Talk:Super Audio CD

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[edit] Do most DVD-ROM drives support SACD?

Just bought the NIN TDS Deluxe Edition, and now I'm wondering if I'm really hearing the SACD part or if my DVD-ROM drive is playing the regular CD data. Coupled with the fact that I just learned NIN's TDS was re-issued not only as an SACD but, in a second "Dual Disc" issue (which I didn't notice was on the market) has a "DVD Audio" side. Oops! I hear a definite upgrade in sound quality from my 1994-released Downward Spiral CD, but... that could still be the regular CD data re-mastered. I hope I didn't spend $28 for what was essentially regular stereo album (as far as my own hardware is concerned) plus a CD of remixes. Is there any way of finding out if my DVD-ROM drive supports SACD? How long have DVD media players supported SACD? --I run like a Welshman 01:36, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

A mere DVD-ROM cannot play SACD audio, as the SACD layer will not play on any PC - what you were hearing was the stereo layer. To play DVD-Audio using your DVD-ROM drive, you'd need a high resolution sound card that supports DVD-A. However, since the stereo layer on both releases was cleaned up and remastered, in my opinion, it was not a -total- waste of money jiy 05:00, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

You could try a "non-hybrid" SACD, which doesn't have any regular CD information, but only SACD information. If it doesn't play on your player, that will confirm you were listening to the regular CD layer. -Neil-, 4/7/2006

If it has the SACD logo on the front panel, it supports SACD. If not, not. Also the manual has a list of supported media. I'm surprised I have to explain these things. 68.0.126.157 00:13, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SACD V2.0

Does anybody know anything about the SACD2 which comes 2006?

I don't, but I hope it included and improved copy protection that also includes a built in regional lockout, to prevent unoffical imports.144.139.89.254

Nobody will buy this if they improve the copy protection more. I'm also quite that there are still people using this format as it has been mathematically proofen that the sigma-delta modulation used in dsd is much less in quality as it is possible with DVD-A and in the later there is also a very good copy protection but still the possibility to make your own (and if you want unprotected) band recordings and burn them on a dvd-r.

SACD2 is just a minor update to the specs, e.g. previously people didn't *have* to include a stereo DSD version on a multi-channel SACD, with SACD2 it must be present. (Almost all discs bar a few minor classical releases have a stereo DSD layer currently anyway). I've heard nothing about changing the existing copy protection (that currently leaves the CD layer open to ripping as with any other CD). -- mandel

"I'm also quite that there are still people using this format as it has been mathematically proofen that the sigma-delta modulation used in dsd is much less in quality as it is possible with DVD-A" All digital recording is lossy, it's one of the drawbacks of the technology. By contrast, the very best analog recordings have amazing technical quality (think of those Phillips Classics quadro recordings from the early 1970s which were DSD remastering (there is no article by that name but there probably should be) for the so-called RQR series (there probaly should be an article about them) of hybrid SACDs), i.e. no measuabe wow and flutter, a dynamic range beyond most domestic sound systems (and most human ears), and a flat frequency response from 0 to 100khz and a slow roll-off above this range. The former two factors also aply to top quality vinyl records (in (near) original) condition when played on top-of the range turntables.144.139.89.254

Yes, digital is discrete by definition. However, your bit on vinyls I must disagree with. While a great *analogue* recording is quite possible, it would not be on vinyl record. Not on the vinyl record we know, anyway. That thing has a whole hell of a lot of limitations and flaws and honestly, I find the following claim (that everybody keeps repeating) a load of crock: "An unplayed, fresh vinyl, played on a top-notch vinyl player, has a lot more of the original aural information intact than any digital equivalent could ever possibly have." It's kind of frustrating to deal with this kind of inaccurate mysticism vinyl fetishists throw around without a second thought. - 194.89.3.244 13:09, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Several errors and missing facts in the article

- PCM at 192 KHz can capture perfectly a 80 KHz sine, without any distortion. See Nyquist/Shannot sampling theorem. This holds true in practice too, the only limitation is given by the steepness of the actual filter used. There should be no problem capturing 90 KHz sines with usual filters employed. (The only distortion caused by PCM is caused by the aliases and images created in the process of sampling and reproduction, and due to the real-world limitations of the filters used. For this reason, these aliases and images happen only very near half sampling frequency). On the other side, at 80 KHz, a SACD will output mostly noise, due to the aggresive noiseshaping needed for DSD to work.

- PCM is not limited in practice in temporal resolution, even with 20 KHz sampling. It's only limited in bandwidth and SNR, which directly correlate with the samplng frequency and bitdepth used.

