Did Sony and Philips make the right call with the cd format being 44.1/16?

[barfle]

The Quad option was present since the start but never used. The only time i had the possibility to know something about it was when i was testing cd-r software and asked for it to someone in the company which had the red book. IIRC it was 32KHz 12 bit 4 channel, which is 1536 kb, slightly more than the 44,1 16 bit 2 channel, which does 1411. As playback time it was similar to regular cd (remember that at the beginning of the cd era there was nothing above 60 min +- 1) because the cd speed was still at nominal level (1x) and increased many years later.

It’s one of those projects of trying to put ten pounds of shit in a five-pound bag. It can be done, but the price of double-density shit has to be paid. There has been some speculation as to how quad was going to be implemented, as the Red Book remains secret to us normal plebes.

 

[winopener]

It’s one of those projects of trying to put ten pounds of shit in a feve-pound bag. It can be done, but the price of double-density shit has to be paid. There has been some speculation as to how quad was going to be implemented, as the Red Book remains secret to us normal plebes.

I'm not sure since i have never worked with DAT tapes but IIRC even DAT had a 32/12/4 quad possibility. Surely it has 32, 44,1 and 48KHz sampling rate. 12 bit were the initial specs for cd, then raised to 16 and (correctly stated) at first used only on 14 bit resolution.

While 32/12/4 seems a low spec (and it is) that translate in 16KHz f/r, 64db and 4 channel. A CD4 master will fit ok.

Please also keep in mind that we're talking with more than a 40 year gap. Consider what happened between late 1920 and late 1960 just regarding audio technology and we're facing a bigger gap, from late acoustical mono shellacs to hifi stereo multitracked.

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

There was an especially frustrating period where major labels encouraged a volume war mastered CD release and then a vinyl release. Circa 2000s. They would refuse to release digitally in 24 bit and free of the hard mastering and instead release a vinyl version that might be cut from the unmolested 24 bit master. Or it might not. Buying that vinyl and sometimes getting treated to an exact copy of the volume war CD was just infuriating!

Sometimes it was the real thing but it was still annoying to have to settle for an analog generational copy of the 24 bit digital master. And pay dearly for it!

On a related note, Sony Japan seems to have a policy of only releasing albums with zero dynamic range compression on the master on SACD. It's great for the reissues that get SACD, but for the reissues that don't...it gets really annoying knowing they have a perfectly fine master (or remaster) in the vaults that they don't give us.

I think on nearly all the Sony Japan SACDs I own, the CD layers and the streaming versions all appear to sound heavily brickwalled compared to the SACD layers.

 

[jimfisheye]

I remember Sony got caught out early on degrading the audio for the CD layer to make the DSD layer sound improved in contrast.

I don't think the spirit of any of these arguments is to suggest keeping 40 - 100 year old tech in service and for sale. When a physical bit of something needs to change, everyone can look right at it and understand.

It's the spoofing angle from recent times that royally pisses people off. When you have the physical requirements for a system clearly covered and it's a software block preventing you from using your device.

Grooves in vinyl modulated in a different direction? Well, ya, looks like I need a different contraption! Adding a couple more channels to PCM digital audio? Same patterns of ones and zeros. Same converters. Multichannel is already a thing for years (files up to 256 channels). But now I need to buy a new device to plug in for the new software that checks an internal whitelist file of "approved devices" or output is muted. Fully functional hardware for the specific digital audio data and someone comes along and tells me I can't use it anymore... just because.

That's the kind of infuriating behavior being complained about. Sure, there are certainly some examples in a grey area. Sometimes what looks like malicious profiteering is genuine stupidity too. Or just really bad timing! But sometimes things are simply what they look like on the surface. Software spoofing really pisses people off when it gets discovered. It's pretty wasteful. Throwing out working stuff because someone programmed a disingenuous error message that tricked you.

 

[ar surround]

Yes @jimfisheye , but somehow, someway we eventually manage to find a way around all of the shenanigans.

 

[mandrix]

CD was a convenient format for the time, and still is for many. Lord knows I've got boxes and boxes and boxes of them stored all over the house.
But I had TDK cassette tapes that survived a few decades, used mostly to rip LP's.
I had quite a few CD's go off into never never land for reasons unknown.
For me, DVDA is still a viable format, 6 channel limitations and all (which could be expanded if there was a will-which there isn't). For now, SACD and BD.
Although I have many fine sounding music DVD's. Pick any of the Djabe 24/96 DTS DVD's and the sound is pretty darn good, at least for my hearing.

