I hope I am not alone in this, but it seems to me that we need to get organized here & start either petitioning the labels/artists for HighRez releases or else boycotting the lossy releases.
The trouble here of course with both these options is that it will get twisted around.
With the first option, we will be fobbed off with one of 2 excuses:
1 - It's down to the artist, or
2 - The labels will not allow it.
I have been given both reasons for the lack. Yet with Option 1, I know for a certain fact that at least one label - One Little Indian - have been told by both Warners & Universal that they will not release DVD-A or SACD, but only 'standard' DVD-Video. But - when you push the labels they claim it is all down to the artist.
Both arguments cannot be right.
With the boycotting option, this will inevitably get twisted as 'there is no demand for surround'.
What to do - imagine the furore if the stereo heads were told that they could only have MP3 releases. You'd never hear the end of it. yet we are expected to be grateful for Dobly Dirgital titles - a format that loses 11/12 of the original data.

We hear you and feel your pain - just look at Dual Disc. Whilst there are some DVD-A'son this format, everything from SONY BMG is DD which has me asking, why not then release it on a Hybrid SACD so we can hear quality, not crap?

Mark

I hope I am not alone in this, but it seems to me that we need to get organized here & start either petitioning the labels/artists for HighRez releases or else boycotting the lossy releases.
The trouble here of course with both these options is that it will get twisted around.
With the first option, we will be fobbed off with one of 2 excuses:
1 - It's down to the artist, or
2 - The labels will not allow it.
I have been given both reasons for the lack. Yet with Option 1, I know for a certain fact that at least one label - One Little Indian - have been told by both Warners & Universal that they will not release DVD-A or SACD, but only 'standard' DVD-Video. But - when you push the labels they claim it is all down to the artist.
Both arguments cannot be right.
With the boycotting option, this will inevitably get twisted as 'there is no demand for surround'.
What to do - imagine the furore if the stereo heads were told that they could only have MP3 releases. You'd never hear the end of it. yet we are expected to be grateful for Dobly Dirgital titles - a format that loses 11/12 of the original data.

Let me give you the plain and simple of my beliefs of why there are lossy discs. Low demand. High-resolution releases are simply a niche product and will continue to be until
1. Hifi can be achieved in extremely aesthetically pleasing ways
2. Hifi can be acquired passively I.E. with a television set

Most of the general public - throughout the world - not just the U.S. don't see audio nearly as important as having a crisp visual experience. Therefore, there is low demand for these high resolution releases as there is not a market for it. Now you ask, why don't the producers just make high resolution anyway... because its more time consuming and costly. Money and convenience are the central issues to why pop or mainstream rock isn't high resolution.

Money and convenience are the central issues to why pop or mainstream rock isn't high resolution.

Good point, but I don't think it would cost any more to create a 5.1 mix, then encode it in MLP Vs just DD - the mix is the expensive time consuming part, not the encoding...

Mark

Let me give you the plain and simple of my beliefs of why there are lossy discs. Low demand. High-resolution releases are simply a niche product and will continue to be until
1. Hifi can be achieved in extremely aesthetically pleasing ways
2. Hifi can be acquired passively I.E. with a television set

Most of the general public - throughout the world - not just the U.S. don't see audio nearly as important as having a crisp visual experience. Therefore, there is low demand for these high resolution releases as there is not a market for it. Now you ask, why don't the producers just make high resolution anyway... because its more time consuming and costly. Money and convenience are the central issues to why pop or mainstream rock isn't high resolution.

This is sophistry, IMHO.
whilst I might agree with point (1), there is no way on Gods earth anyone is ever going to tell me you can get HiFi through a freaking TV set!!!
Never.
As far as Audio not being important? Pur-leeze! The fastest way there is to make a film or production look poor is to use crappy audio and equally the easiest way to make a poor film look good is to use High Quality sound.

Expense?
No, sorry - wrong again.
The remix is what costs the money, and as it's not mixed in Dobly, but encoded to it from PCM, the argument is null & void again.
All I can say in closure is imagine the furore if the stereo heads were told "MP3 only. It's too expensive to give you lossless".

