The Future of the Optical Disc, CD, SACD, etc.

[Squirrelnutzipper]

Over the course of the last several years, I have slowly been converted to computer based audio and have abandoned the traditional cd player and mechanical transport mechanism as hte digital source of choice. A recent article on the B&W website summarizes most of the points I feel are valid for abandoning the traditional cd player. For those interested, have a look at the article here, http://www.bowers-wilkins.co.uk/disp...534&terid=3537

The major issue I have with mechanical cd players and transports concerns the "on the fly" error correction that degrades the sound quality. This article suggests that 30 percent of what is read by the traditional player has errors that need to be corrected by the circuitry and algorithims in the player. Ripping bit perfect copies, storing them on the hard drive, minimizing jitter to the dac with the shortest and simplest single path seems to me to be the only way to go. It is achievable, at far less cost and to me better sonic results than high end cd players and transports costing many multiples of what such an implementation costs. This does not even factor in the ergonomic benefits of having access to your entire music collection in seconds, nor risk of scratching or otherwise damaging the optical disc by repeated handling.

It would seem to be reasonable to believe that the future of the traditional optical disc as playback media may be very limited.

[the porcupine]

I have also gone this path over the course of almost a decade and it's simply the most flexible and convenient way to go.

Just last year, I've set up a modest computer based audio system and have been replacing my lossy audio files to lossless ones.

It's very enjoyable to listen to music this way while using the same PC getting work done or surfing the 'net and more.

[[L]es]

been doing this for almost a decade also..

what's nice about having a decent computer setup is when you play youtube or whatnot it comes out your system in a way that's quite more than fun .

It's very enjoyable to listen to music this way while using the same PC getting work done or surfing the 'net and more.

and if you want just sit back and enjoy the music..

the only thing i dislike about it is having to rip your cds... it gets tiring / dragging after a while..

must be more so for those guys who use a regular cd player.. "grab cd, put in drive, when done eject, get another one.."

at least we just have to do it once

[insyte]

I've also been enjoying my music this way. (since I don't have a dedicated cd player yet)

lossless is the way to go

[soundpurist]

Never got into PC audio but have listened to looseless format and it sounds better than my cd/sacd copies. Maybe sooner a PC in my system.

Though SACD, DVD audio didn't rescue the embattled digital format at least in the view of analog purist (including me)l, for as long as the vinly pressing remains a dot in the business, and the ipod craze continues to dazzle the youngs and even the middle age the future of digital sounds remains bright but maybe it's up between the CDs on the shelves or the files on ipos & PCs. IMHO SACDs/XRCDs/DVD audio are things of the past.

What about blue ray audio?

[bass_nut]

pure music enjoyment thru digital format via cd/sacd/dvd players, pc based audio lossless (soon to be hooked on an external DAC and decent audio system) and portable headfi digital audio players (lossless HiFi music everywhere )... cdp was my music enjoyment source (85+%) for many many years ... recently started pc & headfi digital ... maybe WiFi digital in the near future

[BingoDelMar]

HEPC (High-End PC) is the present and future approach in home entertainment setup but the cdp/dac and other reproduction methods are still here to stay and very much alive...so having both is twice the fun and enjoyment as an audiophile...

[trauma]

Assuming that the optical discs and its several formats mentioned are applied to music only here is my own assumption on what will happen to them in the future.

Optical discs are fast becoming just a storage medium. Mostly to back up existing music library.

Music libraries stored in Hard Drives will be ubiquitous with cheap easy to operate China made versions of Popcorn hour available in low prices and dealers offering to fill these up with pirated but high quality videos and music.

SaCDs will have become almost obsolete and will be kept alive only among a few fetishists who insists that the multi channel path is the best way to listen to music no matter how impractical they are. You just can't multi channel on the go sticking in yourself several earbuds.

Sound reproduction of CDs are at its peak with the best technology available largely ignored because of their ridiculously expensive prices and impracticality like a top loading player with tube powered clocks. CDs are going the way of LPs.

I guess that in a few years the best workable DAC technology will trickle down to the masses and will become a standard.

[Squirrelnutzipper]

Sound reproduction of CDs are at its peak with the best technology available largely ignored because of their ridiculously expensive prices and impracticality like a top loading player with tube powered clocks. CDs are going the way of LPs.

I would agree with this sentiment, as well as the others expressed in Trauma's comments. CD technology is probably at its zenith, but the read errors inherent in cd players and mechanical transports cannot be easily overcome. In the digital domain, there is simply no better way to reproduce sound than using bit perfect digital sources.

One thing that I would not suggest is that cds are going the way of LPs. This is because they are two distinctly different storage mediums. The playback of LPs relies upon transducers, cartridges, and the mechanical forces, such as stylus pressure and alignment affect the sound quality. It is very different than digital. In the case of cd technology, the optical discs are only the playback media for digital information. The impairment of the digital information and the subsequent error correction employed in the traditional cd player, do not add to the quality of the sound, but I would suggest only detract from it.

