Media Reports
BLU-RAY: The World As It Is
By Barry Fox
At a recent meeting of the Audio Engineering Society in London, the audience bewailed the fact that Joe and Flo Bloe are happy listening to music on an MP3 player or iPod or low rate DAB. But one phrase kept running round my brain. The world is as it is, not how we would like it to be.
Or as John Honeyball, a Tonmeister who went into IT, put it during the recent AES debate on the prospects for hi-fi in a mid-fi world: "When people listen to an iPod through headphones it is probably the best stereo they have ever heard."
CD RULES
In the early days of color TV the potential for good sound from the FM carrier was squandered by set-makers who saved pennies by using toy paper cone loudspeakers. Nicam stereo and digital TV made sound a selling point and smart manufacturers used the large volume of air in a big tube set to put some beef in the bass.
But the latest flat panel TVs have no air space and sound awful unless the onboard speakers are switched off and the audio is piped through a home theater or satellite sub. Most people just won't bother. Although a huge marketing push for flat panel and HDTV was tied to the World Cup, the BBC and ITV did not even bother to use the 5.1 surround feed that Dolby made available from the HBS broadcast center in Munich.
DVD-Audio has disappeared and SACD is selling mainly as a CD format. Blu-ray and HD-DVD are locked in a suicide pact and encumbered by Draconian Digital Rights Management.
Ex-Decca producer James Mallinson has 15 Grammys under his belt: "We are heading for a DRM system like the tax system, which is so complicated that no one knows what they can do." Mallinson believes that the future for niche music-classical and jazz-lies in downloading.
"Your local record shop will at best stock only about 2% of the total catalog. Amazon used to offer a wide range. Now it's delivery in two or three weeks which can mean two or three months." But download quality is usually sub-CD, he warns. And it will cost the record companies more in server storage and Internet usage to offer higher bit rates. There are also hidden pitfalls.
Single pop tracks are ephemeral, whereas whole albums are usually bought to keep. Trusting them to a home hard drive leaves an entire music collection at risk of a disc crash or virus wipeout. Many people do not know about virus protection, let alone the need to pay to keep it up to date. They don't back up their PC hard drive, or safeguard download purchases by copying the MP3 or AAC files to CDR. No one in the music industry is giving clear advice on what to do about backups. The download sites just post small print notes for their own legal protection.
The watershed-the music equivalent of Y2K-will be early next year when Microsoft releases the next version of Windows. It's called Vista and (supposedly) turns a PC into the perfect home entertainment center. It won't, of course, but the marketing hype will persuade people that if they want eternal happiness they must upgrade to Vista.
To do this they will usually need a new PC, with more memory, bigger hard drive, and faster chips. And then they will realize that all the music they bought is trapped on the old PC. Transferring it will take a lot more skill and time than many music-lovers have.
So buying music albums on CDs will start to look very attractive again. Nimbus is showing the way to make niche market disc marketing viable. Every CD you buy from Nimbus is now burned to order, rather than pressed.
OUT OF THE BLUE
Meanwhile, the two new blue laser systems, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD, are being touted as the next answer to an audio and video perfectionist's prayer. Demonstrations of the video quality, when displayed on a genuine HDTV screen with full 1920 × 1080 resolution, speak for themselves-although significantly the demonstrators never offer an A/B comparison with the remarkable picture quality now available by up-scaling the signals from a conventional DVD-especially European 625 line PAL-for display on an HD screen.
Likewise demonstrations of HDTV emphasize the value of 5.1 surround, even though it is already available from existing digital TV broadcasts and DVDs. Says Tony Spath of Dolby: "HD picture quality is a driver but increasingly the presence of surround sound underlines the difference in the HD experience to consumers."
Sony is using the slogans "the best sound you have ever heard" and "theater quality uncompressed audio" to promote BD.
"Audiophiles are well catered for in the new HD-DVD format," promises the DVD Forum.
To get a handle on the blue laser audio options, the best starting point is a brief reminder of how the two rival disc formats-both of which use a 405nm laser-store and deliver data. In a nutshell, BD discs are optically very different from conventional DVDs, and the difference lets them store more data and handle higher data rates than HD-DVD. HD-DVDs are very similar to DVDs, which limits their capacity and data rate but makes it easier for factories to convert existing presses.
The two formats have confusingly different audio options, some mandatory and some optional, meaning that some players may not be able to exploit the full audio quality of some discs. The BD standard compels the player manufacturer to provide a built-in decoder for uncompressed Linear PCM, in stereo at 48 or 96kHz sampling rates. But the disc can hold up to eight channels of LPCM at up to 192kHz and up to 24 bit coding.
So in theory at least, there could be an audio-only BD disc with eight channels of uncompressed audio. But basic players may only play the disc in stereo. All BD players must be able to play discs with conventional Dolby Digital (AC-3) 5.1 sound, but at a higher data rate than catered for by DVD players. So Dolby 5.1 should sound better from BD.
Optionally the player can also play Dolby Digital Plus, with 7.1 channels at a much higher data rate. Also optional is the player's ability to cope with Dolby True HD, the lossless compression system based on DVD-Audio's MLP. Much higher data rates than DVD can handle mean that BD can in theory out-perform DVD-Audio. All BD players must have a decoder built-in to handle conventional "lossy" DTS, with 5.1 channels, but at higher data rates than conventional DVD.