This is sophistry, IMHO.
whilst I might agree with point (1), there is no way on Gods earth anyone is ever going to tell me you can get HiFi through a freaking TV set!!!
Never.
As far as Audio not being important? Pur-leeze! The fastest way there is to make a film or production look poor is to use crappy audio and equally the easiest way to make a poor film look good is to use High Quality sound.

Expense?
No, sorry - wrong again.
The remix is what costs the money, and as it's not mixed in Dobly, but encoded to it from PCM, the argument is null & void again.
All I can say in closure is imagine the furore if the stereo heads were told "MP3 only. It's too expensive to give you lossless".

Wow, okay. I think I was misunderstood.

I'd like to make a clarification that it should be E.G. with a television set. By that I meant that customers aren't simply going to buy a hifi system to purchase along with their televisions. Hifi audio needs to be available passively, not necessarily within a television set. By providing a decent hifi system with a television purchase, consumers might be more inclined to use more high quality audio discs/cables/players what have you.

Second point - I did not say audio was not important. I had said "Most of the general public - throughout the world - not just the U.S. don't see audio nearly as important as having a crisp visual experience." If audio wasn't important, why would I have bought my hifi system...


Third point - I guess my knowledge of how a high resolution disc is made is skewed. But even so, you guys say that the mixing is what costs the money. So, in the end it does cost more money to create these high resolution releases. However, I'm not entirely clear on this point, and if someone could more clearly explain why uncompressed audio should be more available - I'd be up in arms right now :D

MaD, it is quite possible I got you completely wrong - please accept my apologies for diving in.
It's just that I am seriously passionate about High Resolution/Lossless.

The point about most people not considering Audio to be important I still disagree with. It's just that IMHO they don't know they think it is important. The fastest turn-off for any film is bad sound. Doesn't matter if it is because it is muddy/distorted.out-of-sync or just plain dreadful - you will hear bad sound way before you decide the picture is perhaps not as clear as last week's film you saw. Trust me on this one, it's a well-known trick in the POST business. Bad movie? Poor camera work? Get the Audio sounding great & people think the picture is better than it is. It's far simpler to fool the eye than the ear - why do you think we use 30fps/60fps for film, even HD is only 60 frames interlaced, 30 frames progressive - yet Audio is 48,000 samples per second. Reduce this to 24,000 and you will hear the difference instantly.

Moving back to the main point though.
A High Resolution disc is essentially anything that is at 24/48 or higher - although Sony seem to think 16/48 counts as "High Resolution" mainly I suspect because it is higher than CD resolution of 16/44.1 (The AC/DC "Back In Black" DualDisc was touted as "Advanced Resolution Stereo" when it is little better than CD).
But I am drifting off topic again. You must stop me doing that, or I'll never get to the end o this post.....
When the record is mixed in the studio, it will either be on 2" Analogue Tape, or digital. If it is digital, it is going to be at least 24/44.1, often 24/48 or even 24/96. 24-bit audio is seriously better than CD quality. To take this down to Dolby Digital actually ADDS to the work required, as the encoding process has to then be monitored at the encoder, andchecked back again to ensure it is drop-out & glitch free. Plus it then needs submitting to Dolby Labs for verification to ensure they are happy with the encoding and will allow logo usage. The process takes our nice, clean pristine 24/48 audio and then reduces the data rates (in stereo) from 2300Kbps (approx) all the way down to 192Kbps. You simply cannot throw away that much data & still seriously expect it to sound the same, and additionally this end result is not what was heard in the studio, so is not what the artist or the producer wanted you to hear. It's a compression algorithm's approximation of what it thinks you don't need to be present in the bitstream because even though it is missing, your brain will attempt to reproduce the missing information. Once you know what you're listening for you can hear the data reduction.
Yes, there is redundancy in PCM files. No doubt about it. You can indeed reduce file sizes without losing information. All you need is a lossless compression system (FLAC, MLP, DTS-HD MAS etc) and the reconstructed waveform will be identical to the original input (MLP verifies this at the encode).
Why should this be available?
Summed up, because this is what the producers heard in the studio. They do not mix in DD or DTS, so why should we be forced to listen to it like this? You lose dynamics, you lose punch & clarity, you lose detail & definition.
Or let me put it another way: Do you prefer VHS, DVD or HD Video?
And why.
If you - as I suspect - prefer HD over DVD over VHS, then this is the visual equivalent. Now you have gotten used to DVD/HD, do you feel like going back to VHS?
Do you use Camcorders? If so, what looks better - DV or Phone cams?