Pick many CD's and the mastering is just plain awful with all the volume war BS. I used to look forward to releases by Satch, only to be pissed at the god awful compression.
Can't really blame the medium for that.

 

[4-earredwonder]

When I recently after many years [because of COVID] finally had my new all Meridian system installed I was told by my installer who is actually a Meridian rep that I didn't need to install my Meridian 808 reference CD player as my OPPO BDP 205 would handle RBCD playback JUST FINE.

Well, I insisted and glad I did. For its time, the 808 which also plays DVD~A Stereo beyond superbly has an uncanny heft that the 205 lacks. Even DTS 5.1 discs sound infinitely better...my point being that the hardware used to play standard RBCD has a huge bearing on the final outcome!

The OPPO 205 Universal Player handles all videos formats including 4K brilliantly and of course DVD~A/SACD/BD~A beyond reproach but when it comes to RBCD playback it does, IMO, fall short when compared to the 808 which in all fairness only plays RBCD and Stereo DVD~A and at the time carried a hefty price tag!

I also need to have my Meridian Reference 800 DVD~A player installed which I recently had upgraded with a linear power supply which in my memory plays DVD~A Multichannel and even DTS/DD 5.1 DVD~V discs better than the OPPO 205! The 800 has three coaxial digital outputs .... 1 for front r/l channels.... another for center channel/subwoofer and the third for rear l/r channels and it's no coincidence that Bob Stuart the inventor of Meridian Lossless Packing [MLP] designed this reference player from the ground up to be a definitive representation of DVD~A and even DVD~V 5.1/DD 5.1 reproduction!

Need to get the Meridian rep back to install it as the Meridian 861 v.8 pre/pro's open architecture design is computer based and has to be programmed to accept the inclusion of the 800 ...... and I don't have the software to do it! Will keep you posted!

 

[mandrix]

Just a shame that extended MLP will never be incorporated into DVDA. Well I guess the reality is that's just me living in the past!
I had that wish a long time ago, thinking more of 7.1, but now we have it in Atmos.
It's just nostalgia. Like when you could actually buy a DTS encoder that didn't cost $1500 like some authoring programs did. With a DTS encoder, if you were into upmixing, you could upmix stereo to 5.1 and encode the wav files to DTS and burn to a CD. I still have a stack of those.

Or if anyone still around remembers, some of us bought the Creative DTS-610 which would convert mch pcm to DTS and we could play as files from a toslink cable to AVR or burn to CD's. I still have my old DTS-610 lurking around here somewhere.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

Just a shame that extended MLP will never be incorporated into DVDA. Well I guess the reality is that's just me living in the past!
I had that wish a long time ago, thinking more of 7.1, but now we have it in Atmos.
It's just nostalgia. Like when you could actually buy a DTS encoder that didn't cost $1500 like some authoring programs did. With a DTS encoder, if you were into upmixing, you could upmix stereo to 5.1 and encode the wav files to DTS and burn to a CD. I still have a stack of those.

Or if anyone still around remembers, some of us bought the Creative DTS-610 which would convert mch pcm to DTS and we could play as files from a toslink cable to AVR or burn to CD's. I still have my old DTS-610 lurking around here somewhere.

Look elsewhere on the forum. Someone would really like to buy that 610 from you.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Personally, I fail to see why anyone would want to create lossy multi-channel DTS encodes in 2024 for burning onto CD's.

Even though I still buy plenty of music on CD (Blu-ray and other disc formats) the first thing I do is copy everything over to a hard disk drive and store the disc in a box. I just don't find handling discs convenient anymore, it's so much easier finding your music via a computer or media file server!

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Perhaps all these recent posts and replies about the Creative Labs DTS-610 should be moved into this existing forum topic: https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/sacd-to-creative-labs-dts-610-out-dts-disc.6627/

 

[KG10]

Perhaps all these recent posts and replies about the Creative Labs DTS-610 should be moved into this existing forum topic: https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/sacd-to-creative-labs-dts-610-out-dts-disc.6627/

As the creator of this thread I really don't mind the off topic posts so people can continue if they feel like

Edit: just to be clear you can still move there if you want to

 

[KG10]

Just a shame that extended MLP will never be incorporated into DVDA. Well I guess the reality is that's just me living in the past!
I had that wish a long time ago, thinking more of 7.1, but now we have it in Atmos.
It's just nostalgia. Like when you could actually buy a DTS encoder that didn't cost $1500 like some authoring programs did. With a DTS encoder, if you were into upmixing, you could upmix stereo to 5.1 and encode the wav files to DTS and burn to a CD. I still have a stack of those.