The final option for BD is the use of the new DTS lossless system, called DTS-HD Master Audio. This works in the same general way as Dolby MLP/True HD. The audio is recorded using compression, then checked for compression/decompression errors and a correction signal encoded along with the compressed audio. When the compressed signal is replayed the correction makes the final output a bit-for-bit replica of the original uncompressed original.
All in all, then, the Blu-ray Disc has the potential to offer the best quality audio yet available from any consumer recording format-far better than today's DVD and better even than DVD-A or SACD. Whether BD players and discs exploit this potential, whether consumer reproduction systems do it justice, and whether many consumers will hear any difference and be prepared to pay extra for the privilege is, of course, quite another matter.
DECODING
There is also considerable confusion over what decode options will be available from the first BD players. It looks increasingly likely that first adopters may find that they cannot take advantage of advanced audio options offered by discs that follow later. The same warning holds true for HD-DVD, because the first players are being rushed out at under $500 to stake a market claim.
All HD-DVD players must be able to decode two-channel stereo LPCM, Dolby Digital 5.1, Dolby Digital Plus 7.1, lossless Dolby True HD (MLP) in stereo and the basic DTS lossy compression system. A decoder for lossless DTS HD Master Audio is optional-as it is for BD.
Dolby True HD is mandated for HD-DVD and optional for BD. This puts HD-DVD ahead of BD in terms of mandatory audio decoding. All HD-DVD players must be able to decode the new formats Dolby Digital Plus and Dolby True HD, whereas DD Plus and Dolby True HD decoding are optional for BD.
The BD group counters that "a BD player can derive a useful audio signal from all codecs, since the "advanced" codecs are compatible with legacy decoders. For example, a Dolby Lossless stream in Blu-ray must also contain a standard Dolby Digital stream that any BD player can detect and decode. This capability is unique to Blu-ray."
The HD-DVD standard also offers the intriguing option for a conventional 650nm red laser DVD to be run at three times normal speed to triple the normal DVD data rate of 11.08Mbps and deliver the same user bit rate as HD-DVD-but with a shorter playing time than blue laser HD-DVD, of course. This could open up new horizons for super hi-fi audio-only DVDs, and hammer more nails in the DVD-Audio and SACD coffins.
Neither format appears to have any rule over the provision of DVD-A or SACD DSD decoding, partly because the competition between SACD and DVD-Audio does not follow the same commercial boundaries as the competition between BD and HD-DVD. None of the first-generation players have SACD or DVD-A capability, some not even CD playback. But there appears to be no reason why future blue laser players should not offer CD, SACD, and DVD-A playback in addition to conventional red laser DVD playback.
The issue of audio outputs on players is still controlled by interim licenses from AACS-LA, the licensing administration which controls the Draconian Advance Access Content System copy protection used by both formats. AACS-LA has delayed and ducked dates on a final specification, and refuses to answer simple questions.
If standard S/PDIF phono and optical outputs are provided for CD, DTS 5.1, and Dolby 5.1 streams, they will be unable to cope with the higher data rates used for the new, advanced coding systems.
Even if players do have unprotected digital outputs, this does not mean they will continue to work after the final AACS licenses have been agreed. Discs can use digital flags that switch off or degrade any signal coming out of an unprotected output. In the long term the highest quality audio is only likely to be available from HDMI sockets which have built-in HDCP copy protection and connect only with HDMI AV systems.
SECURITY ISSUES
There has been an ominous silence on the possible use of audio watermarking to control blue laser audio copying. The music industry doubtless learned from the audiophile outcry over plans to use the Verance watermark with DVD-Audio. But the Verance website recently sprouted a boast of "Breaking News" dated February 21, 2006: "AACS has announced the selection of Verance's technology as part of the content security architecture for the HD DVD and Blu-Ray formats," said Verance.
A check on the AACS-LA website showed no change in the previous absurd situation, with the News and Frequently Asked Questions sections still as they have been for years, promising "Coming Soon."
But AACS-LA has now defended the decision not to throw the AACS system open to scientific challenge, as was done by the SDMI organization when testing audio protection systems such as the Verance watermark.
Says Michael B. Ayers of AACS-LA: "It is important to note that the AACS Specs are public so anyone can review them or scrutinize them as they wish without the constraint of a formal process. The technology specs in SDMI were not public and some have stated that consequently the public testing, with a cash prize, was actually somewhat constrained. That said, different processes are appropriate for different technologies and AACS opened the specifications up to the public as the appropriate measure for the specific technology."
Whether the descriptions of AACS on the AACS-LA website clearly tell us what we need to know is a moot point. Judge for yourself at www.aacsla.com/specifications/.
The bottom line is that however exciting the audio potential of blue laser discs may look from the format specifications and promotional advertisements, the practical benefits of both formats will not become clear for some time yet. My prediction is that the dead weight of a standards battle and AACS copy protection may kill off both blue laser systems, and encourage music and movie lovers to stick with CD and DVD, or switch to hard disc downloading.
The blue laser camps and AACS-LA will then also find out that the world is as it is, not how they would like it to be. M3
Barry Fox reports on the audio industry as columnist for the British publication Hi-Fi News. His commentary appears in every issue of Multi Media Manufacturer.