Why did SACD, DVD-A, and Blu-ray fail as music surround formats?

[Mandrake2011]

Here is an article by Steve "The Audiophiliac" Guttenberg.

(You should be warned that Steve has shown himself to be generally pro-analog and anti-digital.)
He has no answers. You can add your comments to his article on that page.
You can follow Steve on Twitter - his tweets are sometimes interesting.

 

[Quad Linda]

I agree with most of Steve's comments on surround music. Queen's "A Night at the Opera" is a DVD-A advanced res. & DTS title (no Dolby D.) Isn't Steve killing off Blu-Ray audio a bit prematurely?

Linda
Baroness of Blu-Ray Audio

Here is an article by Steve "The Audiophiliac" Guttenberg.

(You should be warned that Steve has shown himself to be generally pro-analog and anti-digital.)
He has no answers. You can add your comments to his article on that page.
You can follow Steve on Twitter - his tweets are sometimes interesting.

 

[JonUrban]

Oh man, we've run this one through a bunch of time. Late hardware, later firmware, copy protection issues, dual formats, new players needed, lack of titles, lack of publicity, lack of stock in stores, failure to restock titles that were sold, too many shitty titles left in the racks (Silverline), birth of the iPod, poor authoring, misconceptions of surround music, it goes on and on.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Yes, we've ran this one through the blender many times. But in the end, perhaps it did not fail as folks are buying BR, which is still just starting to get going and folks did and still do buy DVD-A and SACD. They caught up to what these formats could do on their own by the late 2000's as there was no advisement by the industry at all. The QQ members here (and elsewhere) have done all the heavy lifting on that front.

Another thing, it also depends on what the industry intended to do with these formats to begin with. If it was to replace all formats to create "one format to rule them all" bad idea IMHO. Folks want many formats now and the music industry needs to keep giving us as many as we want. In fact, the music industry should now also consider itself a providor of many formats in addition to providing music sales.

 

[kivar]

this comment from the article sums it up. The general public has ever been informed properly by the recording industry about hi-Res audio.

"5.1 surround is lossy. That is why CD is still the champ."

 

[Mandrake2011]

Steve is taunting us. His latest tweet says: "Why did music 5.1 formats fail? Commenters didn't address question. There are 5.1 HT systems to play them on."

I think it's great that he is asking this. He is a high-profile blogger and the discussions will help raise awareness of the formats.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I'm not sure what to make of the dude, at least he's bringing up the topic. But I'm not sure he's advocating in the right or best light for us. He sounds more like one of those "other forums" uniformed nut jobs. It's also easier to lob bomb's to get attention then to think out fully what the situation actually is. It also serves one poorly to be an either or person in regard to formats. There are so many different ways to experience music now and all are valid in their own right and serve different needs. None of which are ever "going away."

Having an article of opinion with "Fail" in the title assumes one knows what "Victory" meant for surround or the music industry as a whole to begin with. Flame throwers don't build things, they just nag as the "Debbie Downers" of the world. Certainly the 1000's of great titles I have does not reek of "Fail," but a rich landscape of endless music.

Another thing, Napster happened way before the first iPod ever came out, yet the music industry failed to have a clue. The music industry still doesn't know what it's doing and they're stuck with their shallow old idea's about how to sell music or what could be. They sit around waiting for "the next big thing," yet nothing happens because they're not doing anything. And if they do push something they pull the plug too soon and fail to fully execute the idea through, just because it did not sell right away like the latest Lady Gaga single. If one is going to talk about surround's so called "failing" one also needs to consider the big picture of all of music and why everything has "Failed" in the last 10 years or more.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Steve is taunting us. His latest tweet says: "Why did music 5.1 formats fail? Commenters didn't address question. There are 5.1 HT systems to play them on."

I think it's great that he is asking this. He is a high-profile blogger and the discussions will help raise awareness of the formats.

I do agree that he is being intentionally provocative but I really doubt that his blogging will have any significant effect on general awareness.

 

[Mandrake2011]

I really doubt that his blogging will have any significant effect on general awareness.

Sigh. You are probably right. So what do we need? Germanotta to release albums in SACD and/or DVD-A and advertise them prominently?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I do agree that he is being intentionally provocative but I really doubt that his blogging will have any significant effect on general awareness.

Sigh. You are probably right. So what do we need? Germanotta to release albums in SACD and/or DVD-A and advertise them prominently?

The issue isn't Steve but that his audience is already attentive to audio matters, else they would not be looking at his blog. The only way to have a significant effect is to expose the mass market to these ideas and, one hopes, grab the attention of a subset.

Who/what is Germanotta?

 

[Disclord]

I do agree that he is being intentionally provocative but I really doubt that his blogging will have any significant effect on general awareness.

Even if it did have any effect on awareness, that still wouldn't mean that product would get released. Madonna's albums MUSIC and American Life were both mixed in 5.1 for DVD-Audio release, yet neither got released. Cher's Greatest Hits and Believe also got the 5.1 treatment - nada on the market for them either. And the sad thing is, when I play SQ albums through the Tate 101A for friends or DVD-Audio's or any of the Torrent's I've downloaded, they are absolutely blown away. When I was a 15/70 iWerks projectionist at Union Station's Extreme Screen in Kansas City, I took in my Millennium 2.4.6. DTS decoder and would play DTS CD's as intermission music - not a day went by that an usher didn't knock on the projection booth door saying a customer wanted to know where they could get "Band On The Run" or Telarc's "Surround Madness" in the surround versions I was playing - I ended up making a single page that gave some info on the DTS CD's available, the Millennium decoder (since it was only $299 or so then) and how easy it was to get it all set up. I even listed low-cost speakers so that for less than $500 total, a person could have full dts-based surround-sound system. I initially made 50 copies of that info sheet and after about 3 months I had to make more because I'd given them all away.

