How we gonna play our discs in the next future?!

[barfle]

It's interesting to look back at the emergence of flat panel LCD displays. Pretty crummy quality & for years the benchmark of performance they were trying to match was CRT quality. Plasma pretty much did that and then other improvements have far exceeded what CRT could accomplish. Still, much respect should be given to the CRT whether in a test scope or consumer TV and don't forget the mega buck Sony front projectors around that also used CRT.

I still have a Sony 21" Trinitron professional monitor. Pro monitor in the sense no tuner, no speaker, just a bunch of BNC connections on the back. Knobby controls for adjustments you'd never see on a regular TV. It still worked great-last time I tried about 5 yrs ago. I wish I had more use for it than just nostalgia.

My 2150 had UHF connectors for video in and out, it had a tuner and mini-phone jack for audio in and out. I used the tuner to provide baseband audio and video to my VCR (which did not have a tuner).

Ahh, the old days, when nostalgia was "in."

 

[jimfisheye]

Being that discs are already a physical storage container for pcm digital audio files, said files can already be stored in personal file systems. A few ringers trying to push encoded formats aside, the transfer/ripping is pretty smooth sailing. Anyone resisting the move from physical discs to downloads and personal storage... well at least the underlying digital data format is the thing in question and you're all covered as soon as you want to be!

The pioneer optical bluray drive I bought for the Mac Pro in 2011 is still reading and burning. Looks like plenty of optical drives for sale and not going away very soon. The HTPC method already got many of us started down this path almost 30 years ago.

 

[Sal1950]

Very cool stuff. Why is it called a racetrack? The light band on the right side?

Nope, the oval shape of the brass bezel around the tuning dial gave it the name.

 

[Sal1950]

It's not that I still wish I had my Trinitron, but it was state of the art in those days, and I had to make do with something that wasn't quite in the same league.

TV's to love and hate over the decades, LOL.
Sorry for the OT rant.

HATED, Late 80s I bought a 26" Sony CRT, TOTL, great picture but it broke down every few months till I just tossed it.

LOVED, Early 90s bought a 35" Mitsubishi CRT, awesome, loved it. Super picture quality, beautiful Oak cabinet, storage in bottom for VCR, etc. Died after about 12 years or so. Trusted repair man said capacitors were failing all over the board, not worth fixing. I cried, one of my all time favorite TV's. See Picture below.

HATED, 55" Toshiba rear projector. It wasn't bad, but the picture was not too good either. When I moved I just left it.

JUST OK, 55' Sony LED not too bad but not great either. Gave it away after 5 years.

HATED 75" Sony, TOTL expensive LED. First set blew up after 8 months. Replaced by Sony warranty with some other junker with a bunch of dead pixels and other issues. I'm DONE with Sony's.

LOVE, My current 85" Samsung mini QLED. Going on 2 years old now. Zero problems to report, picture quality to die for. I hope it lasts 10 years.

 

[Owen Smith]

My main fear about (stereo) streamed audio is that it won't be discrete L and R stereo but will be a form of joint stereo (IIRC, first used on the MP1 VideoCD soundtrack) which will probably adversely affect the derived surround sound.

First used on FM stereo surely, that pre-dates MP1 by decades.

 

[Owen Smith]

This is so dead on. I buy a disc, I rip the disc, I put the disc away and never touch it again unless I need a different version of the content. I keep a lossless copy for listening at home, and if it's surround I transcode into Dolby Digital before dropping that copy into Plex for max compatibility. Now I have my music accessible anywhere I can stream or cast from my phone, and a backup that isn't worn out.

I tried doing this and found it far too much like hard work. After a year I'd done 15% of my modest collection and just couldn't face doing any more.

 

[MidiMagic]

What I hate is that they have to keep changing the formats. There should be a single standard that never changes.

Instead, every time a patent gets close to expiring, they discard the old format and make a new incompatible one.

Those ripping their content will find that the file format they used will be deprecated, and the new computer can't play it.

The entire computer and media industry is determined to make your recordings quit working. They want you to buy new ones.

And your downloading source will discontinue the content you like.

 

[kfbkfb]

First used on FM stereo surely, that pre-dates MP1 by decades.

https://www.worldradiohistory.com/B...tiplexing-for-Stereo-Feldman-1962.pdf#page=21

Kinda getting off topic, however, FM stereo provides discrete, full bandwidth L and R, I don't know what the FM broadcaster audio processing (to be loud all the time but with a reasonable spectral balance [treble not cut dramatically - see the above link for info about FM pre-emphasis]) does to the stereo imaging though.


Kirk Bayne

 

[Owen Smith]

Kinda getting off topic, however, FM stereo provides discrete, full bandwidth L and R, I don't know what the FM broadcaster audio processing (to be loud all the time but with a reasonable spectral balance [treble not cut dramatically - see the above link for info about FM pre-emphasis]) does to the stereo imaging though.

It's still mono plus difference signal though, which is the ultimate basis for joint stereo. Sure MP1 then goes further and uses joint stereo as the basis for lossy compressing the data further, but that's not inherent in the technique.

 

[barfle]

With vinyl making such a comeback, it seems like playing stereo recordings won’t be a problem any time soon.

I agree that there are too many formats. DVD-A is already going away, if not actually dead. It’s always possible somebody will release something in that format. Somehow SACD survives. It sounds good, but it’s ignored by mainstream player manufacturers. I’m fortunate to have stretched my budget and bought my Oppo 105 when it was available with warranty.

IMHO, the dear old RBCD can sound excellent, and if you want surround, Blu-rays can pack in a ton of channels at higher fidelity than anyone can hear.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I agree that there are too many formats. DVD-A is already going away, if not actually dead. It’s always possible somebody will release something in that format. Somehow SACD survives. It sounds good, but it’s ignored by mainstream player manufacturers.

