Re: Audio Wars
As if High Definition Video wars are not enough, there is yet another war and this time it is around audio. There are many existing formats from digital music in the form of MP3 and like formats, to LPs, to CDs, to SACDs, to DVD-As. There are also many formats of sound processing including Dolby ProLogic variants, Dolby Digital variants, DTS variants and, finally, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD.
The list above from left to right improves theoretical sound quality by virtue of increasing resolution, i.e. more detail/information on the respective media which more closely matches the original sound. It is a given that better quality equipment would also affect the quality of sound for each of the above formats.
It would be nice if manufacturers of audio and video equipment and movie and sound producers and computer hardware manufacturers and programmers all got along and came up with ONE AUDIO and ONE VIDEO standard and move their R&D in that direction so that eventually all equipment would produce, record and reproduce and same format of audio and video signal. This, however, is HIGHLY unlikely to happen. Thus, while a general trend toward digital and higher resolution audio and video media is certain, consumers would still need variety of setups for reproducing the many numbers of combinations that could be formed with the existing and future formats. Therefore, it is likely the decision on what equipment to get would still be based on ones budgets and needs.
The general recommendation would be to go for the highest resolution that could be afforded while taking into account the equipment that would be reproducing it and the cost of obtaining the media. Generally, SACDs and DVD-As audio disks are slightly more expensive than CDs for example (there are some exotic CD types, such as XRCDs that could exceed the cost of SACDs and DVD-As).
For portable media, ripping/downloading should be done at lossless or at least at 320Kbps depending on player capability.
For home audio – SACD and DVD-A significantly outperform CD quality. There is a chance, that in the future they might be replaced by TrueHD and DTS-HD, but for now even most HD movies do not come with those formats, thus the transition would likely take a few years. In the meanwhile, because existing CD/SACD and DVD-A collections would remain, if affordable, a hybrid CD player that can reproduce all of the CD, SACD and DVD-A formats is likely a good choice. Some could be purchased for a few hundred dollars.
Between SACD and DVD-A disks, the choice would depend on the equipment used. For higher end equipment and for multi-channel fuller range (i.e. bigger) speakers, the difference would be less significant. SACD should also have an advantage for stereo listening. For smaller speaker systems, the DVD-A is likely a better choice as it should be better optimized for such a setup.
For TrueHD and DTS-HD, in addition to a BlueRay (or HD) DVD player, a received capable of supporting those formats would be needed plus a 7.1 (7 speakers and subwoofer) system at a minimum in order to utilize the full benefits of these formats, although they should sound better on any system. The reason is that these formats should be theoretically identical to the original due to large capacity of the media on which they are recorded. Presently, there are no music disks recorded or translated in these formats, so a choice of a good hybrid CD player to play the SACD and DVD-A is still a good option (but not a very expensive one, unless money is no object), if a higher level of music and sound enjoyment is sought.
Thus in the sound wars, just like in the HD wars, while some formats seems to pave the way of the future, the existing ones would still remain for quite some time. So while having all these many formats and technologies is not ideal, at least all of them are for real and can be enjoyed accordingly!