So, from my own personal experience, people are interested and willing to set up a surround system - but it's just never been supported by quality software at reasonable prices. The record companies don't seem to "get" this and I doubt they ever will. Yet they bitch and moan about the idea of people like me downloading a quad torrent of "Company". I wouldn't have to download it like that if they'd make it available as a 'real' release - and NOT remixed to conform to some weird "modern" surround "sensibility" - the movie studio's love to destroy movies that way, removing all directional dialogue and creating surround-sound were none existed because "modern audiences are used to surrounds being constantly active" instead of just occasional (and spectacular!) 'special effects' as they were used throughout the 50's and 60's.

 

[mch007]

Who/what is Germanotta?

Lady Gaga???

 

[Mandrake2011]

Who/what is Germanotta?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanotta

 

[DKA]

Yes, I do think Gaga in retail surround, marketed and released in a thoughtful manner, would raise the visibility of the format. Absolutely. I don't think it's any sort of magic bullet (or that anything is), but the majority of surround releases target a very homogenous buying audience.

It would have interesting to have seen what could have been done with multis and "Music." Now there's something for Steve Wilson to give a shot to.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

Lady Gaga???

I've heard of her but take as little notice as possible.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

Well, I know what you mean about Lady Gaga. I thought at first she was just another style without substance, no talent, famous for being famous and phony sensationalism to create fake controversy crowd. But she's got the talent, musical know how to be around a long time and I guarantee "Born This Way" will be around a long time, just as "Y.M.C.A." is a music standard. Yeah, the music is nothing new and she has relied too much on the "phony sensationalism to create fake controversy" to drum up sales thing, but she seems like a cool person who would be totally in our camp if we just laid out the facts to her. That's been my impression of her so far. If we could get a surround title of one her latest, then a new surround title just might sell like the latest Lady Gaga single!

Seriously, I agree with DKA if we could get popular new titles in surround, that would of course open it all up to more new fans of surround. You (Mr. Music company guy) have to build from the ground up new markets and don't pull the plug from the top down on us. There's also already Tons of surround material just sitting there in the vaults as we all know. It's also going to take the musical artists with a clue and understanding about the future of music in order to raise more awareness and ultimately more surround sales as well. I'm also hot on the idea of offering our surround talents to local artists who would love the exposure. Ton's of new music just waiting to be mixed in surround by anyone willing to put out the effort. We already have the tools and knowledge. Burn the discs yourself and sell it on your web site (or one of mine if you like) via your Paypal. We can also use "YouTube" to get the word out there as some of our members already have.

One other thing in regard to the music industry, we have never been given a number by the music indusrty what constitutes "sales" in order for DVD-Audio or any other format to succeed. We also don't know by what definition "Success" or "Enough Sales" even are. Because like the lack of advertisements for products they supposedly want to sell, they keep us in the dark. And this seems to go on with all music, not just surround.

 

[Q-Eight]

Personally, I think it's just awareness -or- lack thereof. Anybody who's hopped in my Tiburon has been exposed to 4.0 surround sound. Granted, only about 80% of the people I've demo'd it to love it... one person asked me "Why does it do that?" LOL. I think if there were a real strong market push by one of the major record companies, with TV ads, demonstration areas in stores and say 50 titles right off the bat to purchase; that there would be a rebirth of surround sound. But that would require effort and capital, two thing the record companies claim they don't have.

 

[DKA]

This isn't really about what one thinks about Lady Gaga (I personally like her, but that her substance is, somehow, left out of her music. I lwill always love a well-crafted three-minute pop song, in the end.) It's really not even about surround, in some ways.

There are very few things in the music business people find worth buying anymore. One of the few things people currently buy in bunches is Lady Gaga albums. Therefore, giving people Lady Gaga in every format possible means more visibility to whatever you sell.

At some point, probably right around Christmas, "Born This Way (Extra Special Super Duper Edition)" will be released. Instead of two extra remixes, for no additional price to the listener, something "could" be thrown in there.

Look, none of this is going to actually work and the music industry is, actually, pretty well f*cked. The surround industry does a fantastic job of marketing 99% of what it does to the same exact demographic. It would make sense to me that expanding to new audiences who are going to, eventually, grow just as old as Rush/King Crimson fans are now, would be a way of reaching out.

And, again, I work very cheap.

 

[0tto]

i agree that entrance of best-selling pop artists into surround format could lift up
awareness about it among the general public and make a significant changes in
label's approach. the problem is that those artists have no clue about such things,
or too busy by the counting of flow-in cash at the moment and don't care about anything else.
how many artists or sound-professionals who has shown interest in surround, do we have here
and what our community did to attract them?

 

[Quad Linda]

I agree that best sellers can attract consumers to the format. I recall a guy walking into my store saying, "I just got all these Rolling Stones SACD's and need something to play them on." We know that works.

My understanding is that the record label will first decide to issue titles in surround. Then, they inform the artist that they want to issue a surround mix. The artist might then be asked for their involvement in the surround mix. Beyond that, I doubt many, if any, artists would have enough clout to demand that the label issue a surround mix.

Linda
Duchess of DVD-A