Blue Man Group's The Complex comes out on Sept 14, published by DTS Entertainment.

Mike

 

about 160,000 total sales in the last year, not very much.

 

I think DVD-A IS going the way of the betamax, with one of the primary reasons being the way many old albums are being remixed into 5.1/6 channel. Most of the old albums that I've purchased redeone on DVD-A so far have lousy remixing jobs and definitely not worth the extra money. My original Santana Abraxas stereo CD sounds far superior to the 5.1 DVD remix job it was treated to. So far, the only REAL good DVD-A disc I have with music properly remixed into 5.1/6 channel is the demo disc that came with the car.

 

If you are concerned about this, look into a universal player. There are a few mass-market units available from Pioneer, Toshiba, et al. for under $250. I don't know how they sound. Moving upmarket a bit, Stereophile rated the Marantz DV8400 as Class A in the latest issue of Recommended Components that came earlier this week; it costs $1694.

Then if you really don't care about price, the Linn Unidisk 1.1 is supposedly amazing, but it also costs $10,995!

 

Santana Abraxas is a DTS CD, not a DVD-A. The DTS CD uses the 1973 quadraphonic master tape created for an quad 8 track tape! Not a fair comparison.

For a great DVD-A of an "old" album, try "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road", "Tommy", "Chicago" or "Chicago V", or "Gaucho".

 

The other irritating thing about some of the "old" DTS discs made from the quadraphonic master tapes is that they mess up the song order; I believe this had something to do with fitting the quadraphonic recordings on LPs. Whatever the reason, it can be damn annoying; I noticed it on Wings' "Venus and Mars" where the instrumental "Crossroads Theme" that is supposed to close the album now has three songs after it.

I picked up a DTS disc of Brian Wilson's 1998 album "Imagination." It's pretty good, and as usual for Brian Wilson the production is very impressive. I hear "Smile" is finally coming out (after all these years) later this month. Anyone know if that will be available in DTS, DVD-A, or SACD?

 

DVD-video players and DVD discs were expensive 10 years ago. But now they are so cheap that average households have one or more players and a good collection of DVD discs. IMO, it a matter of pricing the DVD-A discs. If they are as cheap as (or cheaper than) CDs and the studios put out lot more DVD-A songs, I believe this format will take off, just like the DVDs have taken off.

 

Close! It was to fit them on Quad 8 track tapes! To get equal time on each "side", they moved the song order on many tapes.

 

I agree with a lot of the previous posts that DVD-A/SACD may take 5-10 years to become popular. But that assumes the RIAA will decide to not be so greedy and prices drop per disc. If the dual laer discs coming out are also relatively inexpensive (maybe a couple bucks more than CDs) then they will take a bite out of CD sales and be the new "standard."

But what I disagree with is the statements that CDs were high quality audio and that was the main reason they became popular; and hence DVD-A is higher quality audio so they will be popular. There were several reasons for CD increase in popularity, and the least of which was audio quality. Yes, that was a benefit. But what attracted people to CD was

1. The manufacturing costs of CDs dropped significantly.
2. The decreased storage size
3. But the most important factor for a majority of people was the ability to jump to any song on the album without having to fast forward through all the other songs (as in tape) or to flip the disc (as in vinyl). This was the major selling point for most. Why have to listen to a few songs that you're only "eh" about just to get to that radio single that you can't stop singing along to; when you can jump right to it. If you don't believe me, think of it this way. Why is the iTunes Music Store doing so well? People are excited to be able to purchase the one or two songs they like from an album without having to pay so much extra for songs that they don't want.

Now DVD-A has the higher quality, but point #3 is already available on so many other formats. DVD-A, especially dual layer, may replace CDs in the 5-10 year future; but that whole segment of "physical" music format will probably shrink in comparison with digital music being the new "standard."

 

Please end this thread. DVD-A is already in its Betamax phase and its barely off the ground. Enough. Its over. No DVD-A will be manufactured after 2006 or so. Defunct. Useless. Gone.

BJ

 

Thanks for that exceptionally brilliant and thoughtful post.......





http://www.avrev.com/news/0704/23.dualdisc.html

http://www.dvdaudiodaily.com/

 

Hey oblio, did you read the article about CS2CD . Is this gonna be another technology to be shot down by the record comapanies? Oops, sorry to get off on the DVD-A subject.

 

Hmmm. Who's behind this one? It seems to be more of a "video" thing than audio. I am more into HiRez and Surround Sound than I am into video per se.

Still, it's good to be open about all new technologies. JBM, who posted earlier, is correct in assuming that disc based media may soon be the "option" instead of the norm.....

 

Well, apparently it's a new technology to try and give SACD equal footing with DVD-A or dual disc for that matter. The company CS2CD is working with Sony/Phillips on this. SACD and Video.

Here's a quote from the article:
CS2CD's William Grecia says he may have found the missing link for providing SACD with its "full commercial potential." Grecia notes, "When I first invented the CS2CD, I wanted to create a disc that was consumer friendly, and offered additional features not available on other formats. Being a professional audio engineer, 5.1 and two channels of high resolution music is something I think people will love."

Just gonn have to see what turns up!

 

This is from this past April:

 

I was playing with MP3's in late 1996. It took until 2001(ish) for them to become somewhat popular. Even then portable players were expensive. And the only car player was the "EMPEG". ($1000)

These things take time to adapt...

Be patient. The audio industry doesn't move as quick as the compter industry does.


It's like people who thought VHS would die. That's funny because one of the few ways to record HDTV now is with a DVHS deck. Where's my HD DVD?


Hell dual layer DVD recorders *just* came out in the past 4 months. But the media is too $$ to justify buying one. Even though you can find a dual layer burner for $99.