- SACD is not equivalent to 20 bit 192 KHz PCM. SACD has a quantization noise spectrum that increases with frequency. Over 20 KHz, SACD has worse SNR than 16 bit PCM. 20 bit PCM has constant noise spectrum from 0 to sampling frequency/2, as opposed to SACD. Over 50 KHz, there's not much more than noise at the output of a SACD player. That's why analog lowpass filters at 30 KHz or 50 KHz are used, to get rid of this noise. In summary, 20-bit 192 Khz PCM is already much better than DSD/SACD. Not to talk about 24-bit 192 KHz PCM. Note that there are no real world converters that have actual performance better than 20-bit.

- DSD can't be made totally distortion-free, as opposed to PCM. The reason is that a 1-bit signal can't be properly dithered, whereas a multibit signal can. This is explained in Lipshitz & Vanderkooy paper published at JAES, available at http://sjeng.org/ftp/SACD.pdf

- Do not trust so called "hi-fi experts" about things that they don't understand, or don't want to understand. Trust DSP, electronic engineers, and acoustics knowledgeable people. Hi-fi world (specially so called "high-end") lives of many misconceptions, half-truths and superstitions that go against current scientific knowledge. Audio is not rocket science, by far. KikeG 15:45, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Copy protection

"SACD has copy prevention features at the physical level, which for the moment appear to make this format nearly impossible to perfectly copy. These include 80 bit encryption of the audio data, with a key encoded on a special area of the disk that is only readable by a licensed SACD device."

If I had designed the copy protection I would have designed it to specify what what pressing the disc is, so that, e.g. a UK pressing will only play on players licensed for the EU. Similarly, US and Canadian pressings would only play on players licensed for markets where the mains frequency is 60Hz, and insisted that such licensed mains powered playes designed to operate only on electrical standards of 60Hz countries. Japansese pressings would only play on Japanese licensed players. I am dissapointed about Sony and Phillips not doing this.

What a terrible thing to suggest! Why would you want this sort of scenario to be in place for music? I live in the US, but I enjoy music from other countries. I have a large collection of recorded music from Europe, which both I and my European-born spouse listen to. Nearly all of it is non-English-language music, which means that it would never sell in any quantities worth "officially" importing into the US. Under your scheme, I would not be able to listen to this music unless a company chose to reproduce it here as an "official" US release, which wouldn't happen. I do not understand why you think it's so important to deprive the world of music that comes from other regions. 68.54.232.221 00:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think one feature that severely limits both SACD and DVD-A is that users can't do anything with their music. You must listen to it *at home* on a dedicated player. There are no SACD/DVD-A Walkmans or boomboxes (or car audio players?) and there's no way to put that music on an iPod or other portable device. It's beautifully clear music that's locked away and doesn't belong to the listener. --Navstar 04:53, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

Sign your posts!

Some corrections:

"cant do anything" - shock the monkey original tracks available from realworldrecords.com
there are no walkmans YET - compact cassette was 1970? and the walkman was 1979!
can play the cd layer in a car, or anywhere
no ipod/mp3 player (hd or flash) can store 4.7 GB of data per album! (neither can even firewire 800 transfer it without taking ages.

81.105.251.160 03:13, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Great job!

My word, this article has improved greatly during the last three months or so. I wish somebody was able to implement the Nyquist sampling theorem in the Compact disc article as well, I recall somebody kept removing it (conspiracy!) or something to that effect. Anyway, great job. - 194.89.3.244 13:00, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yet another error in the article

"On the other hand, the fact is undisputed that anti-alias and anti-image filters, required for linear operation of digital systems, produce group delay or frequency-dependent phase shift"

Analog reconstruction filters used in early DACs at the beginning of the CD format did cause serious phase distortion on the audio signal, among other nasty effects. However, reconstruction filters currently used in CD players have in practice no group delay o phase shift. In fact, from the 90's the filtering performed in nearly all DACs is done digitally by means of oversampling and FIR filtering. The FIR filters employed are totally phase linear, which means that the only phase effect they produce is just a time delay, leaving phase relationship between frequencies intact. This linear phase filtering can cause temporal pre-ringing when applied to very special audio signals, which is which talked about in a previous edit (note that the practical importance of this effect is very dubious). So, Im going to delete the wrong paragraph. KikeG 21:01, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Metric/Imperial

To quote

The Sony SCD-1 is a well-known player which was introduced at time the SACD format was introduced to the public. It weighs well over 100 pounds

Pounds? Europeans are now scratching their heads. Please will someone put this in kilos. The current text is a bit American-centric.

