Current Trends in the Recording Format Arena P1 - page 3

Part 1: Is Louder Better?

Q: What are your feelings about SACD (DSD) becoming the next defacto standard for audio encoding?

A: I saw the writing on the wall at the 1998 Tonmeistertagung. There in a large auditorium Sony was presenting it's reasons for introducing DSD as an originating format. I thought--"why should we have to dump our entire studio" just to be up to date in a few years--why should be change to DSD? To the tough German audience of classical recording people, Sony argued, in part, that we should change because the record companies want a more secure medium and besides, the sound of DSD is loads better than PCM 192. The audience guffawed. And I guffaw now!

In our tests here, when comparing DSD to PCM 24/192 (equivalent data rate) and comparing both to the two mix of the mike feed, there was no discernable difference between PCM and DSD. And we have done this many times.

For major mastering people I see that DSD is an endorsable format. Clients may come in with that format and they need to be serviced. Certainly it's important for Sony because of a captive licensing market and brand new revenue streams. But what good are DSD and SACD for the engineer and producer working today without the major label support? (It's gone in classical)

Let's take a look at what would happen if we decided to work in DSD format tomorrow:

25 years of knowledge of pcm---dump it
High end pcm workstation---dump it
800 GB of hard drive---don't dump it but buy 800 more
Expensive multiple A/D and D/A's --dump 'em
New digital studio wiring---rip it open again and add 4 times as much
20 years of engineering thinking about new digital microphones---forget it---dump that too
Expensive outboard gear--wrong format---dump it and re-quip (with what?)
Review fax from major labels that says just send us your pcm work and we'll convert it to DSD. ---Weep!

It's a total joke and we refuse to let the dullards in hi end hi-fi drive our investment. Those who push us to do this re-equipping will not guarantee our bank loan will they? This is even before one reviews the research of Lipshitz and Vanderkooy into the drawbacks of DSD.

Sony didn't tell you that you could record DSD on a regular PCM multi-track did they? No, they said we have some new gear to show and install for you.

We have an increasing load of work for DVD-A. Now someone tell me (a tough customer who has done the listening) why we should change to DSD.

Ealing mobile recording, Ltd., Chicago

Note: The above comments show us that in order for a studio to fully produce SACD discs they will need to fully re-equip their studios with a lot of new hardware and software. This is a very expensive proposition. Many recording studios are in the middle of an economic recession, and with the possibility that the SACD format will have limited distribution, many studios have serious reservations about buying into the SACD format.