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That could just mean more channels
(8.1 channel surround is one of Blu-
Ray’s options), or it could also mean less
compression. Or no compression.
But here we’re talking about the
video disc. Could one of the new formats
also be tomorrow’s higher fidelity audio
discs?
Sony believes it can, and that seems
to be the reason for its lapsing interest in
its own SACD format. Of course SACD
lives on thanks to audiophile labels, but
Sony Music has its eye on something
else: Direct Stream Digital on a Blu-Ray
disc.
Sure enough, DSD, the audio format
of SACD, is one of Blu-Ray’s options.
So will the Blu-Ray disc replace SACD,
prompting audiophiles (and videophiles)
to buy yet another sort of digital player?
Not so fast!
Though Blu-Ray looks like the prob-
able winner of the battle because of its
larger capacity, the DVD Forum has its
own plans. The DVD Forum is, you may
recall, the guardian of the other super
disc, DVD-Audio. That disc was made
possible by Meridian’s MLP (Meridian
Lossless Packing) compression system.
Is MLP one of the standards for HD
DVD? Well, duh!
But who needs it?
Film lovers want a disc with the
greatest possible capacity, in order to
get the best possible picture. However
audiophiles would seem to have all they
could want already. Either DVD-A
or SACD can give you an hour and a
quarter of high resolution 5.1 channel
surround sound. Who needs a disc with
15 Gb of space? Or 30 Gb? Or more?
We can get a clue by looking at
another of the DVD Forum’s formats,
the Dual-Disc. DVD-A had been done
in by its incompatibility with other audio
players, so why not (belatedly) bring out
a hybrid disc?
SACD had gone to hybrid CD/SACD
formats by using a dual-layer disc, and
that has become the norm for Super
Audio. The DVD Forum has brought
out its own hybrid. Think of it as a
DVD-A disc and a conventional CD
glued back to back. Just put it into the
player the right way up, and you’re good
to go. Unfortunately the thicker Dual-
Disc jams in many players, and some
manufacturers warn that playing one
will void the warranty. Jamming in a car
player is all but guaranteed. However a
new format won’t have that problem.
Not surprisingly, manufacturers
mainly don’t care about the audiophile
world, and for the most part they’ve used
the Dual-Disc format for something
else: a CD on one side, and a video DVD
on the other side. Clearly, the consumer
gets more than by downloading the
music with BitTorrent or eMule.
There’s reason to expect similar
products on either Blu-Ray or HD
DVD.
By the way, hybrid video/audio
discs already exist. Some music DVDs
have both Dolby Digital (compressed)
surround sound and the option of
uncompressed PCM sound that is liter-
ally CD quality. With the extra space
on tomorrow’s discs, both picture and
sound could potentially make a great
leap forward.
Just don’t expect to find a player for
sale in a real store for a while.
ULTRA HIGH FIDELITY Magazine 51