After working with DVD-Audio for a little while, I am wondering if the push for 24bit, 98-192khz was ever really needed or if anyone actually perceived an increase in quality over standard audio CDs. In my opinion, we really weren't in need of anything like that since DVD-A and SACD were a bit of a flop with only a handful of releases each. In fact, the ongoing trend seems be that most people would like lower-resolution but more portable formats, hence the success of MP3 and other lossy audio formats. So my poll is: Will we ever need anything more than the 16bit, 44.1khz PCM on standard Compact Disc, or is CD fine and any attempt made for higher resolution audio be doomed to failure. Please Indicate which, if any, high-resolution solution you would prefer, or if you think CDs or even lossy downloads are just fine.

P.S: This would be a good time to bring up any DVD-Audio listening tests, if there were any.

I voted compact disc is fine for now. I also considered voting for lossy formats. I generally listen to nothing but mp3 nowadays.

Not specifically. Users just want to listen to their music how, when and where they want. The format itself is immaterial to most people. In other words, people are thinking only of the end experience, not of the technicalities under the hood. MP3 just happened to be the first on the scene to fill that need and is the most widely supported. Personally I listen to my original audio only once - right after I buy it. After I archive to lossless and rip to lossy for my library, I listen to the latter only.

As a rule, technology progresses, so the answer will eventually be yes. But that's a LONG way off. What I am definitely pretty sure of is that the CD will be the last mainstream physical audio format.

For me it's CDs ripped as WAV and then put in a box should I need to re-rip, then WAVs listened to or encoded to whatever for whatever. I know I should use FLAC or some other lossless, but I've been lazy and haven't reached any space barriers on my HDD yet.

I wish they would put 16 bit / 48 kHz audio files in an open format, with lots of metadata (and possibly other goodies) on a DVD-ROM and be done with it.
CD-DA has an odd sampling rate when 48 kHz is used everywhere else, has poor error correction ("ripping" should be a thing of the past by now) and next to no metadata (CD-TEXT is a marginal improvement).
The closest thing I can think of right now is DVD-Video discs with LPCM tracks; still no metadata though, no compression, and one still needs to "extract" the audio (as opposed to just copying files to the hard drive) should one want a local copy.

I chose Other.

I'm actually ok with the quality on audio CD's, it isn't an issue with me, yet. But then again that's what I've been used to for twenty plus something years, so I wouldn't know any better.

What I want is a non-destructible protective cover for the audio CD's so the disc can never be physically touched, or get dust and other debree on it that can damage the disc surface, of course doing such would make current drive designs obsolete. Since they're so darned worried about applying other protection schemes to the discs ("DRM") they should make some non-removable cover for it to really protect it. I've mentioned some along these lines before - sometime ago though on this very forum.

I change my mind! Some sort of smaller disc size (including my non-destructible protective cover, I won't give that up) with a larger than audio CD capacity would be nice. Say 2 or 3 hours or more possibly DVD, HD-DVD, or Blu-Ray based because my audio room is overflowing with audio CD's, I need to reclaim some space.

Think of MiniDisc with a DVD-ROM-like medium in it instead of a CD-DA-like medium.

I just wish artists, record companies, and mastering engineers actually made use of the quality that CD-DA offers. :-|

Yes, record companies should first learn how to use the dynamic range of CDDAs. Right now, improved resolution would just lead to even more extreme compression.

Red Book format with the disc density of Blu-Ray, and near scratch-proof surfaces.

I doubt that will work properly, because the Blu-ray disc have higher data densities and and readabiltiy is also affected by dust, dirt and fingerprints, not only by scratches.
Therefore, a better error protection than the one defined in Red Book is really needed.

I agree with you, completely.
I own some excellent sounding CDs from the 80's and 90's, the format of CD-DA isn't bad at all, but on many newer CDs the sound is ruined by dynamics compression.

