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DVD
audio is on the horizon. The question is, will it be commercially successful?
In 1985, Sony and Philips
jointly released their digital marvel known as the compact disc. Soon after,
millions of people worldwide
began dumping their large
collections of vinyl LPs in favor of the digital "perfection" offered by
these new shiny five-inch wonders.
Despite the fact that CD
prices were relatively high, early digital recordings as well as remasterings
sounded poor, and early players
were brash and unmusical,
the compact disc not only survived but thrived. Why did consumers so readily
accept an initially (and
many would say still) inferior
medium like the compact disc, and why might DVD audio not be so lucky?
No More Scratches, No More
Pops
The average consumer of commercial
recordings saw the compact disc as a significant improvement over the long
playing record -
compact discs were relatively
immune to mishandling, and surface noise and wear were non-existent since
there was no physical
contact between the CD's
surface and the reading mechanism. Convenience was another major asset
of the compact disc as the
discs themselves required
no real maintenance and could be played in small portable players and car
stereos. In addition, compact
discs were more visually
attractive and technologically intriguing than Edison's one hundred year
old invention. While audiophiles
balked at the compact disc's
inferior sonics, most consumers reveled in the joys of the new medium.
The only drawback was that a
significant monetary investment
in software and hardware was required in order to take advantage of the
compact disc. Nonetheless,
slowly but surely, people
made the investment and migrated their collections of recordings from analogue
to digital. Consumers were
happy, electronics manufacturers
were happy, and the record companies were ecstatic as the compact disc
revitalized a sagging
mid-80s music industry.
Fast forward to 1997: DVD
video is a commercial reality, with DVD audio on the horizon. Will DVD's
advantages over the compact
disc give consumers the
necessary incentive to make DVD audio a commercial success?
DVD Audio: Boon or Bust?
While the compact disc had
several appealing advantages over the LP, can the same be said of DVD audio
when compared to
compact disc? What are the
major benefits of DVD? The higher storage capacity of a DVD disc means
that such a disc has the
potential to contain more
music than its CD counterpart. Unfortunately, the fact that record companies
rarely even come close to fully
utilizing the CD's capacity
of approximately eighty minutes of recorded music, leaves one wondering
whether their utilization of DVD
discs will be much better.
While a DVD disc does have the potential to contain more recorded music,
hopes are that this larger
storage capacity will be
used to store digital data with significantly more resolution than that
offered by the compact disc. If the
prayers of audiophiles are
answered, DVD audio should address many of the sonic failings of the 16
bit/44.1 kHz Sony/Philips red
book standard with a new
standard boasting a 24-bit word length and a 96 kHz sampling rate. While
the prospect of 24 bit/96kHz
digital audio is very exciting
for the audio enthusiast, the question is will the large percentage of
consumers who listen using
inexpensive rack systems
or portable players, care? Most of the people I know who fall into this
category are blissfully happy with
the sound of compact discs
and don't need, or want, yet another new digital format promising better
sound.
Another potentially major
impediment to the success of the DVD audio disc, could be its lack of compatibility
with existing compact
disc hardware. While it
appears that the current crop of DVD players fully supports the playback
of red book CDs, it is not clear
whether the, as yet unspecified,
DVD audio disc will be compatible with standard CD players. Without this
level of compatibility, DVD
audio discs could languish
on retailers shelves, as consumers refuse to invest in the hardware required
to play them. Of course, this
assumes that the discs will
even be on retailers shelves. Given the large install base of CD playback
hardware and the problems
associated with dual inventory,
is there enough incentive for retailers to stock DVD audio discs at all?
The solution to the compatibility
problem is clearly the specification of a two-layer DVD disc, one layer
containing DVD-encoded data
and another containing data
conforming to the red book standard. Such a disc would allow retailers
to stock a single disc satisfying
the requirements of both
CD and DVD software consumers, and allow consumers to acquire the new discs
while not rendering their
current hardware obsolete.
While a two-layer disc is being considered by the industry, it remains
to be seen whether the industry's
executives agree that backward
compatibility with CD hardware is crucial to the success of DVD audio.
Hope For The Future
Audiophiles have suffered
long enough with the inadequate word length and sampling rate of the CD
standard dictated by mid-80's
technology. With an appropriate
specification of a DVD audio "superdisc", offering a 24-bit word length
and a 96kHz sampling rate,
we may soon have a digital
audio disc that fulfills the promises made by Sony and Philips more than
a decade ago. Unfortunately,
the fact that the average
consumer would appear to have no use for such a disc casts doubts in my
mind as to its commercial
viability. These doubts
could be lifted, however, with the specification of a disc that offers
bi-directional compatibility with the current
CD standard. This would
allow retailers to maintain a single inventory of discs for playback on
both CD and DVD hardware, and would
allow consumers to purchase
discs compatible with both existing and future hardware. If compatibility
with existing hardware is not
part of the DVD audio specification,
then DVD audio discs may simply become a niche-market item, produced only
by specialty
labels catering to audiophile
consumers. This would undoubtedly result in limited availability and choice
of titles. We can only hope
that industry executives
see the light and finally give us a commercially viable medium with the
potential for superior sonics. All we
can do is wait and see.
-- Dan Webster |
