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New formats, same old story?

OK, we continue to be inundated by advice to upgrade to a new digital format. Most say SACD, the rest tell us that DVD-A will be the ticket. My thing is that I would be ready to buy if things were sorted out. They are not yet. It doesn't look any clearer to me than it did a year ago today. Am I blind? Neither has taken precedence. More importantly, neither has had the major influx of software we have been waiting for. A major determinant as to which one wins out in the end. Yes, SOFTWARE. Where is it? Sure, there are some titles out there(how many currently???), but new albums are still more often than not released CD only. The people at the record stores still have not heard of either of the new formats. Yes, I know Sony keeps dangling the influx of new players(even cheap ones) at us, but I am still in the same mindset I was last year. That I don't want to invest in a new player that won't be a REAL step up in terms of CD playback(which would make it worth it) until one of the formats emerges as the future path. And, once the players come, will they be obsoleted by a new twist a couple of years later? As in multichannel - which I am not interested in, or by offering a digital output of the new format's signal. Are my feelings correct, or do I need the way I see things corrected? Thank you.
trelja
sdcampbell
2,136 posts
 
Hi, Trelja: As usual, you've hit the nail on the head and fairly described the dilemma that many of us are facing. I've been delaying a buying decision for the past 6 months, thinking one format or the other will emerge triumphant. From the technical articles I've read, SACD appears to be the better format (rather like Beta vs. VHS). Sony is certainly trying to induce us to buy SACD by dropping its prices, but from a practical viewpoint, the REAL issue that will decide the victor is software. Right now, there is precious little software in either SACD or DVD-A format, and much of what is available is re-releases of older recordings. Given the enormous amount of older, 2-channel recorded material (LP's and CD's) that forms the collection of most serious listeners, it's unlikely that multi-channel will predominate the market for quite some time. Given what you and I have said, the situation has forced me to give much more serious NEAR-TERM consideration to an alternative solution: buy a really good upsampling / DAC unit, such as the Perpetual P-1A and P-3A units. I had a long phone conversation recently with Walter Underwood (Underwoodwally), who is one of the owners of Perpetual Technologies (and former owner of Hi-Fi Buys in Atlanta, which closed about 5 years ago). Walter had a number of very interesting comments about the ability of a really good upsampler, which requires very sophisticated interpolation algorithms, to almost match the playback ability of SACD. Perpetual Technologies is selling their two units via Internet, so the prices are very reasonable. Their systems currenty for speaker correction (code is available for a limited number of speakers, with more to come), and will soon have room correction capability as well. To provide room correction, they will rent you a calibrated CD and microphone, which you use to record about 1 minute of music. You then upload the sample to them over the Internet, and about 3 hours later you come back to their site and download the room correction code into your Perpetual Technologies unit. Slick. The total cost of their system, with the additional cost to get customized room correction code, will be under $2000. It's got me thinking really hard about doing this as a first step to get the most from my large collection of LP's and CD's, and deferring a decision about SACD or DVD-A for another 1-2 years until the market shakes out. What do you think?
jdwek
84 posts
 
That room correction unit is certainly good news. I have listened to a sigtech offering room correction and the difference was greater than most other hardware tweaks we use.

JD
djohn
25 posts
 
Hello Trejla:

This was a very good post, and it is one of the main reasons that I am sticking to LP's only.

Has CD technology, and or any future potential improvements been fully implemented yet ???

I am very wary of a new format contrary to what all of the reviewers, and or individual folk are writing.

David
sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
I have the same feeling Trelja, especially the part about the "new" format being obsolete a few years from now. We have already seen this. In 1996 HDCD came out and was the technology that was going to make Red Book obsolete. Then Red Book 24/96 DACs came out which sound for the most part as good as HDCD, so HDCD is already all but forgotten.


Not saying which format is better, if I were a betting man, I would place my money on DVD-A for the simple reason that it fits closely with the natural progression of Red Book technology. As I understand it, DVD-A is basically 24bit/192Mhz. These DAC chips like everything else will be cheaper in the future and will soon replace the 24/96 chips in the typical mass market $199.00 DVD player. Even in non-DVD, the budget Cambridge Audio D500SE CD Player already has a 24/192 DAC. I see 24/192 DVD-A no different than CD players progressing from 16 bit, to 18, 20, and now 24 bit; and SACD while better in the opinion of many (I have never heard it) could go the way of HDCD by the time 24/192 is replace someday by something like Red Book 26/384 or whatever is next.

sugarbrie
3,854 posts
 
PS: What I left out was that Joe and Jane Consumer is most likely never to have more then one system; which will most likely be a HT system. Their DVD player and HT system is also their CD player and audio system. So when (if) 24/196 DVD-A is standard in all DVD players, there will be a market of hundreds of million of consumers to sell these CDs to, not just a handful of audiophiles interested in SACD or something else.
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