[edit] S/PDIF 88kHz output

The article says, "It is, however, possible to get an unencrypted 88 kHz S/PDIF signal from many of the players available on market, as most of them convert DSD to PCM before feeding the signal to D/A converters." Is that true? I thought most SACD players do not have digital output from SACD, requiring you to use the player's analog outputs.--Debell 19:02, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Unmodified players do not have digital outputs, correct. Some people have added digital outputs to their players so they can use external DACs. Mirror Vax 22:34, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I have Sony SCD-XE597. It, like many others, has a TOSLINK optical digital output, but of course, TOSLINK can only carry the PCM from the CD layer, or perhaps the SACD data, downconverted to 44khz. --81.105.251.160 03:18, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] SACD Digital Output Over HDMI

I propose adding to this article the ability of HDMI 1.2 (or higher) to carry one-bit audio formats such as DSD. Furthermore HDMI 1.1 which is currently available (as of July 2006), can carry multi-channel PCM audio decoded from SuperAudio CD DSD format. The Oppo Digital DV-970HD DVD/SACD player is known to be able to output multi-channel linear PCM to HDMI 1.1 compatible receivers such as the Yamaha RX-V2600 or the Denon AVR-2807. I'm not sure what resolution is supported in the PCM, but this is the first sign of an all digital path from SACD to a receiver/pre-processor.

According to the HDMI website, the Playstation 3 will support HDMI 1.3 which adds further capabilities of higher bandwidth, deeper colour depth and transport of lossless HD audio formats found on Blueray and HD-DVD discs. As of this writing, there are no receivers that implement HDMI 1.2 or 1.3 for directly receiving the DSD format of SACD. It has been speculated that manufacturers will skip HDMI 1.2 altogether and go to HDMI 1.3 which is fully backwards-compatible with 1.2 and 1.1 and will be able to transport the SACD DSD format.

[edit] Category:SACDs deleted but I have the data

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20061016211300&limit=213&target=STBot

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&offset=20061016211359&limit=73&target=Drinibot

These links take you to the log page of the bot that was used (with admin approval) to delete the Category SACD tag from the pages which contained it. So there is effectively a list here of most of the albums which have pages on wikipedia that are on SACD. I will do a separate page on my site linking to these articles, that can, of course, not be deleted except by me, and I may add the list as a sub-page on my wikipedia user space. It is allowed to link to that from this SACD article? I disagree with the deletion of the category too, but it was carried by a (small) vote. There's no point in arguing. It won't be brought back. I'll just do it myself. I hope this is useful to people.

--- LeedsKing not logged in --81.105.251.160 15:45, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I was considering adding a category Super Audio CD — it struck me as a very odd omission that there were so many album pages totally failing to mention that they were issued as SACD. I can't believe the information was present, and it was removed without replacement. --KJBracey 12:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

LeedsKing again - I've added the link I promised, which has the bot log for 73 more SACD category pages, which were deleted! I will prob move all the links to my own site, when I have time. --81.105.251.160 11:45, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SACD does not look to be catching on

This article implies that SACD is a format that is gaining in popularity. This is a POV view that breaks the Wikipedia fundamental pillar of NPOV. Here is some information I have researched.

From http://home.ease.lsoft.com/scripts/wa.exe?A2=ind0411&L=classical&P=3676:

In the US, only 300,000 SACDs total were sold in the first half of 2004 (compared with 349,000,000 CDs sold during the same period - that's a mere 0.1% of the market for SACD)

From http://www.tnt-audio.com/edcorner/june06.html:

It seems high resolution formats are still going nowhere

From http://news.digitaltrends.com/talkback32.html:

I keep waiting for a high-resolution audio to trigger a similar tsunami [to catch on like CDs did in the 1980s]. But tiny islands of SACDs and DVD-Audio titles in my local Tower Records have not grown into mighty continents.

From http://www.stereophile.com/images/newsletter/106Astph.html:

Although the failure of SACD and DVD-A to gain traction was an audio issue, I blame that failure on the record labels

From http://www.cepro.com/news/editorial/14139.html:

Let's go down the list [of Sony failures] [...]SACD

From http://www.avrev.com/news/1006/19.tower.shtml:

The pure failure of SACD and DVD-Audio as high resolution formats was analogous burning down a small town

There are also online bulletin posts stating that SACD is a failure: [1] [2] ("there are other reasons to explain the SACD failure"), [3], etc. Samboy 23:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