If Sony was a smart company SACD hybrid could replace CD. Not because of the higher (but unecessary) quality, but because of the multichannel capabilites. A "ripable" SACD would be also apreciated.

I would like to see a non-optical medium replace CD. We do not need higher capacity than CD. The record companies don't want to sell you more than an hour's worth of music at a time anyway. Solid state memory is already cheap enough that they could sell an hour of music (possibly in some high-quality compressed format) for about what they currently charge for a CD (which is already excessive). Then we could stop worrying about dirt and scratches and ripping.

Of course, this only differs from current ability to download music and save it to flash memory by the presence of fancy packaging.

@pdg:
Flash memory isn't susceptible to dirt and scratches, that's right, but it is susceptible to electrostatic discarge.
You can destory flash memory by walking on a carpet and touching the connector pins. (That was not meant as hint to try this).

Really? At least one gigabyte (if not more) would be needed, especially for multichannel tracks, even losslessly compressed... Are you sure 1 GB solid state memory is as cheap to manufacture as optical discs?
Edit: the cheapest 1 GB solid state medium I could find here in France sells for 8 euros (Corsair SD Card 1GB 40x)... compare that to the 50 cents or less for CD-R / DVD-R.

While I like the openness of the CD format compared to DRM-based systems there are some technical disadvantages that come with this format.

So I'd prefer buying "CD-Quality" (i.e. losslessly compressed) files directly, be it on a CD-ROM, DVD-ROM or online.

A few months back I still liked buying CDs, but right now I can't stand them anymore... because ripping is slow and can be such a PITA. I listen to the music on my PC anyway, so ripping and conversion is a tedious must for me.

So I vote "I'd like downloadable hi-res files." Hi-Res = CD-Audio right?

PS: Same goes for Vinyl... a few years back I still had some nostalgic feelings for my vinyl records, but nowadays there's nothing. I only want to listen to the music! I realized that the music is far more important to me than the medium. Or to put it in another way, harddiscs are my preferred medium at the moment, because they're the most versatile when it comes to accessing the data. And the good thing about harddiscs is that there's no sentimental attachment, I only expect them to work, and they'll get replaced if fail to do so or something technically better comes along.

For me the music is detached from the medium now. I think that's a very good thing, because I'm happy with it.

The only reason I think that they might need something else is that there is no standard way to get surround on CDs.

Also, 'Downloadable hi-res files' means files with sample rates and bit depths higher than that of CD, in a lossless format. If you want downloads with equal resolution to CD, select 'Compact Disc is fine for now'.

I think we need a new open format which has support for both lossy and lossless audio, multichannel, lots of metadata, sync lyrics, etc etc.

DVD would be a good place to begin, no doubt.

I have always awed at the Idea of Lossy Audio DVDs with AC3/vorbis audio.

A FLAC DVD would also be cool...

but with exessive lossy compression, I don't think we might see a huge increase in quality.

the current Audio CDs and DVD-As aren't satisfactory enough, IMO.

Agreed,
I still haven't given an answer, still thinking. I like CD and such, but multi-channel would be nice in the future, and probably will happen. But for DAP's down mixing multi-channel audio might not be as accurate as it would be done professionally.

I'm gonna keep thinking and I'll get an answer.

If only all CD players could natively read a lossless format, this would seem sufficient for most taste because it would usually grant an extra 130-260 MB of extra space to be used for meta data, lossy versions, and even a music video. The audio would still be 16bit/44.1khz but that's good enough for my ears.

Oh, too late. But I don't want to buy CDs anymore. The PCM resolution on the other hand doesn't matter to me. If it's at least CD-Quality, it's ok, anything better is probably overkill and a waste of space, but I doubt that disk space will be a problem in the future.

For Me, I think the CDDA is fine but If i were the designer, I would crank up the pcm CDDA to 24 bit 88.2 or 96 Khz, <5.1ch + metainfo with no other changes(may be based on the DVD media with same CDDA file structure for denser capacity)

I can't see any points to use 192 K

Agreed. 16 bit and 48khz is basically perfect. Maybe an option for 5.1 for certain things.