Final point.
My Bank Manager asked us the exact same questions when we were setting up the business. He wanted to understand why High Resolution sound capability was important to us. SO we played him a series of tracks - to be exact, several different versions of the same track (mixed here).
24/96 MLP, 24/48 DTS & 24/48 Dolby Digital.
Start out with DD, then go to DTS, and finally MLP.
He picked the MLP as the most natural & best sounding one without knowing what any of this meant. It's a great way to show yourself the difference....
Go grab a properly authored DVD-A disc, one that has links to the lossy streams in the Video_TS as well as the High Rez streams. Bjork's "Medulla" works fine for this, amongst others. Play the DD. Then the DTS, then the MLP. DD is okay, until you hear the DTS. But when you play the MLP, it's like the aural equivalent of cleaning your windows.

Good point, but I don't think it would cost any more to create a 5.1 mix, then encode it in MLP Vs just DD - the mix is the expensive time consuming part, not the encoding...

Mark


I agree, however if you look at the recent Rush and Dream Theater releases, somebody thought that including documentaries, and useless other disposable extras are more important then the music quality itself, based on somebody's "opinion" that it's what the people want, or can be sod to a wider range of consumers. Clearly it is not what we on this board want.

Last time I've heard vinyl still outsold DVD-A and SACD combined, and that was a couple of years ago when both of these formats were doing better.

MaD, it is quite possible I got you completely wrong - please accept my apologies for diving in.
It's just that I am seriously passionate about High Resolution/Lossless.

The point about most people not considering Audio to be important I still disagree with. It's just that IMHO they don't know they think it is important. The fastest turn-off for any film is bad sound. Doesn't matter if it is because it is muddy/distorted.out-of-sync or just plain dreadful - you will hear bad sound way before you decide the picture is perhaps not as clear as last week's film you saw. Trust me on this one, it's a well-known trick in the POST business. Bad movie? Poor camera work? Get the Audio sounding great & people think the picture is better than it is. It's far simpler to fool the eye than the ear - why do you think we use 30fps/60fps for film, even HD is only 60 frames interlaced, 30 frames progressive - yet Audio is 48,000 samples per second. Reduce this to 24,000 and you will hear the difference instantly.

Moving back to the main point though.
A High Resolution disc is essentially anything that is at 24/48 or higher - although Sony seem to think 16/48 counts as "High Resolution" mainly I suspect because it is higher than CD resolution of 16/44.1 (The AC/DC "Back In Black" DualDisc was touted as "Advanced Resolution Stereo" when it is little better than CD).
But I am drifting off topic again. You must stop me doing that, or I'll never get to the end o this post.....
When the record is mixed in the studio, it will either be on 2" Analogue Tape, or digital. If it is digital, it is going to be at least 24/44.1, often 24/48 or even 24/96. 24-bit audio is seriously better than CD quality. To take this down to Dolby Digital actually ADDS to the work required, as the encoding process has to then be monitored at the encoder, andchecked back again to ensure it is drop-out & glitch free. Plus it then needs submitting to Dolby Labs for verification to ensure they are happy with the encoding and will allow logo usage. The process takes our nice, clean pristine 24/48 audio and then reduces the data rates (in stereo) from 2300Kbps (approx) all the way down to 192Kbps. You simply cannot throw away that much data & still seriously expect it to sound the same, and additionally this end result is not what was heard in the studio, so is not what the artist or the producer wanted you to hear. It's a compression algorithm's approximation of what it thinks you don't need to be present in the bitstream because even though it is missing, your brain will attempt to reproduce the missing information. Once you know what you're listening for you can hear the data reduction.
Yes, there is redundancy in PCM files. No doubt about it. You can indeed reduce file sizes without losing information. All you need is a lossless compression system (FLAC, MLP, DTS-HD MAS etc) and the reconstructed waveform will be identical to the original input (MLP verifies this at the encode).
Why should this be available?
Summed up, because this is what the producers heard in the studio. They do not mix in DD or DTS, so why should we be forced to listen to it like this? You lose dynamics, you lose punch & clarity, you lose detail & definition.
Or let me put it another way: Do you prefer VHS, DVD or HD Video?
And why.
If you - as I suspect - prefer HD over DVD over VHS, then this is the visual equivalent. Now you have gotten used to DVD/HD, do you feel like going back to VHS?
Do you use Camcorders? If so, what looks better - DV or Phone cams?