I have fixed the article and have removed the POV. Samboy 23:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I have also gotten some hard numbers, and they look really bad for SACD. Looking at http://www.riaa.com/news/newsletter/pdf/2005yrEndStats.pdf, SACD sales in 1.3 million units in 2003, 0.8 million units in 2004, and 0.5 units in 2005 (the last year for which figures are available). DVD Audio sales were even worse: 0.4 million units in 2004, 0.3 million in 2004, and, strangely enough, an increase to 0.5 million units sold in 2005. Samboy 06:45, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You've replaced what you see an NPOV with NPOV from a position you favor. You're talking about three years worth of sales figures for a format that hasn't become cheap enough yet for widespread acceptance. It took conventional CDs five years to become even a quarter of total record sales. By this logic you would have written them off--as many people were--in 1985. High definition audio releases haven't been around half that long. They also face a challenge of consumer uncertainty over competing formats, which CDs never had to deal with.

The article already expresses in an appropriately neutral tone the question of whether the improved fidelity is enough for the average listener to purchase new hardware. Your comments skew this the other way by stating as fact that the formats have been rejected.Torc 10:21, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

You claim that it took five years for conventional record sales to reach 25% of Compact Disc sales. This is not true. Compact Discs were released in late 1982. By 1985, Compact Disc sales were increasing rapidly. There is a June 4, 1985 Washington Post article entitled "Compact Disc Sales soaring". On June 21 1987, the Boston Globe posted an article entitled "Compact Disc Sales Outpace Records". The Charlotte Observer published a similar article on July 21, 1987. [4] You also claim that I stated that the SACD format has been rejected. This is not what I put in this article. I stated "It appears that SACD will not get mainstream acceptance. Every year since 2003, the first year that SACD sales are available, SACD sales have decreased by 40%", and added a link to the RIAA sales figures. It makes the article more encyclopedic to add solid facts about SACD's sales to the article. Samboy 11:12, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Some other data points: [5] (2002-2003 sales went up) [6] (Units were in the market by early 2000) Samboy 11:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, in light of your concerns, I have reworded "It appears that SACD will not get mainstream acceptance" "SACD has significant obstacles to overcome before achieving mainstream acceptance". My old wording actually violates Wikipedia is not a crystal ball, so this is a better wording. Thank you for your input. Samboy 11:47, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

It's still bad info, which you're trying to shape to support your opinion that high resolution consumer audio formats have no future. It's totally premature to say that. You quoted two sources: First the RIAA page. But the chart you link to is manufacturer's shipments, NOT sales. (The chart also indicates that DualDisc format sales are counted under CDs, which Melodia pointed out.) This seems logical when you consider that stores are going to order a lot of new titles the first year they're released to build up inventory. Actual consumer sales figures [7] show sales increases year by year, more than 100% between 2003 and 2005 for SACD, this in spite of the fact the overall music sales are declining. The consumer trends page is where you'll find, on the 1998 chart, that CDs only represented 25% of the market by 1989. High resolution audio is expected to take much longer to gain acceptance for several reasons: there are competing formats and consumers are worried about committing to a losing format (and the coming of BluRay and HD DVD formats), adoption requires a much larger initial investment (such as a new receiver and new speakers), and the benefits aren't as obvious as the jump between vinyl and CD to the average listener. The other source is a blog, and considering how many titles Universal lists as available on its page of SACD[8], it's premature to say they're dropping support of the format. Further, Universial is only one of the majors. (This list also indicates that the majority of releases are hybrid releases, which means that most of them would show up on the RIAA charts as conventional CDs rather than SACD sales. You can expect to wait at least ten years before declaring whether high resolution consumer audio has a future or not.Torc 23:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, I see you've reverted my additions again. Thank you for the link to the "trends" report; I am glad to see your adding light instead of heat to the discussion. The RIAA report does have the footnote that CD sales include "DualDisk" (CD + DVD-A) sales; this may or may not include SACD sales. I am sure that the blog posting saying Universal Records and Naxos stopped making Super Audio CDs in 2006 is accurate for the reason that the person who reported the data is an SACD advocate, and would have no motive for posting inaccurate information. As for the CD information, 25% for CDs in 1989 sounds about right based on my memories of buying music around that time (CDs were definitely around, but my local Warehouse had a big cassette section and a small vinyl section). CD had almost all of the problems in the 1980s that SACDs have today: Needing to use an expensive player and being an incompatible format, yet were beating records by 1987 (within four years of introduction) and cassettes by 1992. This thread is getting too long; I will take my proposals and make a section for them. Samboy 02:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The person, advocate or not, could simply have wrong information. Perhaps Universal stopped manufacture of SACD-only discs and now manufactures only hybrid discs, or maybe they shut down their own manufacturing plant and outsource SACD manufaturing. In any case, it certainly appears that the statement was inaccurate.[9]

