NOW tell me Sony are not full of Shit!

[See Why Audio]

Far be it from me to sum this all up but I'll have a go... heh... no, please don't all answer at once, just think about it.

Re: Sony / BMG an. other. huge. company f****d up hi-res surround by not marketing it.

It's an easy target but hitting it misses the point.
Imagine: You are an executive in a multi-national music-and-visual-content corporation (pick any one they're all the same) Would you, in a millyin years, market something that was so expensive to set up and impossible to control as ANY multi-use hi-res audio format? No you bloody well wouldn't. (don't start on SACD - it isn't truly multi-use because of it's technical and end-user limitations.)
You have a huge back catalogue ripe and waiting for re-release on high resolution for an adoring public who spontaneously erupt in street celebrations as every DVD-A title emerges... oh...

I see... MP3's... right.

This is a direct and easily identifiable (indeed typical) product of capitalism. Pure and simple - if there isn't a profit motive then the idea is dead before it's born. Hi res is and will always be expensive unless there is a world-wide internationally regulated standard of replay that allows manufacturers and software producers alike to mass produce. Oh, what's that you say? We don't care? You'd be right. Most people don't give a sh1t about hi-res and THAT is what drives the market. Yes they would appreciate it if it was laid on a plate but it won't SELL that way.

Re: What format is better than the other.

Ummm, welllll, uhh I think that DVD-A is preferable for many reasons;
1) flexibility of use, 2) sound quality IMHO for purely technical reasons, 3) you can make them at home quite cheap, and that's it really.

SACD? Not convinced. I notice the difference in sound quality over CD immediately but actually after having heard a few, I don't tend to like them. Why? Not ready to answer that yet... watch this space but don't hold your breath.. I said DON'T!

I've been playing around recently making transfers of SQ and QS quad from vinyl-to-96k digital surround and of course I make my own DVD-a from the results. I wouldn't trust any other format to replay my work quite as well. And it sounds GOOOOOD. If there is any hope for the DVD-A format I believe it lies in the end-user flexibility typically ensnaring home audio enthusiasts, small recording studios, musicians, DJ's etc.

For me it's a n0-brainer: if I can do it at home with limited funds and a modicum of enthusiasm, I am the ENEMY of Sony/BMG/Phonygram/E-M-EEyEEEE (shouted in a Johnny Rotten Way) purely because they cannot control me.

I note with hilarity that such things as cassettes, minidiscs, are now such a thing of the past that nobody here discusses them much less cries about it despite the obvious technical posssibilities of a superior product over others that I might mention and yet vinyl refuses to die precisely because it is a wonderful SOUNDING medium that happily also provides tactile end-user enjoyment factors. Or something.

The music companies? Sony? They're sellng us MP3's now - the ultimate distillation of easy distribution over quality. Does my head in.

I work as a high definition audio restorer for the re-issue trade. My business is slow. Clients are thin on the ground. Am I a dinosaur?

Answer me that.

Colin AKA See Why Audio.

 

[BananaSlug]

I've been playing around recently making transfers of SQ and QS quad from vinyl-to-96k digital surround and of course I make my own DVD-a from the results.

Ahh, but if you could buy any one of your favorite quad mixes on SACD or DVD-A would you bother with your vinyl? I sure as hell wouldn't! Getting my turntable back out and buying SQ discs on eBay and then trying to convert them is one of the most frustrating experiences I can imagine. It's a 'neat' technology, but this is why cds were able to kill off vinyl in a few short years. And, the cost to big music would be very small, probably the biggest cost would be paying someone to dig up the old quad masters. If people (as in tens of thousands) cared it would be profitable - I would imagine. But, as has been stated so many times, the massed don't care. However, the question is, IF big music had given Hi-Def music a big push what would have happened. I doubt much, but that is only a guess.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I work as a high definition audio restorer for the re-issue trade. My business is slow. Clients are thin on the ground. Am I a dinosaur?

Answer me that.

No, you're on the cutting edge of the future of music. I hope that business picks up for you. It's the buying public that was/is slow to catch up. Look at the price of certain DVD-A/SACD's on ebay compared to a year ago. As HDTV becomes the norm people buy multi-channel amps and speakers for the home theater experience.

I was at a clothing store the other day when the sales person was bragging to me that he had a DTS 5.1 mix of Pink Floyd DSOTM from the SACD a friend gave him. I told him that was fine, but had he heard the original mix in Quad and did he know about the other Pink Floyd mixes out there? He hadn't, but he was totally interested to know all about it. There seems to be something happening out there in regards to surround sound and quality of sound as people see MP3s for what they are.

 

[See Why Audio]

Sorry am I missing some button that attaches your original text? I'm not deleting it on purpose...

