--- las <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >
> If there is such a debate over the difference in quality between a
> CD
> and it's MD copy, why don't they use the same technology for Md
> that
> they use for the new HDCD?
Are you really talking about HDCD - the extension to the Red Book CD
format developed by Pacific Microsonics - or the higher-resolution
digital formats like 24/96 PCM and SACD?
HDCD supposedly encodes additional information within a pattern of
least-significant bits on the CD, which is unpacked by a suitable
decoder (or not, if you've got a regular player). My HDCDs sound
very good indeed, but whether this is to do with this '20 bits into
16 will go' method or just careful recording and mastering isn't
clear.
> Funny, I really never heard any complaints aobut the quality of CDs
> in
> recent years, yet they still felt that they should improve them
> even
> more. I'm told that you can hear the difference.
How much of this is politics and large companies trying to protect
dwindling revenue streams, and how much is genuine 'progress' is
unclear. DVD and its troublesome sibling DVD-A represents a major
step towards high-fidelity multi-channel reproduction in the home
(whether you want to go beyond stereo is another matter). SACD, to
my cynical eyes, looks like Sony saying "hang on a minute", and
trying to muscle in on the new money (those CD licences will expire
soon) whilst responding to the calls of the music industry by
deploying effective anti-piracy measures (doesn't SACD carry a
physical watermark, at pit-level, whereas DVD-A's is buried in the
data?).
As for sound quality, the greater bandwidth and lower noisefloor of
the new formats are something of a red herring (not entirely
convinced I *need* playback over 25kHz, or dynamic range over 110dB),
though they may well have genuinely beneficial side-effects like
simpler filtering. The real deal is multi-channel from all that
extra capacity.
> If most people are happy with a regular CD then maybe an HDMD would
> provide the quality to end the "how much better is the original CD"
> debate?
Well, 650Mb re-writable storage on an MD-sized disc has been possible
for some time now, hasn't it? So, you could have an MD with no lossy
compression whatsoever. Or, you could have an ATRACed DVD feed onto
such a disc - maybe preserving the discrete multi-channel info?
Of course, such things wouldn't work in the many thousands of MD
units already in circulation...
Mike.
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