CDs did not face the same problems SACD does today. The price to convert wasn't nearly as high because you didn't need to by a new receiver or additional speakers to use the technology, plus there were no competing emerging formats.Torc 02:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The sales data quoted above is VERY misleading, from what I gather. Unfortunetly, it tracks ONLY SACDs that are not hybrids -- which are counted as CDs. Since almost every SACD release in the past couple years have been hybrids, it only stands to reason that the sales have been so bad. (Being Wikipedia, I'm not going to go into how the record companies killed the format and the sales data doesn't help mattters). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 12:40, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you have a reference handy to support this claim? If so, this is useful information to add to the article. Samboy 19:05, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

No, just posts on SA-CD.net, but it's been brought up multiple times. I'll go searching through the forums later to see. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 23:22, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Ok, here's one post of a few: [10]. And there's others here and there, but this is the most telling, as it also talks about how it doesn't include smaller labels -- which are the ones normally releasing SACDs. So seriously, there's number manipulation going on that renders your points meaningless. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 00:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Material I have removed

I removed the following material:

It remains an interesting question whether adoption of the new formats will be driven from the top down or bottom up. So far the trend has been from the top down with many labels adopting SACD for their new releases and re-releases, but mostly in the areas of classical music and jazz (the traditional hi-fi standards).

The wording of this implies that of course SACD will catch on, the only question being how SACD will catch on. The "many labels adopting SACD" line implies that there is an expanding market for SACD. It looks like the majors are dropping SACD like a hot potato, but there is a lot of interest among smaller labels [11]. Samboy 12:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I've updated the article to point out the above facts (Majors dropping SACD, minors liking the format). Samboy 12:03, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hybrid SACDs are not 100% compatible

From http://forums.macnn.com/66/ibook-and-macbook/323226/hybrid-sacd/:

My PC drive attempts to recognise the DVD layer [of the hybrid SACD], leading it to an endless loop, instead of the standard CD one. Samboy 21:28, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

This is one person with a problem and no response confirming or denying it. Do you have anything more substantial?Torc 23:51, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

There is a sa-cd.net thread where multiple people report the same problem; this is a known issue with inexpensive DVD-ROM drives. Samboy 02:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The thread discusses Hybrid SACD discs on combo CD/DVD drives, not in standard CD players. It does not make the statement that Hybrid SACD discs can be played in any conventional CD player false.Torc 23:45, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] About the RIAA report methodologies

OK, I have a little more information on the RIAA report. "Data is collected from RIAA member companies that distribute approximately 84% of the prerecorded music in the United States." [12]. This data is collected from SoundScan, who get their data from cash register sales...the 84% figure above reflects 84% of the stores, not 84% of the record labels. Samboy 01:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

What that says is that the RIAA numbers, besides not being indicative of SACD dying, are skewed against an accurate reflection of SACD sales. The charts appear to count hybrid discs as CDs (and nearly all SACDs are hybrid these days), they include only [SoundScan] retailers, who tend to focus on pop music. More importantly, the numbers are US only and therefore exclude Europe[13] and Asia, which seem to have much stronger SACD markets than the US. We've also yet to see the effect that comes from every PS3 shipping with an SACD drive built into it. What I don't see in any of these reports is any major label giving up on HD audio formats; if anything I see clear evidence of labels adapting to make them more common and more available to consumers (but I don't add that to the article because it's really not relevant). I really don't understand the NPOV tag you've added; it seems more like you're claiming it's NPOV because the article doesn't declare SACD dead or dying like you want it to. The article already sufficiently expresses the problems SACD adoption faces and the fact it's currently only popular among audiophiles, but until the format is replaced or clearly abandoned by most labels, it's a guess whether or not it or another HD audio format will ever catch on.Torc 02:52, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

The NPOV tag just means there is a disagreement that we're working on resolving. Since you have posted hard figures showing an increase in SACD popularity countering my hard figures showing SACD sales going down, I think it is far to not have those figures in the article. The Sony PS3 may or may not change things. The issue I had is, when I first saw this article, it had a lot of data points implying that SACD is about to become the next big thing:

"It remains an interesting question whether adoption of the new formats will be driven from the top down or bottom up". This sentence (which I have removed) implies that SACD will be widely adopted.