Final point.
My Bank Manager asked us the exact same questions when we were setting up the business. He wanted to understand why High Resolution sound capability was important to us. SO we played him a series of tracks - to be exact, several different versions of the same track (mixed here).
24/96 MLP, 24/48 DTS & 24/48 Dolby Digital.
Start out with DD, then go to DTS, and finally MLP.
He picked the MLP as the most natural & best sounding one without knowing what any of this meant. It's a great way to show yourself the difference....
Go grab a properly authored DVD-A disc, one that has links to the lossy streams in the Video_TS as well as the High Rez streams. Bjork's "Medulla" works fine for this, amongst others. Play the DD. Then the DTS, then the MLP. DD is okay, until you hear the DTS. But when you play the MLP, it's like the aural equivalent of cleaning your windows.

I think we all agree that high resolution discs are terrific. I, for one, would love to see more widespread use of DVD-Audio. High resolution essentially offers a more convenient way for them to experience vinyl (yes, I know vinyl is superior, but its frankly pretty darn inconvenient).

However, when you show any non-audiophile the costs it takes to put in for a good system - they cringe. I'm sad to say it, but even when they hear the difference - they just can't see themselves putting out the expense for such a system.

And it is the fact that hifidelity systems are not as widespread to their video counterparts. The lack of hi-fi systems means there will be less of a market for these high resolution releases. Therefore, distributing these extra formats for a relatively niche market can prove to be costly.

24-bit audio is seriously better than CD quality. To take this down to Dolby Digital actually ADDS to the work required, as the encoding process has to then be monitored at the encoder, andchecked back again to ensure it is drop-out & glitch free. Plus it then needs submitting to Dolby Labs for verification to ensure they are happy with the encoding and will allow logo usage.

Alrite, read your post again... Thought over this little passage several times and got to thinking.... Follow the money. Could it be that because Dolby charges more for MLP licensing that turns off studios from using this format? I can't imagine the licensing fees for SACD from Sony are very cheap either. Is this a feasible reason for why are music is lossless?

Meridian owns MLP, Dolby is only one of the licensees.

Meridian owns MLP, Dolby is only one of the licensees.

MLP is now owned by Dolby Laboratories.

I agree, however if you look at the recent Rush and Dream Theater releases, somebody thought that including documentaries, and useless other disposable extras are more important then the music quality itself, based on somebody's "opinion" that it's what the people want, or can be sod to a wider range of consumers. Clearly it is not what we on this board want.

Last time I've heard vinyl still outsold DVD-A and SACD combined, and that was a couple of years ago when both of these formats were doing better.

No it is not what we want on this board.

I guess it is because before music DVD-V, there was only VHS (and LD which I've had since 1996), and so even DD5.1 is a huge improvement over analogue tape. I never collected music videos (I think all up I might have 3?), but in about 2000 or 2001, industry surveys seemed to point to the fact that the highest selling titles were music videos on DVD-V not movies. And I guess that the studio executives made their decisions based on those marketing figures...

That said, I still think that DVD-A had the edge where it can contain video content, and play on any DVD player. It is unfortunate that marketing was so bad for the format where I was told by many sales people not to buy it unless you had a DVD-A player. Clearly they never read the cover notes...