I never said it was AS cheap to manufacture, just that it is cheap enough that they could sell music in that form at a similar price if they chose to. Besides, it would not need to be 1 GB if they used a very high quality lossy compression, or even lossless.

While I'm generally in favor of greater resolution (24/96 or higher) - it usually can't hurt - there are other improvements I'd rather see:

- Variable compression. Too many non-classical releases are massively over compressed. Yes, it's better for radio, ordinary quality headphones and background music. But any decent quality systems today can handle the full dynamic range and do fantastic things with it.

Why not give us two (or three) masterings - one for general consumption and one uncompressed? DVD (and many CD's) have enough space.


- Control over the music/instrument mix. Rather than use multichannel just for surround sound, give us the option of enhancing or softening particular parts of the arrangement - strings, vocals, percussion, horns, etc. It would be like walking closer to a musician or section.

Probably more likely to happen with classical. But it would be fun with many other genres as well.

Agreed. 192k is pretty overkill any way you slice it. I doubt many things are actually recorded like this and our ears don't need any frequencies above 20k. Most of it was up-converted anyways and was a waste of space (or marketing gimmick, whatever).


Also agreed. A lossless encode of a CD should fit on 512MB.

Some artists are doing this already, offering a CD with the CD mastering (i.e. loud) and then a DVD with a 5.1 mix that is different. One example that comes to mind is the CD/DVD package by QOTSA, Over The Years And Through The Woods. The CD is the same no-dynamics sound that Josh Homme (the frontman) favors (-10.34dB) while the DVD Stereo LCPM(!) track on the accompanying DVD sounds much fuller and as in fact quieter; if it was a CD release, it would be their quietest one (-8.04dB).

I see that as the perfect release--compressed CD for car or portable play, with video DVD for watching with a well mastered/mixed 5.1 or stereo audio track. Also keep in mind that's lossless stereo at that for easy ripping and playback on the home system. Everyone wins!

Why not just release a good dynamic mastering, and let devices compress it? More powerful as the DAPs are becoming, that could be feasible. To me that sounds like the holy grail.

Secondly, I'm not sure I agree that highly compressed material sounds better on DAPs than less compressed material. Many are the albums I an forced never to listen to with my sealing earbuds.

In order of need:

1. Good "CD quality" stereo - no smashed dynamics and distortion (or multiple mixes with this as one option)
2. Consistent navigation (CD is fine, but DVD-A is hopeless)
3. Surround sound (preferably ambisonics)
4. Meta data
5. Higher sample rates / bit depths

If we're not going to get studio master quality given away without DRM, I think the DVB CPCM ideas look promising. I think DRM would be fine if it worked every where, let you use the music you'd bought on all your devices without restriction, let you rent music, and let you "give" temporary copies to friends. The problem I have is that everyone has their own DRM, some DRMs become obsolete before I've finished listening to the music (anyone remember Liquid Audio?), many tie you to one device.

Lossless compression would be nice, but linear PCM is fine. A DVD based disc format makes sense, but just for getting the files to me - they'll go on a PC. I might download, but if I did, I'd still burn some kind of back up. If it was a CD on the other side, that would be cool, though giving it to my kids to play would defeat the "backup" use.

Cheers,
David.

The question is phrased in terms of resolution (bit depth), so my vote is that CD is fine. Of course, most pop releases hardly come close to utilizing the available 16 bits. Sample rate higher than 44.1 isn't strictly necessary, though it can make life easier for equipment designers. For a generation whose hearing above 16 kHz is usuall shot by the time they reach middle age, the whole audiophile foofaraw about needing high sample rates is kind of a joke.

But if the question were asked more generally, multichannel is potentially superior to two-channel, and CD doesn't offer that (at CD resolution).