You are reading way too much into this statement. It does not say SACD will be widely adopted, it simply expresses uncertainty over how much adoption will take place from software being pushed or how much will come from hardware being pushed. Torc 06:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"The format continues to attract major new artists". Actually, only one major artist (Depeche Mode) made significant new SACD releases in 2006, and one other artist (Peter Gabriel) has stated interest in releasing SACDs in 2007. So we don't get in a pointless discussion over semantics: "Major artist" means an artist of significant enough merit that sa-cd.net posts a news item about the artist making a SACD release. I have revised this sentence to read "a few"; think you for not reverting this change.

Here is one of many examples of SACD and DVD-A releases from the last year, and many more are on that site. Using sa-cd.net as a benchmark is as totally arbitrary as using Rolling Stone as the only benchmark for a band being popular. Torc 06:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"many music buyers are building an SACD collection even if they have no SACD playback equipment and are not specifically inclined to purchase SACDs" This is an argument advocating the thesis that SACD is going to take off any day soon. I don't know what to do with this, so I have kept it. Note that this assertion is not referenced.

Again, you are reading the assumption that SACD will take off into that statement. The statement itself is factual and unbiased. It in no way indicates SACD will take off, but only shows the method by which manufacturers are getting SACD content into peoples' homes. Torc 06:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

"Most surround sound/AV receivers can do some processing on multi-channel audio in order to improve the speaker matching and account for the room acoustics. Better quality surround receivers do this in a DSD bitstream for digital signal processing at high fidelity.". This doesn't sound correct; DSD is not a good format for performing signal processing on since modifications to the bitstream increase the noise level of the signal. Again, this assertion is not referenced.

Now that I have noted a number of unreferenced assertions which are in this article (there is a reason I added the "unreferenced" tag under the "NPOV" tag, let us look at the two referenced assertions which you have deleted from the article:

As of 2006, Super Audio CD has significant obstacles to overcome before achieving mainstream acceptance. Every year since 2003, the first year that the RIAA published SACD sales figures, SACD sales have decreased by 40%. [14]

You rebuttal to this fact is as follows: "Actual consumer sales figures [15] show sales increases year by year, more than 100% between 2003 and 2005 for SACD, this in spite of the fact the overall music sales are declining." So, we have two conflicting numbers: One showing sales going down (which may or may not account for hybrid SACD sales), and another showing sales going up. This data that you have obtained is good enough for me to not put the above statement as is in the article.

These are not conflicting numbers. The numbers you presented are clearly marked as manufacturers' shipments, the numbers I presented are clearly marked as consumer purchases. Since the issue being discussed is 'How much have people bought?' manufacturers' shipments make little difference. Torc 06:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Universal Records and Naxos stopped making Super Audio CDs in 2006. However, many small labels are adopting SACD for their new releases and re-releases. [16]

Your rebuttal to this fact is a simple "The other source is a blog, and considering how many titles Universal lists as available on its page of SACD[17], it's premature to say they're dropping support of the format.". However, for this statement to be rebutted, all you need to find is a single Universal Records announcment or release a new SACD or hybrid disc has been released by the record label in 2006. "Oh, it's a blog and he could be wrong" is not sufficient reason to delete this statement. Samboy 03:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

How about this? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 04:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Looks to be from Deutsche Grammophon. Samboy 04:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Why not go read about the label and you'll see why I linked it. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 04:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. I have updated the wording of the relevant sentence in the article to read "On the other hand, Universal Records stopped releasing new Super Audio CDs in 2006 under their main label; their subsidiary Deutsche Grammophon still releases SACDs". Do you feel this is a fair wording? Samboy 05:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

No, it's incorrect. Here, again, is an industry paper stating: "The new entries bring to 12 the number of new Super Audio CDs that Universal Music and the labels it distributes will be bringing to the market in the months of August through October." I linked to that in my initial comment, which is why I said the blog was clearly wrong. A blog is no more authoritative as an unsourced Wiki article, and is not sufficient to add new information to the article as you did. But setting all that aside, even if it was true, saying the reason they're not manufacturing SACDs was because the format is failing is still conjecture given the current format war. Torc 06:17, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, we're getting dangerously close to Wikipedia:No original research, but it looks like sa-cd.net's list of Universal Records releases has nothing more recent than 2004 or so. The "no Universal releases in 2006" statement is one made by someone who knows what he is talking about, and is backed up by a search at sa-cd.net. I see no reason to not include this statement in the article. Naxos does have a 2006 release [18], so I will only mention Universal as no longer making SACDs in 2006. Samboy 04:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

See above. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 04:49, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Keane, Snow Patrol, and Incubus

I have changed the following:

Some popular albums are also available on SACD, including releases from Keane, Snow Patrol and Incubus' Crow Left of the Murder.