Mark

@Mark.
The marketing for DVD-A wasn't just bad - it was appalling. Supposedly knowledgeable retail staff were clueless. I remember clearly buying my first DVD-A player to be told by the man in the store - "you don;t want one with the 6 analogue outputs. That's old. You want this one - it does Dolby Digital which is far better" in obvious blissful ignorance of the fact the player in question (the ill-fated Pioneer 565) also decoded DD.
There was no marketing at all, and very few of what I would term "desirable" titles unless US Back Catalogue material floated your boat. I don't mind that personally but if there had been a better push.......makes me think that the industry just didn't want it to succeed. Perhaps the thought of Studio quality audio in the hands of the consumer worries them, and DD with it's 11/12 data reduction is a somehow "safer" option for them.

@MaDequipment.
No, cost is not an issue (Weird. I thought I had replied to this previously) as the mixes are not done in DD. They are done at 24/48 usually, sometimes 24/96 although in my experience little is actually mixed at 96KHz, but it's upsampled to that resolution after the fact for mastering. Bob Katz will upsample even a CD mastering job to 24/96, and convert it down again for the final PMCD/DDP disc. With DVD-A, it's actually a few steps of the process taken out of the equation. So cost is not a factor - it has to be a deeper one. I just do not accept the standard wisdom of "there is no market for this". It's sophistry in the worst possible way. Of course there will be low sales (AKA "no Demand") if nobody knows it exists. It's the old, old problem - you cannot buy something you have no knowledge of. I still remember when the REM DVD-A were available, and there was this mass TV advertising in the UK. Mentioned the CD, the Music DVD - but the DVD-A were simply ignored completely.

I also do not accept that vinyl is superior in any way at all. Vinyl is not even better than a well-made CD - which is admittedly almost a thing of the past these days with the massive overcompression carried out. Try the same overcooking for a Vinyl master, and you'll end up with a pressing that cannot be cut because of the energy in the mids & upper frequencies. A stylus just would not be able to track it if the cutting head hadn't burned out in the first place trying to cut it.
What people think is better about vinyl is the way the format requires headroom to be left included for transients to come through properly. It's the headroom that is being regarded as making this 70 year old format that to be blunt has a very low S/N ratio, wears out every time you play it, the styli do not last, and after 5 plays it is far from sounding the same as it did when you first bought it. But it has an unmistakeable warmth to it that 16 bit audio at best finds difficult to match (although with work it can be done) because of the inherent fragility of the format, plus the fact early DAC were just not up to the task and let far too many aliasing artifacts slip through. Later discs in the main had by now been so badly overcompressed in the name of volume (thanks to the cursed invention of the CD changer. Prior to this, you'd forgotten the true loudness of the previous disc by the time you'd changed it, so it wasn't the issue it is now) that advances in DAC technology were largely outweighed by the problems created by the overcompression & insane limiting that is now commonplace.
But I am digressing, and I apologise for this.
to my ears, 24 bit audio is awesome.
24 bit audio in surround is even better - it gives me the impression that when I play these discs - even out of the sweet spot - that the artist is in the same room as I am. We should be allowed to hear these mixes as the artist & producer intended them to be heard. And that means High Resolution in Lossless form.

@MaDequipment.
No, cost is not an issue (Weird. I thought I had replied to this previously) as the mixes are not done in DD. They are done at 24/48 usually, sometimes 24/96 although in my experience little is actually mixed at 96KHz, but it's upsampled to that resolution after the fact for mastering. Bob Katz will upsample even a CD mastering job to 24/96, and convert it down again for the final PMCD/DDP disc. With DVD-A, it's actually a few steps of the process taken out of the equation. So cost is not a factor - it has to be a deeper one. I just do not accept the standard wisdom of "there is no market for this". It's sophistry in the worst possible way. Of course there will be low sales (AKA "no Demand") if nobody knows it exists. It's the old, old problem - you cannot buy something you have no knowledge of. I still remember when the REM DVD-A were available, and there was this mass TV advertising in the UK. Mentioned the CD, the Music DVD - but the DVD-A were simply ignored completely.



Thanks for pushing this subject. I did some extra research on the net and finally understand that it does not cost extra money to create these high resolution releases. However, you cannot argue with the fact that a large portion of the population does not own a hifi system. What is the point of buying a DVD-A disc if you're going to listen to it on some crappy sound system? Its like buying a high-octane gasoline for a Corolla. You simply will not enjoy the benefits of the product. So even if DVD-A/SACD was massively advertised to them as say, the iPhone, the public still would not buy the product.

