18 comments

• 

  PS3 Owner

  1 year ago

  Good article, but I disagree with the assertion that it took 10 years for the audio CD to take off. It may have taken them that long to surpass LP sales, but audio CDs on their own were a rapid success with audiophiles, with media and players available at mass-market prices as early as 1984.
  reply
• 

  keylimesoda

  1 year ago

  Quick correction: SACD playback on a PS3 does not require HDMI, you can do it over the normal stereo out (I use a PS3 as my primary SACD player).
  
  While we're at it, the PS3 offers some very nice CD upsampling options--something normally only found on far more expensive CD players.
  reply
• 

  vex

  1 year ago

  "Is a war fought if nobody cares?"
  
  I guess audiophiles and surroundophiles rate as "nobody". For those that were there in the trenches, the war was a bloody one. Classical music fanatics (of which I am not one) won that war, because there are TONS of classical SACDs in print right now, both in stereo and surround.
  
  The mass market flocked to portability via compressed audio formats and couldn't give a flying fig about audio quality or surround sound. The rules of the game changed in a big way such that DVD-A and SACD really had no hope to succeed beyond their niche markets.
  reply
• 

  Hans Nayron

  1 year ago

  The biggest thing hurting DVD-A is the lack of titles. I love the sound of DVD audio but I only own 5 discs (compared to 3000 Cds/1000 LPs). If the majors and indies would release more titles it would be my first choice over vinyl.
  reply
• 

  DVD-A owner

  1 year ago

  The real problem with these next generation audio players is that your average joe can't see the benefit. People didn't upgrade from LP to CD because they sounded better - on the contrary, audiophiles in general still use LPs when they want superior sound. It was the convenience of a much smaller format, that didn't need turned over, and had many other benefits to it.
  
  Now, the new convenient music format is the mp3 (or aac, or wma, or whatever), and so that's where the standard consumer goes. He/she lacks the inclination to buy the expensive audio equipment it takes to hear the difference, because he/she is perfectly happy with the way things are now. It takes a real audiophile (read: snob) to go out of their way.
  
  So frankly I don't think either of these formats will ever gain ground. Higher definition audio will only come when it is convenient as an mp3 and fits on an nth generation iPod.
  reply
• 

  Mike

  1 year ago

  Format wars are nearly done. The last format will be "the internet."
  reply
• 

  Greg Andrew

  1 year ago

  As the previous poster said, it certainly did not take compact discs 10 years to take off - not even close.
  
  First off, the cd player wasn't even introduced in the US until 1983 (It had been introduced abroad a year earlier) By 1986, people were buying 3 million players and 53 million discs a year. By 1990, worldwide disc sales were approaching one billion a year.
  
  The CD player was, to quote a 1985 Time Magazine article, "the fastest selling machine in home electronics history."
  reply
• 

  Devindra

  1 year ago

  Wow, some excellent comments here! Let me respond to a few:
  
  Keylimesoda: You're right about SACD playback over the PS3 analog ports, but I didn't mention those because that only supports stereo output. Thanks for the correction! HDMI is still the only way to get the full benefits of SACD from the PS3 though.
  
  Vex: I didn't mean to offend anybody, but you have to admit, far fewer in the general public know about these formats than they did about HD DVD and Bluray when that war started out. It's the fault of the manufacturers who never really publicized DVD A or SACD.
  
  PS3Owner and Greg: You're right about those stats, I think I just looked up the wrong article when trying to source that information. I was just a kid in the 80s, so I didn't have any first-hand knowledge ;)
  
  DVD-A Owner: I'm in total agreement with you. With the music companies focusing on loudness in CD quality, and a public ignorant to how that ruins their music, there's little chance we'll see either of these formats truly take off...
  reply
• 

  Greg Andrew

  1 year ago

  Oh, and the total number of dvd audio and sacd discs sold in 2006 - the seventh year both formats were available (SACD having been introduced in 1999, DVD-Audio in 2000) - was 1 million in the United States. There were more vinyl records sold that year.
  
  These are only the latest two of the many new audio formats that have failed in the 25 years since the cd was introduced. The early 1990s saw the format war between DCC, DAT, and Minidisc - a war that nobody won, since consumers refused to move to the new digital formats from the analog cd
  reply
• 

  Jim

  1 year ago

  To make the comparison of these formats easy for anyone, I usually point out the sampling rate. The more samples you take over a given period of time the better the reproduction of the original music. Not unlike the resolution of a photograph measured by the number of pixels in a digital camera for a single exposure. The more the better. So, the approximate sampling rates for the formats are:
  
  CD - 44 thousand samples every second (44,000)
  DVD A - 96 to 192 thousand samples every second (192,000)
  SACD - 2 million samples every second (2,000,000)
  
  To me, the SACD is far and away the best sounding.
  reply
• 

  Raziel

  1 year ago

  Very good article; but i think it should be mentioned that the current war is the third one of its kind...Anyone remembers about the other next generation Audio format war from the early 1990s?
  