To read as follows:

Some popular albums were released on SACD in 2004, including releases from Keane, Snow Patrol and Incubus. However, all three bands did not release their 2006 albums on to the SACD format.

Here is the evidence to back up this statement:

Keane Only their 2004 album "Hopes and Fears" was released on SACD [19] [20]. Keane has since released "Under the Iron Sea" in 2006, which was not made a SACD release [21]
Snow Patrol Snow Patrol has released some four different records. One their third one, "Final Straw", was released on SACD [22] [23]. In particular, their fourth album "Eyes Open" did not have a SACD release [24]
Incubus Again, only their 2004 album "A Crow Left of the Murder" was released on SACD [25]; their 2006 album Light grenades was not released on SACD.

Is there any issues with the wording of this statement? Samboy 05:09, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes. The Keane album is the only one of these examples I checked because I'm tired of doing this research. Keane's 2004 album was released in May of 2004[26]. The SACD version wasn't released until December 2004.[27]. Under the Iron Sea has only been released seven months ago. So again, it's premature to say that the SACD will never be released. Further, this seems like a totally arbitrary list of three atrists to single out. (Again, it's a pattern of cherry picking data to further your point.) Keane's popularity I believe has also wained a bit and Incubus hasn't matched the success of "Stellar." You're again making an assumption that the delay or the decision not to release these on SACD is a reflection of SACD itself rather than some other factor (such as their decision to release a CD+DVD version.

These three artists were already listed in the article as examples of current popular acts releasing their material on SACD. I can only find two mainstream pop artists who will release a new SACDs in 2007: [28] [29]. I couldn't find any 2006 releases of new pop/rock SACDs; the previous new pop/rock releases before the 2007 upcoming releases was a late 2005 release of a 2003 CD: [30]. I got this information from the search here.

As for my opinion; that doesn't matter. My goal is to make the Wikipedia article best reflect reality. Ever since coming to this article, I have changed my opinion of SACD from one of it being a moribound format on life support to one that is thriving in certain niche markets. However, it is a format that current mainstream pop/rock artists presently have very little interest in. And yes, the argument that current artists don't make good music nor care enough about sound quality to even consider SACD is a compelling one, but one that obviously does not belong in the article proper. Samboy 06:47, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

This is connected to the "no major artists" debate above. 1. Snow Patrol is a major bad in the UK, if not anywhere else. 2. I don't think we're going to dispute that Genesis (releases in 2007) is a major band. (It has a press release on SA-CD.Net). I know they are not new albums, but they are new releases by a major band on the format - THIS year. --81.105.251.160 13:38, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OK, I've removed the "NPOV" and "unreferenced" tags

OK, I've removed the "NPOV" and "unreferenced" tags for the time being. As long as other editors continue to back up their statements with facts, and do not revert my changes without significant discussion here, I think we can make this article have a neutral point of view. Samboy 05:18, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, it looks like the last edit makes the article more concise and better reflect the reality of SACD today (it's struggling in the mainstream, but seems to be doing OK in certain niches, such as classical and a limited number of back catalog albums from classic rock artists). Samboy 07:43, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SACDs by genre

I downloaded the entire databased at sa-cd.net, and sorted it by genre. Here are my numbers:

   2 Inspirational
   4 Independent
   6 Spoken
   8 Folk
  11 Latin
  13 Instrumental
  20 New
  27 Country
  27 Easy
  30 Traditional
  43 World
  47 Chanson
  63 Blues
  70 Soundtrack  
  81 Demos/Samplers
  99 Unassigned
 104 Chinese
 121 Japanese
 128 Vocal
 409 Pop/Rock  ( 9.6%; but "Japanese" and "Chinese" above are 'Japanese pop', etc.)
 759 Jazz      (17.8%)
2202 Classical (51.5%)
4274 Total

Is this information other editors feel is useful to add to the article? Samboy 19:34, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think SA-CD is an authoritative source, since it appears to be driven by (potentially biased) user submissions and what's available at Amazon. I also think the comments in the article about how many releases are in each genre give a false impression about the role of each genre. Sure, there are more Classical titles, but if you look at the list of top sellers, 2/3rds are popular titles. It still goes back to handpicking the data to further the conclusion that popular music is secondary in the SA-CD market. Why mention the number of titles in the genre instead of the top twenty selling titles?Torc 04:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

It's the best information we have and I don't know why we shouldn't trust its figures. Note that I carefully worded it as "number of releses" and kept the information about pop SACDs being the biggest sellers in the article. What we don't have solid information on is the number of total classical sales vs. the number of total pop/rock sales. Pop/rock sales are not obviously not meeting expectations, since, as documented above, a number of bands make a single SACD pop/rock release, then never make another SACD release.