Whilst there are some DVD-A'son this format, everything from SONY BMG is DD which has me asking, why not then release it on a Hybrid SACD so we can hear quality, not crap?Because then "the masses" couldn't listen to the material in surround. Most people don't even care about hirez and the prospect of multichannel (even lossy multichannel) is what gives them a real hard-on.

I think SACD would have fared better if, from the start, only hybrid discs were made and ALL were multi-channel. Multichannel really is the main selling point to J6P (or is that too much for J6P?), or should have been the focus for marketing purposes. And the higher quality would be a benefit for those who have HiFI systems, since higher audio quality isn't likely to be enough for the average consumer to buy into it. I really hope the PS3 gives new life to SACD!

I think SACD would have fared better if, from the start, only hybrid discs were made and ALL were multi-channel. Multichannel really is the main selling point to J6P (or is that too much for J6P?), or should have been the focus for marketing purposes. And the higher quality would be a benefit for those who have HiFI systems, since higher audio quality isn't likely to be enough for the average consumer to buy into it.
But J6P wouldn't have an SACD player to enjoy the multichannel tracks of an SACD. J6P will only have a standard DVD player, like most people, and the only multichannel he MIGHT be able to "enjoy" is that which comes from a DVD as lossy DD or DTS. J6P would only be able to listen to the CD tracks of a hybrid SACD, so he wouldn't really give a rat's ass about buying a hybrid SACD.

But J6P wouldn't have an SACD player to enjoy the multichannel tracks of an SACD. J6P will only have a standard DVD player, like most people, and the only multichannel he MIGHT be able to "enjoy" is that which comes from a DVD as lossy DD or DTS. J6P would only be able to listen to the CD tracks of a hybrid SACD, so he wouldn't really give a rat's ass about buying a hybrid SACD.

Well, the dream was that if all SACDs were hybrid, maybe they would be more widespread, and that eventually J6P's slightly more technologically-inclined children would become curious about what "super audio CD" on a bunch of their hybrid CDs was all about, and since they already got their new PS3 (still dreaming, J6P is happy to get his hands on a Wii) that can play them finally, then they get blown away when they hear the SACD versions of their favorite albums, and then they tell all their friends, and then everyone on the internet is clammering for more SACDs, and then, maybe, SACDs catch on instead of dying a slow ignominious death. Oh well, at least we got some Elton John (just bought four albums) and Genesis.

Well, the dream was that if all SACDs were hybrid, maybe they would be more widespread, and that eventually J6P's slightly more technologically-inclined children would become curious about what "super audio CD" on a bunch of their hybrid CDs was all about, and since they already got their new PS3 (still dreaming, J6P is happy to get his hands on a Wii) that can play them finally, then they get blown away when they hear the SACD versions of their favorite albums, and then they tell all their friends, and then everyone on the internet is clammering for more SACDs, and then, maybe, SACDs catch on instead of dying a slow ignominious death. Oh well, at least we got some Elton John (just bought four albums) and Genesis.Yeah, we're the weak ones; stupid enough to become entranced. :D

As usual, the short-sightedness of the recording and electronics industries crippled hi-rez, by being so concerned about preventing digital copies of hi-rez being passed around. So they crippled the digital connection for hi-rez, which would have allowed the same single digital cable people would already be using for DD and DTS, and instead requiring the 6-channel analog cables to be used. That ensured that only the real enthusiasts would go through the effort to enjoy true hi-rez, and as usual came back to haunt the recording and electronics companies.

Add that to the move towards compressed music and the Ipod generation, and it's easy to see why SACD and DVD-A have failed. But that said, I still have several hundred hi-rez titles, several universal players, and will continue to enjoy these formats for hopefully years to come.

As usual, the short-sightedness of the recording and electronics industries crippled hi-rez, by being so concerned about preventing digital copies of hi-rez being passed around. So they crippled the digital connection for hi-rez, which would have allowed the same single digital cable people would already be using for DD and DTS, and instead requiring the 6-channel analog cables to be used. That ensured that only the real enthusiasts would go through the effort to enjoy true hi-rez, and as usual came back to haunt the recording and electronics companies.

