The "DSD Revolution" Still Coming, or a Bust?

Beave, Not to quibble, as I have no beef with you personally, yet, they didn't "aid" in anything... the music industry purposely, and willfully stopped manufacturing vinyl completely to force CD sales of music to improve, end of story. I was there.

 

Me too Rob. Right through the 70s, 80 and 90s. Vinyl quality tanked - technology brought us digital replay thanks to Philips and Sony and the rest is history.

The "machine" didn't do anything different to vinyl than they're doing to CD now, except they're churning out overpriced vinyl for the same old titles all over again. Quality still seems to be suspect and all of this new vinyl brings us albums brought from recordings made digitally (ancient reissues aside).

CD/digital was always going to win out. Classical music buffs had long wanted LP done with - CD brought them 78 minutes of distortion free clarity and with fewer breaks in movements/symphonies and no more of that increasing distortion as each LP side came to a close that ruined many a piece. I used vinyl till 2011, when I gave it up and gladly gave it away to charity. Your beef isn't with the medium, it's with a bunch of suits.

 

Huh? CD sales exploded in the second half of the '80s, while plenty of vinyl was still being manufactured.

Cassette is what "killed" vinyl though, not the CD. The labels couldn't justify continuing to manufacture three different formats, especially with one of them (vinyl) in massive sales decline. Nobody wanted to be the last buggywhip maker...

 

I don't believe cassettes killed vinyl at all.

I was buying new LP's for $7.99 when the average price of a new CD was $18.99. Vinyl had to go; but, not because of sound quality and durability. People were promised perfect sound quality, durability (as if they didn't need to take care of them) and portability with CD. Out of those three, they got portability and learned the hard way they didn't get the other two, far too late in the game.

 

Wave Trace! Now THAT sounds like an interesting idea!

Ok, I obviously am not phrasing my posts correctly. Sorry bout that. I have no need to be antagonistic here. All your points are well taken.
I will now open up a bottle of Northwest Microbrew, kick my feet up and just read the posts.
the beave

 

I don't really care what you believe. The sales figures were a matter of public record:

Huh? I don't have a single CD I can't still play, almost 30 years after buying - and playing the heck - out of them. When it comes to durability, they stomp vinyl into the dirt. Cassette too, for that matter..

As for fidelity, I've never been able to take vinyl seriously as a format. Especially mass-market pressings, which are consistently plagued with a list of massive, readily apparent fidelity issues. A portable CD player spinning a scratched up used CD bests that garbage when it comes to fidelity.

 

Well ... all the way back to June on the OP. It's a great question. My answer IMO: DSD is dead. "Long live DSD" does not follow. It's really truly dead, not just mostly dead. Lossless redbook 44/16 PCM or better (up to 192/24) DRM free open format (basically FLAC although there will be ALAC as a well) wins. Every other format will wither on the vine. Why? It's an open portable standard and it packs in enough data that any more data will not be audible.

DSD technically was an interesting and maybe elegant idea. The concept was that since sigma-delta ADC/DACs were becoming the architecture of choice at the time SACD/DSD was contemplated why bother with multi-bit streams at all? For those unfamiliar with sigma-delta there is a well established tradeoff you can make: High rate low resolution (usually 1 bit or 2-3 bits at several MHz) or low rate high resolution (initially 44.1 kHz 16 bits for Redbook CD). Sigma-delta ADCs over-sample at high rate, and at that time usually 1 bit. Then after that the digitally subsample it to wide 16/24 bit which needs a another stage of digital filters and losses. Then on the DAC side they do it all over again, interpolate up to a high rate which requires more digital filtering and than out. So the idea was simply to remove all those 1bit-to-16/24 bit conversions with the losses and just stay in 1-bit the whole way through, in the ADC, the mixing, mastering, media (SACD) and playback.

But they added strict copy protection, nothing to do with technical. Ergo it wouldn't play on legacy hardware. So huge investment needed by consumer for marginal benefit. Result small market. The beauty of the new F/ALAC formats is they play natively on an iPhone, and everything in-between. If you don't like the big file size, you can easily downconvert it. Game over. With Pono and 2 other stores set to have 2M tracks plus of redbook or better lossless I don't see any other competition in the lossless market. If you're in love with an actual CD, you can cut your own.