Ouch! Hey easy there,

Vinyl - s'not dead. s'NOT I say NOT! (OK it's struggling but look at it like an endangered but loveable species like, say, the whale... any whale)

IF 'Big Music' had "given surround a push?" what would have happened? Of course we will never know because they DIDN'T. I imagine they might have made it work if they wanted to. They are after all the ONLY people with the clout to do it.
Re: Buying SQ and restoring it... in my own time...
Answer:Like any hobby it doesn't make sense to the girlfriend.
OK I get your point but frankly until I CAN buy all my favourite surround mixes (I can't) then your point is moot. Where can I buy the absolutely STUNNING original SQ 4 channel mix of Santana Borboletta? The answer is: eBay and SQ LP and yes, ME, and my accumulated knowledge and skill doing the work. Some of us enjoy this kinda 'work' you know...

I simply don't believe that there exists a large enough market for Hi-res surround sound, to make it work, in today's advertising-to-demand world of commerce.

Oh yeah, since we seem to be squaring off, here's a tickler for ya - I will give you a DVD-A of my restoration/decode/reburn-to-DVD-A of Borboletta if you can tell me what format Sony introduced to combat National Panasonic (Technics) unassailable lead in the world of consumer reel-to-reel in the mid 1970's? I'll give you a clue. It died with no trace.

All the best, Col

 

[BananaSlug]

Ouch! Hey easy there,

Sorry, upon re-reading I did come off a bit pissy. We're basically on the same page. Just the thought of de-clicking another eBay vg+ record makes me a bit angry that they didn't release all those quad mixes. I spent dozens of hours making a DVD-A of Herbie Hancock's Sextant. Great disc, they really should have released it as an SACD. As well can be said of some of the Santana quads, Caravanserai being a personal favorite. Can't answer your question, though I'm gonna guess it was some kind of tape in a cartridge?

 

[winopener]

Elcaset

 

[See Why Audio]

You're on the right track Bananaslug but Winopener gets the prize - It was the 'Elcaset'. I remember being very impressed by one at Harrods of all places. But even then I wondered whether it would ever take off and wasn't surprised to learn of its fate. Digital compact cassette anyone?

Hey, but I'll send you that DVD-A anyway if you want to trade for your 'Sextant'!

Actually anyone else out there want to do some trades of DVD-A discs? Is that allowed? Because yes, Bananaslug has a point, it does take a lot of time to do these DVD-A discs...

Old Quad Guy, thanks for the kind words but I don't think I am on 'the cutting edge of the future of music...' at least not until I can persuade the record companies that what I do is better than CEDAR.

Back to the argument at hand - Are Sony full of sh1t? etc.:

My life is a struggle precisely because the record companies don't really care about quality as much as sales. I maintain that there are a huge number of recordings out there that will forever more sound best coming from vinyl. If you're lucky enought to have a workable master tape then of course that's the best source but so so many have disappered, degraded, been lost, never existed in the first place that vinyl is the last hiding place for some truly great recordings. It's my job to salvage that material - and I think I do a good job - but try asking the record companies to spend real hard money on these projects! They just don't have the mind set.

Unfortunately it's not just the majors. Small labels everywhere fudge the quality just to get the stuff on shelves. I gather that a label called 'Silverline' doesn't get too many thanks around here? Anyway - even for standard old CD re-issues the labels big and small by and large don't take too much care over their vinyl-to-digital archiving, they just throw it at a CEDAR machine and hope for the best. There are exceptions to this rule of course but they are thin on the ground.

I'm trying to think of any well known artists' material that was sourced from vinyl, available on the market today and all I can come up with is some tacked on tracks to a couple of Grateful Dead and Buffalo Springfield box-sets. The tracks are their early 45's, and clearly the master tapes have gone so there is an example of what can be retrieved. In the world of Reggae music practically anything recorded before the 1980's is likely to exist only on vinyl and that is where I do most of my work.

I work for a small Japanese re-issue label that prefers to have me remaster their prog-rock, folk and 80's post-punk material from good vinyl than use master tapes - they are not being lazy, they just had too many bad experiences with master tapes. For instance the master tape of an album by Marc Ellington was found to be so crazily EQ'd that it was far preferable to go for the vinyl than use the tape, because the original cutting engineer had made some sweet EQ alterations while cutting the LP.

The thig about the major labels is this: they have an attitude that if it's 'restoration' then it's too esoteric to be marketable.

'24 bit Remastered from the original master tape' sounds a lot better to the marketing men than 'Carefully restored from old vinyl', right?
I KNOW that there is better sound in those old grooves than there is in many a mastertape but I cannot fight that attitude.