  I'm talking about the DAT (Digital Audio Tape) vs the Mini-Disc, the exact same story back then; two rivaling formats in a market where CDs already dominated and satisfied the needs for the average consumer and beyond; (and Cassette tapes were still common enough to market a tape based format). And again there were two formats totally uncalled for and therefore, mostly ignored.
  
  The only plus of those formats is that they allowed digital audio recording in a time when analog mix tapes were still the way to go; CD burners were unheard of, and thus some people found them appealing as a private recording, primary from their CD collection.
  
  I guess that third is the charm, right? To all consumer electronics companies: please learn from the past and stop doing this to your customers.
  reply
• 

  me

  1 year ago

  Do you want a simple explaination of the 1-bit audio approach? Think of a light bulb that cannot be dimmed - it only works at one voltage, and gives off a constant brightness. However you can switch it on/off as fast as you like. Do this fast enough and no-one can see it. If it is off half the time, you get 50% brightness, but you can adjust the timings for any amount from 0% to 100%. So you have complete control.
  
  A normal CD uses 16 bit sound levels - the sound wave can be any of 65536 levels, and that level is measured at 40-something kilohertz. If you use one bit, but a much higher sampling frequency, you can get the same effect, and SACD goes higher again. Any ugly effects of this switching (dithering) happens at frequencies way beyond what your ear can hear, but you would see them on an oscilloscope.
  reply
• 

  RIF

  1 year ago

  @Raziel
  DAT and Mini-Disc was not in competition. Mini-disc and Philips DCC (Digital Compact Cassette) came at the same time and wied for the same market. They both offered some way of recording compressed music. It was obvious from the start that DCC would go nowhere, and it indeed died shortly afterwards. Minidisc got a bit further, but never got much success.
  
  DAT came before these and was the first possibility to digital record sound in a CD quality (actually just above).
  
  Remember in those days the recordable CD had not yet been invented by Philips and a single CD was 3-5 times larger than harddisk capacity. Therefore DAT had a chance. But the chance was blown by very expensive DAT tape decks and 1-time copy DRM.
  reply
• 

  emarkay

  1 year ago

  I for one will never forget the Elcassette. :)
  If only the greed of the executives was replaced by the cooperation of the engineers, we'd all have the best possible world of technology.
  reply
• 

  Troy

  1 year ago

  >>>"CD - 44 thousand samples every second (44,000)
  >>>"DVD A - 96 to 192 thousand samples every second (192,000)
  >>>"SACD - 2 million samples every second (2,000,000)"
  
  
  This is waaaaay too simplified. One must also take into account how BITS each of those samples uses:
  
  CD == 44,000*16 == 704 kbit/s per channel
  DVDA== 192,000*24 == 4600 kbit/s per channel
  SACD==2,000,000*1 == 2000 kbit/s per channel
  
  Thus in terms of raw data captured, the DVD-Audio has more than the SACD. I don't know if that means DVD-A sounds better? I only know that there are more bits captured than the SACD.
  
  
  
  >>>"It was obvious from the start that DCC would go
  >>>nowhere, and it indeed died shortly afterwards.
  >>>Minidisc got a bit further, but never got much success."<<<
  
  
  Why is it it obvious that Digital Compact Cassette would fail? To me it seems like an obvious upgrade..... you can continue using your 1000+ library of analog cassettes, rather than throw them away, and enjoy better sound with digital upgrades.
  
  I like backwards-compatibility.
  reply
• 

  Alex

  9 months ago

  1982. CDs first hit the market around October of 1982, if I recall correctly. You are right, though, it did take a while for the format to overtake LPs and cassettes -- somewhere around 1988 or '89, wasn't it?
  reply
• 

  JRC

  7 months ago

  Sony should make peace with Toshiba by dumping sacd and giving all blu-ray players the ability to play DVD-A discs. Music busines needs to be in the DVD space for albums/concert content in a big way. iTunes is great for singles but I don't want to buy albums there...
  reply
• 

  Josh

  4 months ago

  I don't know when this article was published, but I know of many computers that can play SACD's.
  
  On a sidenote, the Who's Tommy sounds amazing on SACD (they cleaned up and brought Keith's drumming out moreso than any previous release)
  reply