Or if anyone still around remembers, some of us bought the Creative DTS-610 which would convert mch pcm to DTS and we could play as files from a toslink cable to AVR or burn to CD's. I still have my old DTS-610 lurking around here somewhere.

What is extended MLP?

 

[ar surround]

Or if anyone still around remembers, some of us bought the Creative DTS-610 which would convert mch pcm to DTS and we could play as files from a toslink cable to AVR or burn to CD's. I still have my old DTS-610 lurking around here somewhere.

Look elsewhere on the forum. Someone would really like to buy that 610 from you.

This?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/1351602141...NwwOwpHd9h5muK3dRye7xWJcYC|tkp:Bk9SR-D5pcecZA

 

[chucky3042]

11 bits is about the limit of human hearing (now shoot me down!)

 

[jimfisheye]

11 bits is about the limit of human hearing (now shoot me down!)

If you mean that 66db dynamic range is the limit of human dynamic range perception... yeah probably somewhere around there. Any more loud is just maxed out. But we need resolution or a signal is meaningless. 2 bit resolution is noise. You need a "digital noise floor" of 8 bits to build your signal on top of. If you want 66db of USABLE dynamic range, now you need 19 bits.

See how close 16 bit was? Careful use covered 9 out of 10 cases. 24 bit is a true 'set it and forget it'.

Have you seen any of the vinyl rip sharing? The silly end? Kids are posting these vinyl rips at 32 bit floating point and 192k sample rate. They don't understand that their 24 bit converters max out at... 24 bits fixed point in the first place. So they record all that zero padding to file. Then the 192k sample rate. Got to set the switch to the highest setting, right? That wouldn't be the worst mistake. And it's just padding in the file and nothing actually corrupted or anything. The main mistake is apparently never listening to their rip very closely and realizing their result sounds like lo-fi mush because they have some DJ turntable setup and/or they just didn't know how to calibrate the system. Not sure what triggered this digression... Oh, more bits are better! Until they're not.

It's almost like watching a flat Earther video. "We've got the most expensive gyroscopic stabilized angle measurement device from NASA here!" <later> "Well... these things must not work either..."

 

[mandrix]

Personally, I fail to see why anyone would want to create lossy multi-channel DTS encodes in 2024 for burning onto CD's.

Even though I still buy plenty of music on CD (Blu-ray and other disc formats) the first thing I do is copy everything over to a hard disk drive and store the disc in a box. I just don't find handling discs convenient anymore, it's so much easier finding your music via a computer or media file server!

I agree. But I assume people had, e.g. DVDA discs they wanted to convert to DTS to listen to in their cars.
In my case, I used to have a pc audio system and the main rig in another room. I was creating mixes on the pc, and the 610 allowed me to monitor in real time on the main rig via a long toslink cable. But that was years and years ago.

But these are topics from many years ago before you were a member here.. I was just mentioning in passing, not trying to blow up a thread.

 

[mandrix]

What is extended MLP?

Well that's my words, not a technical term, just how I think of the codec used in Atmos.
MLP, or Meridian Lossless Packing as devised to be used for DVDA discs is a lossless codec that can reduce the size of wav files by up to 50%-ish. But it's limited to 5.1. Think the Surcode MLP encoder.
MLP has been "extended" to encompass more channels and is used now e.g. in Atmos.

That's it in a nutshell, I'm sure some technical guru could go on ad infinitum.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Meridian Lossless Packing

 

[4-earredwonder]

Well that's my words, not a technical term, just how I think of the codec used in Atmos.
MLP, or Meridian Lossless Packing as devised to be used for DVDA discs is a lossless codec that can reduce the size of wav files by up to 50%-ish. But it's limited to 5.1. Think the Surcode MLP encoder.
MLP has been "extended" to encompass more channels and is used now e.g. in Atmos.

That's it in a nutshell, I'm sure some technical guru could go on ad infinitum.

In a nutshell, Meridian's MLP is now akin to DOLBY TRUE HD which if your pre/pro does not embrace DOLBY ATMOS is now reconfigured to Dolby True HD 7.1