With regard to multi-channel disc formats I wonder if anybody knows how many DVD-A's and SACD's have been released each year over the last 5 years?

Fortunately we have Blu-ray audio discs which offer more than enough data-space to provide multiple lossless stereo and multi-channel muxes

 

[barfle]

With regard to multi-channel disc formats I wonder if anybody knows how many DVD-A's and SACD's have been released each year over the last 5 years?

Fortunately we have Blu-ray audio discs which offer more than enough data-space to provide multiple lossless stereo and multi-channel muxes

PS Audio, through their physical media group Octave Records, is releasing a handful of stereo only SACDs. They also make a player that’s too expensive. Dutton is also releasing a handful of SACDs in MCH formats. I don’t know of anyone else, but that’s an admission of ignorance more than anything else.

I believe I understand die-hards hanging on to what they know. And I’ll undoubtedly continue to support them as I’m able.

 

[par4ken]

PS Audio, through their physical media group Octave Records, is releasing a handful of stereo only SACDs. They also make a player that’s too expensive. Dutton is also releasing a handful of SACDs in MCH formats. I don’t know of anyone else, but that’s an admission of ignorance more than anything else.

I believe I understand die-hards hanging on to what they know. And I’ll undoubtedly continue to support them as I’m able.

SACD has long been popular in Japan. We are still getting a few MCH Sony releases. I'm waiting on Barbaletto and Laura Nyro, both delayed by the postal strike. I'm sure that there are still many DSD fanatics out there. While I've never considered DSD to be superior to PCM sound wise I do maintain that there can be issues converting from DSD to PCM. Best to keep DSD as DSD if possible.

At one time DVD-Audio was my favourite format. SACD sort of replaced it as DVD-Audio faded and SACD's started adding a CD layer for compatibility. SACD's don't have the rather frivolous video menus and features of the other formats and 5.1 channels are good enough for me. An audio only format, I kind of like that!

Fortunately we have Blu-ray audio discs which offer more than enough data-space to provide multiple lossless stereo and multi-channel muxes

Blu-ray are great in that they can handle more channels and especially more content on a single disc. Being PCM there is no worry of sacrificing quality by format conversion.

To sum up I have a soft spot for all formats even the now "standard definition" CD. So bring it on anyway you can and I'll be happy!

 

[jimfisheye]

What I hate is that they have to keep changing the formats. There should be a single standard that never changes.

Instead, every time a patent gets close to expiring, they discard the old format and make a new incompatible one.

Those ripping their content will find that the file format they used will be deprecated, and the new computer can't play it.

The entire computer and media industry is determined to make your recordings quit working. They want you to buy new ones.

And your downloading source will discontinue the content you like.

I see all this being embraced by the industry at the moment. Like they're flailing to find anything people actually want to buy and freaking out or something.

We still only really have PCM digital audio as the root format though. For 40 years now! Doesn't look like that's going anywhere. New AD and DA converter hardware and software would need to be created to do differently. Remember that Sony tried that with DSD. Some sad clinging to that going on aside, all audio is PCM digital.

Keep your music archive on your favorite storage devices. Your devices! Not someone else's that you need to connect to "in the cloud". Keep any proprietary decoder software that comes along for encoded formats. (It's still PCM digital audio. Just "zipped" with some encoder.)
Keep older OS installers!
Keep final clones of old systems.

See something useful on the internet one day?
Download that as though you think it will be removed tomorrow! Because it is sometimes.

Sure, there's software spoofing. Dolby is playing hard with their Atmos decoder. It is in fact a dongle to sell new AV receivers. But this is all surmountable. Much of the software is even freeware! (Not Atmos though.)

The analog formats...
You have to keep machines in service decades later! Raw component parts go obsolete. There are calibrations! Some calibrations required manufacturing factory jigs. This all seems harder.

DSD (SACD) is the one modern outlier. You need to keep a working machine with a proprietary optical drive.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

We still only really have PCM digital audio as the root format though. For 40 years now! Doesn't look like that's going anywhere. New AD and DA converter hardware and software would need to be created to do differently. Remember that Sony tried that with DSD. Some sad clinging to that going on aside, all audio is PCM digital.

I'm surprised DSD never made it into the Blu-ray disc specification (even as a private stream), given both are Sony implementations...

 

[Sal1950]

PS Audio, through their physical media group Octave Records, is releasing a handful of stereo only SACDs. They also make a player that’s too expensive. Dutton is also releasing a handful of SACDs in MCH formats. I don’t know of anyone else, but that’s an admission of ignorance more than anything else.

I believe I understand die-hards hanging on to what they know. And I’ll undoubtedly continue to support them as I’m able.

2L has a lot of SACD's available. They are mostly classical and do a huge variety of formats both on disc and download.
https://shop.2l.no/en-us

 

[jimfisheye]

I'm surprised DSD never made it into the Blu-ray disc specification (even as a private stream), given both are Sony implementations...

My guess would be it would have been a PITA for them to continue to support. DSD was a purely marketing driven analog of PCM digital meant to start a format war. It offers no benefit in fidelity or otherwise. It requires an intentional alternate set of hardware that never took off to their original plan. They tried to be usurpers, failed, then fell back into offering a product to cater to the PCM digital standard.

They probably had visions of studios buying their DSD AD and DA converters and getting in with bed with some software makers like Avid to make a "DSD Protools" and just taking over the digital audio world. Didn't work out so, ok better cut off HD DVD and DVDA at the pass and compete in the PCM arena again. Bluray!