What Will Follow Compact Disc?

The advent of DVD (Digital Versatile Disc) should have changed all that - providing a standard of recorded sound eagerly awaited by all audiophiles. Unfortunately, three competing systems have lead to total confusion. All three have the ability to offer 96kHz sampling and 24-bit resolution, as now used in most high-quality studio recording, and all three have discs of the same physical size as the present CD. However, this digital information cannot be read by the lasers of existing CD players. (Many recent CDs indicate that they have been mastered using 96kHz/24-bit technology but they are then truncated to conventional 44.1kHz/16-bit for the actual CD). It is expected that all DVD players will also be able to play existing CDs, albeit at 44.1kHz/16-bit.

DVD-Audio is supposed to be the successor to CD, but the industry working group set up early in 1998 to agree the standards was totally bogged down in the details for many months. The original proposals even included four different types of disc, each of which would be playable on one or two of three different kinds of player! Eventually a DVD-Audio specification was finalised in February 1999 and many of the leading record labels announced their support for this standard, including BMG, EMI, Universal Music and Warner Music.

However, DVD-Audio discs are not playable on existing CD players, nor in DVD-video players (unless they have additional lower-grade PCM tracks). The proposed launch in the last quarter of 1999 was abandoned after a Norwegian hacker broke the security code for DVD-Video. DVD-Audio players eventually appeared on the UK market at the end of 2000, together with a very limited number of DVD-Audio discs. Updating this article in early 2004, I find that the available number of DVD-Audio discs remains painfully small.

Meanwhile, Philips Electronics and Sony Corporation, the original developers of CD, have produced SACD (Super Audio Compact Disc). This has the possibility of being a dual-layer disc, combining a DVD-type specification layer with a CD-standard layer. These dual-layer "hybrid" discs are playable in both new SACD players, where the new short wavelength laser reads the top layer at 96kHz/24-bit, and in existing CD players where the laser reads the lower layer.

The hybrid disc looks and plays just like an existing CD in a CD player. As this system has the support of the holders of  the CD patents, and licenses are available to manufacturers on the same terms as existing CD licenses, it seemed likely that it was a potential winner, at least from a technical, if not commercial, viewpoint.

However, two developments initially limited the potential for success of SACD. Firstly, Philips Electronics sold their Polygram Records labels to Seagrams and their subsidiary Universal Music; thus losing control of the premier classical disc producer. As mentioned earlier, Universal Music announced their support for DVD-Audio rather than SACD!

Secondly, when announcing plans for the release of the first SACD players in Japan in May 1999, Sony also announced that the first discs would actually be single-layer and would not be backwardly compatible with existing CD players. Fortunately, the original intention of providing hybrid discs has actually been achieved and the SACDs now available from companies such as Albany, BIS, Chandos, Delos, Harmonia Mundi, Hyperion, Linn, PentaTone, Telarc (and EMI and Universal Music) are all dual layer. Some from Sony also are but it is amazing that they still produce many single-layer discs.

In the meantime, a third system had already been developed and was the first to market. This was DVD-Video.

By all accounts the sound quality of SACD is something special; with analogue-like ease and compression-free dynamics very similar to digital and analogue master tapes. The initial response to DVD-Audio has been rather more muted with the players themselves being substantially criticised. No doubt, DVD-Audio is capable of realising as fine results as SACD and iIt is unlikely that companies such as Meridian would support it, if it wasn't!

Following Seagram's sale of Universal Music to the French Vivendi group, Universal Music announced that they would be supporting the SACD format instead of DVD-Audio and EMI have followed suit (with their pop releases at least).

Many players introduced by the major Japanese maufacturers are capable of playing both DVD-Audio and DVD-Video discs and many players are capable of playing SACDs and DVD-Video discs but only a few are yet capable of playing both DVD-Audio and SACD. It seemed likely that a number of manufacturers would see this as the most sensible route and there has been a flood of "multi-format" players onto the market.

Given that the public in general are quite satisfied with the quality of current CDs, unless a truly compatible disc (such as hybrid SACD) can be developed for sale at, or close to, existing CD prices and thus have the advantage of single- inventory and backwards compatibility with existing CD players, it is hard to see how the new discs, DVD-Audio or SACD, will have more than a very limited future. Fortunately, a number of enlighted companies - including Albany, BIS, Harmonia Mundi, Linn and PentaTone - are doing just this and only issuing recordings as SACD/CD hybrids at regular CD prices.

Another particularly disturbing feature of the DVD-Audio standard that has been revealed is that this is basically a multi- channel system with no specific stereo tracks on the disc. Any stereo playback will be achieved by a stereo mix down within the DVD-Audio player from the multi- tracks on the disc. Particularly for classical recordings, one wonders what those recording engineers who have carefully balanced their stereo recordings will have to say about this!

As for the internet as a music carrier, anybody who has heard the compressed and low resolution sound and experienced the long down-load times of MP3, MS Media and RealAudio will know that -in its present form - for classical music it is a non- starter. At some time in the future when 96kHz/ 24-bit audio can be downloaded in a sensibly short time to a realistic storage/playback medium then it might be another matter. But one wonders whether collectors will be happy without booklet notes. And just who is going to promote these new recordings!

However, there is enough concern in the mainstream pop music trade that a global organisation - GERA (Global Entertainment Retail Alliance) - has been formed by the main retail trade organisations in Australia, Canada, Germany, Holland, Mexico, New Zealand, the USA and the UK expressly with the intention of addressing the "digital delivery of music and discrepancies of taxes paid by such distributors, piracy and the standardisation of release dates worldwide. By strengthening the retailers position in the world market, the association hopes to have a greater influence on the direction that the music industry takes and to push for a more inclusive role in any developments taking place".

Clearly any real successor to CD is still a long way off and I believe that any eventually successful system will not in any way adversely affect the millions of existing CD users. There would appear to be little likelihood of a system being adopted which would make existing CDs redundant.

Brittens Music Eastbourne