So what about quality? Well my quick review of the best architectures from Wolfson, TI (Burr Brown) and ESS show they are all variants of multi-bit SD. So the 1-bit stream is being bested by the technical wizardry of the latest architectures. Believe me they would stay 1-bit if it was better they don't care about the architecture only results. Really the input format doesn't matter as long as the digital information there. Once the market converges on common rates and widths the investment in improving the DACs will be more focused and it just gets better. I for one am glad 30 years of format wars is over and we can get back to music.

 

To approach one point at a time, that chart is of profit, not volumes. Everyone should know by now that an Lp record was/is more expensive to produce and deliver (cost) than a CD and therefore there was much greater profit (price) initially in the later. Recall the retail price of a record vs. a CD during the overlap years (roughly one half). Not to mention that digital as a format ironically and literally destroyed the local record stores in time (sharing).

And I have never taken the compact disc seriously. I don't know of a single CD near 30 years old that I would care to listen to (due to lack of fidelity in a MINT condition). I have tons of Lps from as far back as the long-play format goes that still offer excellent high fidelity, not to mention many are probably worth a small fortune.

Cassette (prerecorded) was the bas*ard step child of the 8-track tape, it sold, but otherwise was useless.

Durability/performance...hummm. If you treat a Porsche like a pick up truck it will never last. Try to treat a pick up truck like a Porsche and you will never last!

 

"Ergo" means "therefore" - but the two statements are not related. There is no copy protecton with DSD - the pit modulation and 80-bit encryption was added to the SACD.

Yes, SACD needed new hardware - it would have needed new hardware without copy protection.

 

That chart seems to indicate sales volume, not profits. Units would also be interesting. To look at units one would need to divide each set by the average sale price of items in that set. given the relative ASPs, the LP would have an even steeper drop on a unit chart compared to the rise of CDs.

 

An obviously angered response; so, I'll opt not to respond to it beyond this.

 

Am I still missing something? It measures dollars (grossed?) over time with no mention of units but, I agree, not profits. So what is true, is I have no idea what that chart represents except CDs=more money. Is that like, a good thing?

 

Brilliant.

 

Hard to argue with your post.

 

Oh ****.....................!!!!!!!!!!!!
Breaking open another brew......let the fireworks begin.....
the beave

 

Not for me.

 

I think you have made the wiser choice here... I should follow in your example, cheers!

 

Beg to differ. They got sound quality and often excellent at that. What they weren't used to was finding out by just how far their existing systems fell short or how much distortion they'd been used to with vinyl.

Most of the CDs I have from the early days are excellent. Cold? Harsh? Not by a long way.

 

All I know is that DSD downloads sound amazing for the most part and modern DACs are including DSD playback. Not sure I care how widely adopted it becomes as long as good music is available.

 

Good music Lee...but NOT familiar music. Deal killer in regards to wide adaption.

 

Maybe we never get to wide adoption.

 

Then it is a vicious circle..no wide adoption..no major catalogs.

Look at what just hit the market..the McCartney, Harrison, Lennon catalogs..the S&G..all archived to 96/192 PCM.

DSD was not even up for consideration. And S&G are Columbia (Sony) artists. A joke really,so I think the charade
of thousands of major label DSD masters has to end.

 

It's a glass half empty view but I think the glass may be half full as Sony can release a lot of DSD files from Miles Davis' catalog and others. But it is a legitimate question if they actually will. They do have lots of DSD masters.

The chance for more hirez more likely rests on Apple getting into 24 bit which several insiders have told me they have been working on for years...yet nothing has happened. The hope is that Pono maybe helps.

 

I don't see it half empty or half full...it is just the cold stark reality. The hype in August 2013 is that there would be 10,000 DSD downloads. There are 250 rock and pop titles currently available.

Even if Sony releases ALL their Miles and similar, that is still one label. They are NOT mastering their legacy artists to DSD anymore. Springsteen and S&G were done in PCM. This is proof to me
they were blowing smoke. If DSD transfers were done, and they soon become available, I will eat my words, but Bob Ludwig was very, very transparent and revealing about the mastering.

Forget Apple. Pono maybe a catalyst for some things I agree.

 

I suspect if Apple went in, the controversy of life or death for DSD would be over... it's about market coverage and catalog diversity, isn't it?