48kHz comvertion. I am out of time, you should pick up that issue, it has some other interesting articles concerning the future of the SACD and DVD-A formats.

Happy listening and enjoy!

JT

[Spider124]

I don't know, 192khz, 24bit looks fantastic on paper, but I absolutely refuse to give up my ability to use external DACs or processors. (Which can NOT be used with DVD-A players because they downsample thier digital output, if they have one, to CD quality)

Charlie

[Carlucci]

Ray, Haven't they been making great strides with spatial effects in only two channels? Is this due to new technologies like Qsound?

I would just like to know how they are achieving the surround effect with only two speakers. More and more, I find that if I situate myself in an equilateral triangle with my speakers, I will really enjoy some cool spatial effects in some of the newer CD's. Madonna's "Music" is a great example, as is Roger Waters' latest live CD.

There are some songs (and even TV shows and commercials for that matter) that have forced me to check to see if my surround speakers are activated, when of course they are not.

For those that have a Receiver and DVD player equipped for DTS, I recommend you give some of the DTS audio CD's a try to see if you like the multichannel music. I've tried Sting's "Ten Summoner's Tales" and think it sounds pretty decent.

[Q-Man]

JT,

I read the articles in Sound & Vision. They make DVD Audio sound rather nice. I listened to a demo of it at my local Sound Advice store. I'm going to go for it. I was impressed with it's use of the center channel & rears.

I'll wait about another year & see how many DVD audio disc are released. From what I heard, I think it's time to retire the old CD player.

Q.

[decibel man]

A little update on that article I mentioned. On page 90 there is an article titled "DVD-Audio 101". This is just a quick look at DVD-A, but it gives you a good idea of what it may mean to us in the marketplace. One of the interesting points that I did not know was how the sampling rate will vary depending on a lot of different variables. For instance, "...the 176.4- and 192-kHz rates are available only in two-channel mode because the system can't get enough data off the disc fast enough for more channels at those sampling rates." This format is very flexible though, it can utilize 96-kHz/24 bits for the front three channels and 48-kHz/20 bit for the surrounds. The discs are even capable of also having SACD tracks on them. It is way to early for me to consider investing in either DVD-A or SACD, but I think we will have a winner in the next couple of years. I think it would be good advise to look closely at the future of both formats before buying a player designed for either.

Happy listening and enjoy,

JT

[4977]

I have decided to hold off until someone makes a reasonably priced combination player. Pioneer is supposed to be make a very expensive universal DVDA, DVDV, SACD player so I am assuming additional manufacturers will also make them. Just a matter of when I can Afford one.

[drobo1]

I haven't been on the board much lately but the high resolution post caught my attention. I have been very busy lately listening to my Sony 777ES Super Audio CD player through tubes driving my La Scalas/REL Strata speakers. Absolutely stunning. It's the first digital source that consistently delivers goose bump music. Beware, I am a two channel only listener. Quality multichannel music playback is years away until somebody like Chesky does it right beginning in the recording phase. Currently multichannel is a marketing gimmick. As for DVD-Audio, good luck. It's implementation will be a souped up PCM CD variation that will sacrifice potentially good two channel hi-res to produce multichannel cooked down playback because of the space limitation of the format. Fortunately, SACD does not have this problem and can deliver two channel high resolution, multichannel hi-rez plus Redbook CD playback all on the same disk. Throw in DVD-Audio problems with the audible Verance water marking protection encoding and I think SACD will be the hi-rez format assuming listeners really want a hi-rez format. That's the big question. Most think regular CD sounds wonderful. What a pity. I would rather listen to my vinyl rig than most CD's.

drobo

[Colin]

Well I have heard that SACD does sound more like vinyl, the $5K machine did not impress me - maybe 'cause I am kinda cheap ...

some of the specs of the DVD-A format might make it the eventual winner, specs like wider frequency range than CDs and greater dynamic range,

plus don't forget that the public would love to have cute sounds coming from all five of their little Bose speakers!