See Why

 

[winopener]

You're on the right track Bananaslug but Winopener gets the prize - It was the 'Elcaset'. I remember being very impressed by one at Harrods of all places. But even then I wondered whether it would ever take off and wasn't surprised to learn of its fate. Digital compact cassette anyone?

DCC has done better than Elcaset... there were hifi decks, walkmans, car radios and a good bunch of prerecored tapes.
Wanna some?

 

[BananaSlug]

You know, I was going to guess Elcaset, simply because there was a discussion here a few months ago about it. I have got to pay more attention to things that have no importance to me at the moment, you never know when there will be a quiz I will drop you a PM about a swap.

 

[winopener]

So you didn't saw actually that new great technology (in 1977) that failed miserably?
No worry... you can live anyway.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

The thig about the major labels is this: they have an attitude that if it's 'restoration' then it's too esoteric to be marketable.

That's really a shame. That's the same altitude which caused 85% of silent films to be lost for all time. Today everyone knows that there's value in each and every silent film that's still left and people buy them today on DVD. In many cases it is the collector who had the only survivable print.

I still believe that there's value in these old recordings. It can get discouraging trying to convince the music industry otherwise. But MP3 is a dead end. As computing power grows, sound recordings can only get better quality. There's nowhere else to go but up. Certainly our Quad Discs and 5.1 DVD-A / SACD discs have a big wow factor. The Beatles "Love" disc made a lot of people multi-channel aware.

In the music scene I'm sort of in I tell people about the DVD-A / SACD players and what can be done with a SQ records and that there are some great mixes they've never heard before. The feedback I'm getting is people are burned out on MP3s - although they do give us some money - and they're interested in DVD-A especially since most bands record on the computer at least at 24 bit / 48 kHz. You might offer your DVD-A mastering services directly to up and coming bands. They're the ones who always need something that distinguishes them from the rest of the pack.

BTW I hope that the next generation HD players include DVD-A / SACD! We don't need another format for music that will be abandoned yet again.

 

[EMB]

What's often forgotten in these discussions is just how small a percentage of sales reissues/remasters/catalog items are. I don't have exact percentages, but when you consider how many copies of new 'hit' albums sell on a weekly basis, sales of older material has to be piddling and negligable...hence why such boutique labels as DCC, MFSL, CCM, Razor&Tie, and others were able to license certain stuff and fill in some of the gaps. That DCC is gone, MFSL very selective about its output, and others probably struggling, should be telling enough.

We collectors/audiophiles live in a little cocoon of our own that is not in any way representative of 'the masses'...and we often forget this and wonder why formats fail or why cherished titles never see light of day. Of course, you would think there would be a reasonably decent market for, say, Steely Dan remasters including a 5.1 SACD capability...and yet the Moody Blues reissues have this, but it's doubtful those numbers are any more impressive than Elton John's were(had they been good enough, one would think there'd have been a second wave of 5.1 titles, but alas....)

I don't think the formats were ever really the issue, as much as the major labels not educating the public. Perhaps the wise move would have been to start by issuing titles in DVD DD format, since most consumers are used to movie and music videos, if not always playing those with multichannel capability back in 5.1. SACD and DVD-A screamed 'esoteric' and 'elitist' in the same way a lot of folks thought about quad thirty years before(when they thought of quad at all).

It's also a shame that, once the hybrid SACD was released, it wasn't promoted with the zeal necessary to put across its backward compatability. But then, the only way to have made that possible would have been to issue ALL SUBSEQUENT Sony titles as SACD hybrids, something Sony obviously was not about to do, although one wonders how it could have been riskier, financially speaking, than the introduction of the compact disc itself, which was just as unknown to the public back in 1983. Any format can take off if the labels not only push and promote and educate, but convert and prefer that format--as they eventually did by the close of the '80s(that they couldn't kill off vinyl completely is a testament to that format, one must think).

As for abandoned formats, SACD and DVD-A, if they are indeed abandoned(and that isn't the case just yet), these will join 78's, 8-tracks, cassettes, reel tape, etc., as extinct formats that one can still enjoy for the rest of their days. But the public has so far shown no desire to embrace HD-DVD or BluRay en masse, have they? These may not work out either, except as niche formats, which may yet happen with SACD and DVD-A.

ED

 

[BananaSlug]

So you didn't saw actually that new great technology (in 1977) that failed miserably?
No worry... you can live anyway.

And I may be able to pick it up cheaply on eBay now

 

[Jason]

I'm afraid that many of you in this thread are blaming Sony for something that really should be blamed on the general public. Sony pushed SACD plenty, but the general public responded with a communal yawn.

It's really nothing more than You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. How much money was Sony supposed to throw at this format before giving up? I'm sure they lost an astronomical sum on it. You can't expect them to drop millions of dollars on TV commercials. They'd have to sell millions of extra units just to pay for the commercials. A lot of these discs sold in the neighborhood of 1000-10,000 units.

