[daycart1]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kentamcolin Interestingly, I read that more new vinyl was sold last year than SACD & DVD-A combined!

Go Team Vinyl!!

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by daycart1 Go Team Vinyl!!

I'm finally joining the team!

 

[clarke68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kentamcolin Interestingly, I read that more new vinyl was sold last year than SACD & DVD-A combined!

Not quite, but almost:

RIAA Midyear 2004 U.S. Manufacturers' Unit Shipments and Value Chart

...this is the most recent data the RIAA has posted on their website.

 

[Zanth]

Glad to see that all the downloading is hurting their sales

AS for vinyl...hey, stick with what works! SACD and DVD-A are going the way of the dodo, but...blue ray or HD-DVDA will be around the corner soon!

 

[JaZZ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth SACD and DVD-A are going the way of the dodo, but...blue ray or HD-DVDA will be around the corner soon!

Who knows... But what do you expect from them? Sonically? Technically? What's not good enough with SACD or DVD-A?

 

[clarke68]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zanth AS for vinyl...hey, stick with what works!

Yeah, an increase in vinyl sales could be a really great trend...I'd love an excuse to flesh out my (almost completely non-existent) analog set up.

Don't get too comfy with Blu-Ray and HD-DVDA, because now we have Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) on the way, as if the digital format wars weren't confusing enough already.

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JaZZ Who knows... But what do you expect from them? Sonically? Technically? What's not good enough with SACD or DVD-A?

I'm not saying they aren't good enough (though even higher bitrates can't hurt with more and more samples...) but the fact remains, the industry is going to be pushing this tech HEAVILY in the next few years, mainly to push the HDTV standard and to promote yet another purchase of one's media library, particulary movies.

 

[Zanth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clarke68 Yeah, an increase in vinyl sales could be a really great trend...I'd love an excuse to flesh out my (almost completely non-existent) analog set up. Don't get too comfy with Blu-Ray and HD-DVDA, because now we have Holographic Versatile Disc (HVD) on the way, as if the digital format wars weren't confusing enough already.

I can't deny that 100GB - 1 TB wouldn't be nice? A rate of 1 GB/s too! Tres tres sweet!

Two of these discs and I would have my entire music library! Uncompressed!

 

[jefemeister]

Quote:

Originally Posted by clarke68 Not quite, but almost: RIAA Midyear 2004 U.S. Manufacturers' Unit Shipments and Value Chart ...this is the most recent data the RIAA has posted on their website.

Interesting data. It shows a bunch of things, but this is the most shocking to me:

Cassette brought in 1.14x as much money as Hi-Rez and sold 5x as many units. And, if you combine album and single sales, Vinyl brought in 1.74x as much money as Hi-Rez and sold 4.3x as many uints. (all for the 1st half of 2004)

So either Cassette (especially) and Vinyl are not as dead as previously thought, or Hi-Rez is deader than a doornail.

and CDs brought in more than 19x as much cash as Vinyl, Cassette, Hi-Rez, and DVD combined.

Off-topic but interesting: A quick comparison on average unit prices, given in order of market introduction:

Vinyl: $7.76
Cassette: $4.40
CD: $14.45
DVD: $18.42
Hi-Rez: $19.22

 

[e_dawg]

I've noticed that they're putting DVD-A 5.1 players into luxury cars these days, but not SACD.

 

[soundboy]

Philips and Harman International are working on car SACD players.

New SACD releases are averaging about 70 titles each for the first 3 months of this year. Next month will see Dire Straits' "Brothers In Arms" arriving in full 5.1 surround sound SACD.

 

[Czilla9000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by soundboy I agree with you. All I am saying is that SACD isn't dead yet....on life support, maybe?

...or perhaps a 'persistive vegatative state'?

 

[bangraman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wmcmanus So sad, because I sure can hear the improvement that SACD provides over redbook.