[jdm56]

quote:

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Originally posted by drobo1:

Quality multichannel music playback is years away until somebody like Chesky does it right beginning in the recording phase. Currently multichannel is a marketing gimmick. drobo

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I wish I could say I thought you were wrong here, but unfortunately I have to think you're probably on the money. Practically every review of multi-channel music I've seen, whether DVD-A, or DTS or Dolby Digital DVD seems to fall into that gimmick category, with unrealistic (if not absurd) placement of sources in the surround channels. YYYYYeccchh!! I am so pumped by the potential of multi-channel, and yet so frustrated by the reality of it.

That SCD-1 does appear to be a real piece of work! I'd love to hear one sometime.

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JDMcCall

[Frank_F9]

I have to say I picked up the DVD-A Yutaka Sado conducting Chabrier & Ravel disk, but I don't have a DVD-A player.

In DD 5.1 it sounds fantastic. Huge soundstage without gimmicks, the rears are used only for reverb stuff. Its a sure jaw dropping reference disk. Besides I really like the gimmicky stoner effects.

However, on my DVD-V player I CANNOT PAUSE, FAST FORWARD, OR REWIND any tracks. I cannot reach any of the addition content (video/interviews). That sucks, especially 'cause the last 2-3 minutes of "Bolero" is killer demo material, but i have to WAIT 12 minutes to get there.

DVD-A pratical? No. Cool? Yes. Will it ever be mainstream? No.

Regards,

Frank

[tech rep]

Thanks for all the great replies. It appears

that my thoughts on this matter are the same

as many of you.

I love the idea of the 24/192 res on dvdA. I was really hopeing for that part of it. I'm not much on the gimmech side either.

Guess I'll wait like most of you, Not quite ready to drop 3-5K$ on a format with very little music on the shelves.

I read quite a bit on up-sampling, sounds like a good way to squeeze the best out of my collection.

How about it, anyone got any first hand knoledge with an up-sampling DAC? Sounds pretty good , but I have no where to audition it. Any inputs are appreiciated.

Thanks in advance .

tech rep

[drobo1]

Don't let hardware price deter you from entering the high resolution digital playback world. I bought my Sony 777ES from J&R Music world for $1600, new in the box with full warranty. Oade Brothers will do them for $1500. For this you get a 60 lb machine, SACD playback, and outstanding Redbook CD playback with multiple slope filter choices. The difference between this and the top of line Sony SCD-1 is the SCD-1 is silver and has balanced outputs. I doubt most of your preamps and amps have balanced input. Software is another issue. SACD's are more expensive than regular CD's at this point. Don't take this as a sales pitch, just a reality check.

drobo

[drobo1]

tech rep,

24/192 would be an improvement but I doubt you will see that from DVD-Audio disks. In order to deliver multichannel on DVD-A disks the signal will be cooked down to 96 khz sample rate and perhaps fewer bits in order to fit data on the disk. With this knowledge will the music even be recorded in the highest resolution. The only way to get the full 24/192 will be as two channel or two channel with low resolution surround channels. Upsampling is an interesting enhancement method to 16/44 CD's. Of course, it can't add any data that is not present. It merely interpolates smaller steps between amplitude values and clocked samples. This has merit in digital sampling theory and is an improvement over regular cd. It just makes the discrete steps smaller based on existing data. It can't compete with recorded direct stream data on SACD or 24/192 recorded DVD-A. DCS and Dodson appear to be the best devices at this but cost 3 to 10 times the price of a SACD player. I have visited the shop of Perpetual Technologies here in Colorado and I think these guys know what they are doing and are offering 30 day trials on their upsampler and dac audio computers for extremely reasonable prices. I would check them out if you are on a budget and want to try outboard processing. Oh yeah, I repeat myself. I am not a sales person, I am just after good sound.

drobo

[Audio Flynn]

Just saw a JVC DVD Audio player on Audio Advisor for $ 599.