Given the foregoing, it would seem highly likely that optical discs will ultimately be a dead end, where anlogue will always have adherents who believe it to be more like live sound. By way of disclaimer, I am not an avid adherent of analogue, but there are also technical reasons why the debate of analogue versus digital will be with us for a long time.

[JackD201]

I called this almost 4 years ago right here in WS. I think however that HDs are an intermediary step born of economics rather than actual performance. While HD failure rates are steadily declining across the board the threat of losing one's whole collection sans an optical based "original" still looms large. Solid state memory on the other hand having no moving parts (compared to HDs which spin at 5,000 or 7,500rpm depending on models) and very good read and write times seems to be the safer bet. All we have to do is wait for the prices to go down.

I heartily agree that mechanical jitter borne of stamper imperfections and transport carriage and speed errors are the optical digital media's biggest problem. Problems that are sidestepped by proper lossless ripping to an appropriate file type.

There is a step that we consumers ignore however. Digital Masters are generally sent to the pressing/stamping plants as well as online music services in the form of CDRs or DVDRs. Having listened to many stereo bus outputs from Sadie, Protools and even AMS-Neve workstations vs. their CDR dubs I can definitely say that the jitter monsters start as early as this stage. Fortunately masters are now beginning to be sent in data only media via SSM or Hot Swap drives and even over the net.

With the exception of HK and Japan I noticed drastic reductions in retail space and inventory selections at brick and mortar stores like Tower and Borders. Yup even at big box stores like Best Buy, Circuit City and CD king Wal-Mart. Chart positions are now measured in terms of number of downloads. Downloading is no longer the future I postulated all those years ago. It's now the present. This is VERY significant.

Once unencumbered by a physical medium we will enter a realm of hi-res files with seemingly no upper limit save that of processor power, storage space and bandwidth speed. No more format wars and no more obsessing over DAC chipsets as number crunching will be done by native CPU power. CPU power will determine what can be processed, Storage Space will determine how many files we can ultimately afford to keep and bandwidth speed how quickly we can get hold of our music without choking the life out of the rest of our digital lives.

As I've always opined, the analog stage contributes much more to the overall sound of any given digital product. Products that use mostly the same chipsets anyway save for the few that have developed proprietary conversion and filter technology which are the physical beds of their proprietary algorithms. This is perhaps the reason that the most popular mods have to do with tweaking power supplies, op amps, j-fets or even tube buffering or completely redesigned analog output stages.

[highlander]

maybe WiFi digital in the near future

For starters.....I have seen and heared a Bluetooth headphone that sounded 'acceptable'

[John Martin]

The optical discs are here to stay. With the advent of Bluray technology, there are a lot more flexibilities. Not to mention, the prices have been starting to drop. Its gonna be a year or 2 when the market starts to accept this new format. Its better in all aspects. Sound (and video ) capabilities. Lossless format is acceptable to the mass market so its gonna be a trendsetter.

[BingoDelMar]

No matter how far we go on laser technology, analog reproduction will stay because Music is Analog...

[Squirrelnutzipper]

The optical discs are here to stay. With the advent of Bluray technology, there are a lot more flexibilities. Not to mention, the prices have been starting to drop. Its gonna be a year or 2 when the market starts to accept this new format. Its better in all aspects. Sound (and video ) capabilities. Lossless format is acceptable to the mass market so its gonna be a trendsetter.

John, I do not agree that Bluray is much better than other optical disc technology. There are some obvious differences with Bluray discs, but the same type of limitations are present. Primarily, Bluray offers more density so that more information can be stored on the disc. This is particularly important for high resolution video, where more resolution requires more data. The disc is still read by a laser, albeit violet and not blue in color, and is still subject to error from the pressing and also disc surface scratches, not to mention all the mechanical and electrical reading issues involved. Therefore, Bluray uses error correction algorithms that are like RS or RSPC for cds, but are called Pickett code. It is more powerful than Reed Solomon error correction. It has to be because of the amount of data that needs to be read. Thus, Bluray has comparable limitations to cds and for this reason, I still posit that optical disc audio playback is a dead end technology.

As to FLAC and the other lossless formats, they are an intermediary tool that has broad relevance when storage and data transmission rates are an issue. It is already compelling to store uncompressed files, such as WAV, as the cost of storage is in a downward spiral. One can now buy a Terabyte hardrive for $150. If data integrity is an issue, it is not very expensive to guard against HD failure by implementing RAID at any one of several levels. Given the low cost of the drives, it is entirely practical to use a swappable drive and store it offsite in case of natural catastrophe, such as fire or flood. That way your entire music collection is very secure. Try that with thousands of jewel cases or LPs!