The problem for me is that I don't always hear it. And I'm not talking about the dual layer CD/SACD discs where the difference is usually very detectable. I went to the trouble of buying the same recordings pressed separately on redbook and I think half the time (or more?) I can't tell a difference. On other occasions there is a huge difference.


The 'holy $&#£!' recordings have strangely not been from Sony. I was very impressed with an Eastern European redbook recording of a violin/piano performance (I'll have to dig out the disc to remind myself) but the SACD version was even better and that was truly surprising.


But I have a nasty feeling that many SACD's aren't, if you know what I mean.

 

[fewtch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jigglybootch Of course, even if vinyl still was the standard, who am I to say that the loudness race would have never happened?

It never would have happened (a race to see who can make the needle jump off the record surface first? Not bloody likely

).
Quote:

Originally Posted by clarke68 Back when CDs first came out (1983) music piracy was called 'home taping' and it wasn't any easier with a CD than it was with an LP. Most U.S. homes did not have personal computers, and the ones that did were limited to about 640k of RAM.

Try 64K

.

 

[elrod-tom]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bangraman The problem for me is that I don't always hear it. And I'm not talking about the dual layer CD/SACD discs where the difference is usually very detectable. I went to the trouble of buying the same recordings pressed separately on redbook and I think half the time (or more?) I can't tell a difference. On other occasions there is a huge difference. The 'holy $&#£!' recordings have strangely not been from Sony. I was very impressed with an Eastern European redbook recording of a violin/piano performance (I'll have to dig out the disc to remind myself) but the SACD version was even better and that was truly surprising. But I have a nasty feeling that many SACD's aren't, if you know what I mean.

I've heard a few SACD's where I thought that the differences were minimal. Some of them (Oasis' What's the Story Morning Glory is a good example) are in sonic terms simply garbage in, garbage out. Too bad too, as I like that album.

OTOH, I've heard more than a few where the difference just leaped out at me. Roxy Music's Avalon and Stevie Ray Vaughan's Texas Flood are two examples that come to mind right away. More often than not for me, it's a soundstaging thing.

I think one of the big differences in the media are the wideness (if that's the word) of dynamic range. I think this is one of the reasons why SACD are proving to be so popular for classical music. Think about any CD recording that you've ever heard of Beethoven's Pastorale. The quieter movements are louder than is natural, and the louder always seem (at least to me) to be hitting the ceiling. Now, listen to that same piece on SACD, and you'll find the experience very different indeed. If nothing else, the music seems to find a much more lifelike presentation.

BTW - I can't take full credit for the example shown above. My Mother-in-Law is a classically trained pianist with an MA in Music Theory from a European university. She noticed the difference immediately when I played the SACD for her, and finds SACD to be much more like she always remembered hearing it, both live and from analog sources like reel-to-reel and (gasp!!) old vinyl recordings (though she did mention that the pops and crackles made it unlistenable in some cases...SIGH!!).

I hope we continue to see additional titles in SACD. My suspicion is that it will likely be around in some form or other...most likely as a sort of MFSL "Master-Disk" kind of audiophile specialty item. Of course, the pricing will be steep...SIGH!! I also have some hope for DVD-A as a format. I'm hoping that once the newer technologies take hold, that we'll see DVD disks coming to market with all that video content AND 192k-24 mixes as well. I don't find many, but the ones that I have (e.g. REM's recent "Best of" release) are stunning in their presentation. There is also the notion of PCM being the dominant encoding format, which also gives me some hope.

Unfortunately, I don't think that we can rely on the general public to drive that kind of high-end product. As has been mentioned, low-quality downloads are the current rage. I have to admit, I do quite a bit of it myself. There will only be limited financial incentive to undertake the kind of massive effort required to remaster to the appropriate resolutions. For that matter, I'm not sure how one even does it if the front-end source is digital.

In the end, if we want the hi-rez formats, it's pretty likely that we're going to pay for it. I mean REALLY pay for it. I envision $40 hi-rez format albums somewhere down the line.

What do they say? Sorry about your wallet? But happy for your ears, I guess.