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I'm very interested in the possibilities of multichannel music, but I fear for my recent investment in a high-quality two-channel system. Very few artists provide a compelling reason to go multichannel..
DVD audio standards are still up in the air, but promise (hopefully) to come down soon. For our inaugural question, we want to know what you prefer: fewer channels and longer playing times, or multichannel high-quality sound with shorter playing times.
You have reported that 24bit/96kHz is a waste of bandwidth. I would like to see a choice of 20 bit/56kHz or whatever the right numbers are. Then I would like to know how many channel/minutes would fit on a DVD disk in this format. If possible, I'm interested in the best of all worlds - great quality, multichannel, and long playing time. It seems that we will have to buy a new player if any format other than the current CD audio standard is selected, so we might as well use available technology to maximize quality while minimizing space useage. Thanks for asking.
Keep the outer layer CD-compatible, and use any decent lossless compression scheme to allow long play times on the inner, hi-def layer... Above all, require text info embedded in the data for each track (title, etc.) for display/cataloging purposes... Gee, maybe even cover art (gasp!), lyrics, and liner notes? Certainly worth <1MB on a ~5GB disc...
Buying a 2ch top notch amp and a pair of good speakers cost me tons of money already. If 5.1 comes around, I'll have to multiply the price by 2.5!! Ouch!!(Oh, and a Sub that'll match them(which in itself is close to impossible) Imagine 5 Grand Slamm, 5 Levinson 33 mono, a more expensive preamp(5 should and will cost more than 2 ch preamp), another 1 1/2 pair of expensive cable. Extra interconnects to hook them all up, D/A that output 5.1 ch etc etc. Gee, I don't even want to think. Last but not least, many people out there will not have the room for proper placement of rear speakers. We already have problem setting up 2 ch, think what 5 will bring us. Home theater wise, we can compromise here and there for rear speaker placement, but audiophile system setup can take no compromise.
Since music labels probably won't record more than 60 or 70 minutes per disk anyways (more like 35-40 minutes for most pop albums) we should make the most of the remaining space. Besides, the limiting factor to current high end audio is the CD itself. A 24bit/96kHz on a entry level system should easily outperform todays best 16 bit systems. We also should not look at the Video standard for audio. People generally do not realize loss of details in Video sound because of the video distraction itself. To use video sound decoding standard would be inadaquate for audio only standard.
Two channel higher resolution interests me more than a multi-channel, multi-speaker sytem... this is because I was enlightened to the potential one day at a recording studio. There is nothing in this world except live music that surpasses freshly laid soundtracks.
Anything is better than the current CD standard. Why push the learning curve when most people understand stereo (why confuse the unwashed masses with multi-channel when they are mostly concerned with receivers and multi-disc changers. Stick with the best in stereo.
This survey lacks the most important DVD-A proposal for high-quality sound so far, the one done by the Acoustic Renaissance for Audio: -hi-rate, hi-res -hierarchical multichannel, from mono to periphony, based e.g. on Ambisonics. This is so far the only system that guarantees very high quality as well as a true paradigm shift in music recording and playback. Investigate www.meridian.co.uk/ara I vote strongly against: -pan-pot based multichannel like AC-3 and DTS -data-reduced systems A mix of formats, which can be played back by all standard machines, offers versatility during the recording process, so that the recording engineering can decides what format suits the artistic contents of the recording the best. Any mix of formats should be sufficiently open to allow for future developments.