My impression is that 2003-2004 was the peak for pop/rock SACDs, considering the number of bands making releases in that era (Pink Floyd, Nine Inch Nales, Keane, Snow Patrol, Incubus, just to name five) who never made another SACD release. And, yes, there are exceptions, such as Depeche Mode, but the number of pop/rock artists leaving the SACD format outnumber the number of artists making SACDs for the first time. Another data point: Only Depeche Mode, Can, Little Richard, The Byrds, CCR, and The Moody Blues released pop SACDs in 2006. Samboy 06:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Saying it's the best we can find doesn't make it right. We shouldn't trust its figures because it offers none, it's not an industry-published site, and it provides no indication of where it gets its information. If you're looking for a place to stamp the WP:NOR, it's on the overuse and overanalysis of material on sa-cd.net.Torc 21:42, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you. There has to be a better place to get solid numbers. Samboy 18:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OK, my recent edits

I have made three recent edits. Since there have been problems with reverts on this page, I will explain the justification for these edits:

Edit number one: "the hybrid discs can be played on all conventional CD players." -> "the hybrid discs can be played on most CD players." "All conventional" is by nature a statement that can not be proved; in addition there are known problems with SACDs and some CD/DVD drives [31].

"All conventional" means that the CD layer of an SACD disc meets Red Bookstandards. By definition, a CD that meets red book standards can be played on a conventional CD player. The sentence doesn't say 'all CD/DVD drives.' You've still provided no evidence that there is any problem with Hybrid SACD discs on conventional CD players; you've only provided a link to a forum where some people were complaining about behavior on a few combo CD/DVD drives.Torc 22:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Edit number two: "the biggest sellers are ''[[The Dark Side Of The Moon]]'' and ''[[Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits album)|Brothers in Arms]]'' (unreferenced)" -> "the biggest sellers seem to be ''[[The Dark Side Of The Moon]]'' and ''[[Brothers in Arms (Dire Straits album)|Brothers in Arms]]'' [http://www.sa-cd.net/topsellers]" . I have changed un unreferenced fact in to a referenced possibility as per Wikipedia:Citing_sources.

Edit number three: removing "so both formats are likely to co-exist (as do DVD-R and DVD+R)", as per WP:NOR

Samboy 19:10, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Er, as someone else said, that SA-CD.net link gives no reference as to just WHAT "top sellers" refers to. If I were to make a guess, I'd say it was "top selling discs from click-throughs by this site", which is hardly representitve of overall sales. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 19:18, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

In order to follow Wikipedia:Citing_sources, we either find objective proof these two albums are top sellers, keep the "seems to be" wording, or remove the sentence altogether. Samboy 19:34, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Then remove it. We have no evidence it's the least bit accurate or current.Torc 22:02, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, I've added this article to the RFC list. In the meantime, please see Wikipedia:Verifiability#Burden_of_evidence before adding information from sa-cd.net.Torc 22:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I intend to remove the statement that these two albums are the top selling SACDs in seven days if there are no further objections or any evidence presented showing that the sa-cd.net popularity list is authoritative, current, accurate, and reflective of total sales rather than site-specific click-thrus or Amazon.com data. Torc 18:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree removal is a good idea. Samboy 18:51, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, I've changed the wording to "Appear to be". I am about to make the wording less verbose, since people here feel SA-cd.net is not a reliable source. Samboy 20:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

It was I who ASSERTED that they are the biggest sellers. The source of the info is SA-CD.net - goto bottom of any page and click 'top sellers'. Or use what amazon says about it? --81.105.251.160 13:41, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ripping SACD to MP3

The statement that it is impossible to rip SACD to mp3 is false. It's difficult (currently), but not impossible. Aside from the analog hole, which had been mentioned, there are other methods[32]. Plus ripping from the CD layer or using the analog hole will be sufficient for most mp3 users.Torc 22:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

But does the word ripping imply digital, (virtually) lossless ripping (or good-enough AAC/MP3) whereas using the analog hole is really 'recording'. Of course the CD layer is often enough - how many mp3 players support multichannel 5.1 output of any kind?! --81.105.251.160 13:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

You can't rip anything to mp3 losslessly since mp3 is a lossy format. Torc2 06:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Top Sellers on SA-CD.net

Just thought I'd let everyone know, the webmaster of SA-CD.net has made a post on what exactly the top sellers link refers to: here. As you can see, it says nothing about what the overall top ones are, in any capacity... ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ 12:45, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

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