Currently two formats are fighting to become the follow up of the current audio, DVD-Audio (DVD-A)and the SuperAudioCD (SACD). While it seems that the SACD is currently leading, also the DVD-A camp is improving their technology in order to gain populairity. One of the benefits of the SACD is that it also plays in normal CD players, because it has hybrid content (a SACD layer and a audio CD layer).
The DVD-A camp, that has been developed by the DVD forum has now announced that it will try to find a way to also develop a hybrid DVD-A format. This would allow customers to buy a single disc that can be played on every CD compatible player a consumer might have. Unfortunately it requires to change the current CD standard (owned by Sony and Philips, developers of SACD), so it's not very likely it will happen.
Although both DVD-Audio and SACD offer clearly audible improvements over standard CD, it's unlikely that most music lovers care about the benefits. Both formats are top-down initiatives being pushed on a market that has never had any complaints about CDs. The stated agenda is making the listening experience more rewarding, but many observers believe that the real agenda is end-to-end control over how consumers can use the music they purchase'”an end run around the music industry's copy proliferation problem. CD-based content can be easily transferred to recordable CD, MP3, and other formats, or sent as audio files over the Internet, but at present there is no way to do that with DVD-A or SACD data. |
At a European Conference held October 30 in Paris, the DVD Forum announced that it would begin investigating proposals for altering the CD specification to accommodate DVD-A. It was quickly pointed out that the Forum may not have the legal right to do this. Some Forum officials replied that if this were true, they could still create their own format.
If the DVD forum also develops their own format it will make it even harder for consumers that currently have to choose between DVD-A, SACD, DVD-R, DVD+R. Fortunately there are already DVD-A/SACD and DVD-R/DVD+R devices on the market. Read the entire article here.
Read more about the SACD in our article here and discuss this subject in our Audio Forum.
Source: Stereophile.com