Too CoolText

The SACD is way too expensive to take a chance on.

Plus Neil Young likes DVD A His sound on Recordings and live has been good for 25 years.

[Mr. Blorry]

I had to dredge up this aging thread to put in what I find is quite exciting!

I have been looking for DTS CDs to play on my DVD player, and the few I have are quite nice, especially Steely Dan Gaucho. Of course, I'm a HUGE fan of this album anyway. Well, I'm at Best Buy (the most god-awful store of its kind on the planet, but a good place to find CD and DVD titles, and the occasional washing machine), and I ask the heavily pimpled associate where I might find the DTS CD selection. His eyes glaze over, obviously with no idea of what I'm talking about, but we find another associate possessing fewer zits that knows right where they are. Interestingly, there is a little known section deep in the "high-end" audio department where both the DTS CDs and DVD Audio titles are kept. I'm floored that Best Buy even has DVD Audio! Well, I can't find what I'm looking for in DTS, but pick up the DVD Audio copy of Deep Purple Machine Head. I start drooling, because it is such a great album, and I have heard many great things about this digital transfer, when lo and behold I read the fine print, and find that this disc can be played on regular DVD players! Yes, it is Dolby Digital, so we know it's compressed, but I thought, what the hell. It's only $22, and I don't have a WAF to deal with.

I was flabbergasted. It is the best remastering job I have ever heard! It sounds like the boys recorded it yesterday. Perhaps it would sound even better on a DVD-A deck, but that's not the point I wish to make.

The fact that someone took the time to dig up the old master tapes of this classic album, and carefully remaster each track, and then remix down to a new finished product, is what is important. I also bought The Doors LA Woman and although not quite as impressive as Machine Head, it is still far better than the standard digital transfer. I also have the "regular" remastered version of LA Woman. The difference between the two is that on the CD version, they took the original two-track mixdown, and remastered it. With the DVD-Audio version, the same guys took the original 8-track master tapes, remastered each track, then created another mixdown. The difference is amazing, and well worth the $22! I am so glad that those of us with "ordinary" dvd players can enjoy the efforts of those who have painstakingly remastered this great music, even though a true DVD-A player may actually sound better.

Even if all they do is go back and remaster onto CD format, I sincerely hope more of these classic albums are brought back to life in this fashion. I could go to any one of these file-swapping services (like Napster used to be) and download every song off both of these albums, but I wouldn't have anywhere near the quality of these new remasters. Since they're DVDs, they have copyright protection, making it difficult to pirate, and they as of yet haven't developed a five-channel audio mp3 anyway! There are thousands of fantastic albums recorded over the past half century that would enjoy a renewed popularity and an upsurge in sales if only they could be restored with equal care. Sure, it's a time consuming and expensive undertaking, but I think the rewards would be well worth the effort.

Lastly, I whole-heartedly agree with you guys who think this concept of home theatre audio is a nothing more than a fad and a silly gimmick, but that is also what our predecessors said about stereo when it emerged. Remember the early stereo Beatles albums, Rubber Soul, for example? That was horrible stereo! It was a brand-new technology, so nobody knew what sounded good, and what sound crappy. The same with these attempts at "spatializing" old two-track recordings. The Dolby Digital version of LA Woman is the most subtle surround mix I've heard yet, and ironically, I hear that the DVD-A mix is awful! It seems to me that what they finally learned about stereo, was rather than assigning certain instruments to certain speakers, they could instead mix the tracks to broaden the soundstage, and that is what I hear when I listen to LA Woman. Rather than have an instrument suddenly jump out of a rear speaker at me, it sounds more like the subtle ambience of an auditorium. Opinions? Questions? Anyone?

[boa12]

mr. b, u just sold me on that machine head as that was the 2nd real LP i purchased post-puberty. right after Sabbath's Paranoid (hey i was a real what came to be known as "metal head" back then)

did ritchie blackmore produce that newer disk? thanks for the heads-up!