Add that to the move towards compressed music and the Ipod generation, and it's easy to see why SACD and DVD-A have failed. But that said, I still have several hundred hi-rez titles, several universal players, and will continue to enjoy these formats for hopefully years to come.

Sorry, but this cannot go unchallenged.
Please remember the consumer digital audio connections of CoAxial & TOS-Link (ADAT Lightpipe) were not actually capable - and still are not - of passing 24/96 PCM at 6 channels. It's too much data. The spec for these is limited to 8 channels maximum at 24/48 sample rates, up to 24/192 stereo.
So this was indeed a problem, and it was gotten around fast by the introduction of FireWire based digital outputs. Sony, Denon both did this.
What crippled SACD/DVD-A was the complete & total lack of the following on behalf of the industry:
1 - Marketing awareness. Too many people are still completely unaware these formats even exist.
2 - Lack of desirable, unique titles. We got a pathetic few, but it was mainly American Back Catalogue material. Very little UK material. We got ignored - again (Same thing is happening again with HD DVD & Blu Ray, neither of which have native PAL formats in their specs.)

The overcompressed crap on iTunes & the like? It's only what our dumbed-down public have been told they want by the Red Top Press.
For £400, I can think of far better quality gear to buy than an iPod.

Sorry, but this cannot go unchallenged.


I am not quite sure what exactly you are challenging from my post. To be honest, I don't profess to be any sort of technical expert--I am just an enthusiast who's been buying hi-res music almost since its beginning.

But with all due respect, I don't believe it has ever been disputed that copy protection has always been a big aspect of SACD and DVD-A, and the industry's concern about consumers making perfect digital copies of the hi-res titles was part of that. And major copy protection, and lots of cables, and new player requirements, and overall lack of titles, and consumer apathy, equals failed formats. However you slice it, there's plenty of blame to throw around.

I am not quite sure what exactly you are challenging from my post.He is challenging your contention that multichannel hirez can be passed via a Toslink or digital coax connection. It cannot be. There is too much data present in hirez multichannel soundtracks to be passed via those connections.

MLP is now owned by Dolby Laboratories.

Provide proof for that please!
They [Dolby] do provide license worldwide but that doesn't prove ownership.


http://www.meridian-audio.com/p_mlp_in.htm


http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technology/mlp_lossless.html

He is challenging your contention that multichannel hirez can be passed via a Toslink or digital coax connection. It cannot be. There is too much data present in hirez multichannel soundtracks to be passed via those connections.

Gotcha. What can I say, I'm a lawyer, not an engineer. :)

Provide proof for that please!
They [Dolby] do provide license worldwide but that doesn't prove ownership.


Reread MaDequipments post YOU replied to. He was wondering if Dolby charged more for MLP licensing when you insisted Meridian handled MLP licensing not Dolby. :rolleyes:
Dolby/MLP (http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech_library/58_MarkMLPLossless.pdf)

if you want hiRez- go to aixrecord.com
you'll hear the difference.
db

Reread MaDequipments post YOU replied to. He was wondering if Dolby charged more for MLP licensing when you insisted Meridian handled MLP licensing not Dolby. :rolleyes:
Dolby/MLP (http://www.dolby.com/assets/pdf/tech_library/58_MarkMLPLossless.pdf)

I insisted Meridian owned the rights since they developed it! I knew that Dolby was the licensor, but I didn't know they also aquired ownership of the trademark and logo, thanks for the link, that's all I was asking for not for *****ing attitude with it, so next time save the emoticon for your peers and just provide the hard facts. I'll be happy! :) Thanks!

Provide proof for that please!


You're welcome. And less exclamation points make me less uppity.
Of course you know what the attitude is about. Everyone hates their posts to be challenged in a public forum such as this. That's why I make sure my postings are correct.:)

So as I, which is why I asked for "proof".I guess I should have used the question mark? I did a search and couldn't find anything on Meridian selling MLP to Dolby, Hence why I was "so sure". :)