Believe it or not, during 1999, the first year of SACD, when it was available only in Japan and the players were several thousand dollars, Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" SACD sold a whopping FIFTY (50) COPIES!

I agree Sony made some mistakes along the way, but I don't think they were big enough mistakes to alone have killed the format. It was simply: Lack of demand.

One of the major benefits to SACD that Sony was pushing to other labels was that it could not be copied. (And amazingly, its code has to this day never been broken!) But then when Sony made the hybrid disc, with a CD layer, that CD layer could be copied. So then all the disc had going for it, for this part of the sales pitch to other companies, was that the SACD layer could not be copied. Big Deal.

 

[solaris]

as i said before

I live in a city of about a million people, there is a older 6 story building being renovated. It runs half the block. the scafolding is covered by an iPod add 6 stories high, half a block long. Now whats this about SACD or DVD-Audio being given a good shot. NO REALLY just show me the advertising and I will shut up.

 

[EMB]

To be fair, we can't blame Sony completely, since the entire industry is to blame if a format isn't embraced by the public(provided the format is worth embracing, which SACD most definitely was).

So what should everyone have done? Simple: start issuing your new and reissue releases only in that format. Sound crazy? Well, in 1973 RCA did just that with Elvis' ALOHA FROM HAWAII VIA SATELLITE. And Atlantic and Elektra had the right idea with their respective Aretha and Doors comps. Unfortunately, these would turn out to be isolated examples, and w know the rest of the story.

But imagine if titles like DARK SIDE OF THE MOON had been quad-only releases? Wouldn't the public have accepted quad faster, even if most listeners didn't have quad equipment? Since the Lp's were stereo-compatible, wouldn't it have made sense to issue albums quad-only(no higher list, just treat it as the replacement format)?

But SACD's, like DVD-A, weren't compatible...and so to make them compatible, they needed to be hybrid: SACD's with a CD layer, DVD-A's with Dolby Digital and DTS tracks. Audiophiles might not have liked the idea, but unless a format is meant as an upgrade/replacement, as the compact disc was, it's a doomed/niche format. SACD's would only have worked for consumers if that was to become their only alternative. But the risk of lost revenues keep the labels and companies from choosing one format. Compounding the problem, competing formats always turn up--as it did in the quad years, the SACD/DVD-A issues, and now HD-DVD and BluRay. Universal players are a solution, but then consumers have to go out and buy a new deck(at the least)and most just aren't going to do that.

On the other hand, in an iPod world, what chance does hi-rez have for mass appeal?

ED

 

[soundboy]

NO REALLY just show me the advertising and I will shut up.

Full color full page ad from Sony BMG in October 2007 Stereophile for "Bach: Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould" (1955 Zenph Studios re-performance)

 

[elmer]

Full color full page ad from Sony BMG in October 2007 Stereophile for "Bach: Goldberg Variations - Glenn Gould" (1955 Zenph Studios re-performance)

Free SACD sampler in Rolling Stone Magazine along with Double Truck ad featuring national co-promotion with Circuit City with listening stations. In all fairness, the execution at Circuit was miserable but Sony laid out big bucks not to mention all of the $$$ incentives they gave to Telarc, Chesky and most notably Universal to support the format - sad truth is that the public didn't bite.

 

[Jason]

Some years back, the New Yorker had a multi-page color insert devoted to SACD. That had to cost big bucks, and it was target marketed to a wealthy, at-least-supposedly sophisticated audience. Results for Sony's expenditure: Nada.

In the hey-day of quad, people had 4 good, respectable-size speakers. In today's home-theater-in-a-box experience, people have 5 cheesy little cubes and a subwoofer. I would never listen to music on crap like the stuff that's marketed nowadays.

 

[JonUrban]

Free SACD sampler in Rolling Stone Magazine along with Double Truck ad featuring national co-promotion with Circuit City with listening stations. In all fairness, the execution at Circuit was miserable but Sony laid out big bucks not to mention all of the $$$ incentives they gave to Telarc, Chesky and most notably Universal to support the format - sad truth is that the public didn't bite.

This is what kills me. This was great and at that time, with this promo, DSOTM out, reviews in all the newspapers about the surround "Moon", the SACD had the highest awareness in its history. People may have been on the verge to jump.

However, this was the exact time that Sony bailed. Kaput. Dead. We got 4 pop/rock SACDs released by Sony after that, leaving UMG to carry the torch through the year. After that, bye bye.

If they would have followed that big marketing with some decent, high profile titles (WYWH, etc), who knows what could have happened.

I don't kill them for bailing, I kill them for WHEN they bailed.