I again want to affirm that I do not share the above sentiment or prognistications about analogue. Whether music is analogue or the voice of the angels is of no matter. Analogue is not a bygone technology, but is entirely different and has many compelling attributes that ensure that this format will be around for a long time to come. The day when a digital audio converter will be able to create the same voice as analogue has not yet arrived, and I would suggest that it still remains something in the distant to foreseeable future.

[rtsyrtsy]

The link to the Bowers & Wilkins website doesn't seem to work.

I am a believer in the Read Until Right approach of getting the bits of the music that the artists / recording engineers intended, not the bits that some error correction algorithm (no matter how fancy its name). In my not so scientific personal comparisons, I've much preferred as transport a Squeezebox streaming FLAC over an Oppo DVD player (which got good reviews as a transport) and over a modified Audio Note CDT-Zero (which while arguably is at the bottom of the Audio Note totem pole is the natural partner for my modified DAC One.1x through which I heard all 3 transports).

Regardless if the streamed file is FLAC or WAV format, I thought the sound was more intimate, fuller, and convincing. Far away from my vinyl system, mind you, but better than optical discs.

Re: storage, while I agree that costs have dropped, I am still suspect of its reliability. I have recently been a victim of (though admittedly a consumer, entry level solution) a product that claimed mirroring but turned out to be proprietary that recovering data from the mirrored disc would cost me an arm and a leg, maybe a torso, too. This said, I'm waiting and seeing what happens to products like Drobo's (also a proprietary RAID solution!) or HP's Media Servers (not available in my market).

The ideal solution for me seems to be the Google and Amazon led cloud computing model where data robustness and security are managed by teams of people each of whom are a lot smarter than me and using equipment I cannot afford on my own. Now if only bandwidth were available and fairly priced where I am.

I know, I know, would I like some cheese with my whine?

[egay]

Could it be getting bleak for the traditional round music disc?

i spent half of the day yesterday looking for SACD in Odyssey, Music One, and some small music stores in QC/Cubao/QAve and all i see are DVDs, VCDs, and CDs (some LPs in Music One )... CD titles do not seem to be growing, and those available were so-so (at least not my taste)

as had been said here, the market determines the way these discs would go: but i doubt it will be similar to what the LP did...

meanwhile, could somebody please direct me where i can get those SACDs before they become extinct?

.e.

[zenaudio]

meanwhile, could somebody please direct me where i can get those SACDs before they become extinct?.e.

Try Astrovision/Astroplus (they had a sale on SACDs last year). Also Fully Booked at Serendra.

On the original topic, technology will definitely move on. There will be newer, better, faster, smaller, cheaper, etc kinds of digital storage and retrieval system than anything we have today.

I daresay analog has a better chance of surviving (albeit niche) since this is a purely electromechanical system, existing in the non-quantum realm of materials of construction and circuitry.

A digital system on the other hand is a total digital system, eg, a CD is useless without the optical reader and software that goes with it. So when CD players/readers and compatible software won't be manufactured/used anymore, what will happen to the storage medium? I think I still have a few floppy disks around but I don't see any floppy drives in any of my working computers at home. And I'm in a race to transfer my digital video tapes to dvd before my playback system conks out.

In the meantime, i will enjoy my SACD and CD collection as much as I can.

[bass_nut]

Could it be getting bleak for the traditional round music disc?

i spent half of the day yesterday looking for SACD in Odyssey, Music One, and some small music stores in QC/Cubao/QAve and all i see are DVDs, VCDs, and CDs (some LPs in Music One )... CD titles do not seem to be growing, and those available were so-so (at least not my taste)

as had been said here, the market determines the way these discs would go: but i doubt it will be similar to what the LP did...

meanwhile, could somebody please direct me where i can get those SACDs before they become extinct?

.e.

brand new CDs are distributed and sold throughout our country... practically all malls (especially the big ones) have CD stores...i can not see & say the same with brand new LPs .... hence, i agree, the market determines the way these music formats would go

[trauma]

the majority of the music buying public > the young, aren't buying CDs anymore.

I never met anyone 13yo to 20yo who owns at least a few CDs.

What they have instead is several hundred songs on their iPODs or PSP.
Maybe its not cool to get CDs anymore and that sure determines its fate.

[bass_nut]

the majority of the music buying public > the young, aren't buying CDs anymore.

I never met anyone 13yo to 20yo who owns at least a few CDs.

What they have instead is several hundred songs on their iPODs or PSP.
Maybe its not cool to get CDs anymore and that sure determines its fate.

i agree again on that... younger gen prefer their porta ipods & other music players...

maybe exemption but some of my nephews & my children have their own cd collection... they also ask CD copies of some cds i have at home maybe to transfer these to their music players ??