NOW HIGH-RESOLUTION AUDIO IS POISED <strong>TO</strong> FURTHERBOOST ITS GROWTH, THANKS <strong>TO</strong> THE INTRODUCTION OFAFFORDABLE COMBINATION UNITS THAT PLAY DVD-AUDIO DISCS ANDSACDs, PLUS DVD-VIDEO AND STANDARD CDs.36ingly is becoming a mainstay in Americans’ family and mediarooms. The receiver, considered critical to the full enjoyment ofhigh-resolution digital audio, has found its way into 28 percentof U.S. homes, a result that is consistent with the previousyear’s study. The 2003 study found some 61 percent of receiverowners say they are “interested” or “very interested” in musicDVDs.The broader 2002 DVD-Audio Interest study found that 20percent of respondents believe the sound quality of music CDscould be improved “a lot.”Eager to improve sound quality, most surround sound receiverowners are hooking up their devices to four or more speakers.Of those who have linked their receiver to one or morespeakers, 87 percent have connected it to at least four speakersand 66 percent have plugged in at least five.Surround sound receiver owners show strong potentialinterest in the new digital music format. Of those who havehooked up their receiver to a DVD player, more than three outof five have used their DVD player to listen to music CDs duringthe last year. This finding suggests strong potential interestin the new digital music formats.Choice is what audio content is all about. <strong>Consumer</strong>s canchoose from more than 500 available DVD-Audio titles andmore than 800 different SACDs. Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side ofthe Moon” on SACD from Capitol Records reached No. 1 on theBillboard catalog chart, achieving 100,000 unit sales in the U.S.Surround Sound Receiver Ownership*YearOverall Male Female 18-34 35-44 45-54 55+
The TechnologySince we are tossing around the term “high-resolution audio,”it helps to know how audio resolution is determined. Fordigital audio content, two yardsticks are usually used to measureresolution, which includes sample rate frequency and wordlength (number of bits). For example, CD digital audio utilizespulse code modulation technology with 16-bit word lengthsand 44.1 kHz sampling rate. Or, put another way, 44,100samples per second of the analog signal digitally describe anaudio tone.DVD Audio, developed three years ago by the DVD Forum(initially Panasonic, Pioneer, Toshiba and Warner Music,among others) also uses PCM but boosts sample rates to 192kHz and word length to 24 bits per sample.DVD-Audio’s data compression technique is called MeridianLossless Packing (MLP). The “lossless” refers to the fact thatall of the original data is recovered from the compressedversion (none is “lost”). DVD-Audio discs, however, also canaccommodate the same audio encoded as Dolby Digital forplaying on existing DVD-Video players.DVD-Audio offers at least 74 minutes of high quality 5.1channel surround sound, plus additional features that are notavailable on CDs such as the ability to store music video clips.DVD-A discs also can include interactive DVD-ROM content.Rather than increasing both word length and sampling frequenciescompared to standard CDs, super audio CD (SACD)developers Sony and Philips came up with a technique calleddirect stream digital (DSD), which reduces word lengths to asingle bit and increases sampling frequency up to 2.8224 MHz(mega as in million), or 64 times the CD sampling rate.SACDs were first launched in 1999 as an audiophile format instereo only. In 2001 the format added multichannel disks andplayers.SACD also requires compression to fit all of its informationonto the disc, which it gets in the form of a technology calleddirect stream transfer (DST). Like DVD-A’s MLP system, DSTis a lossless scheme that offers bit-for-bit accuracy.OC<strong>TO</strong>BER 2003Both SACD and DVD-Audio have data-storage capacity of4.7GB per layer, which is more than seven times the capacity ofa standard 74-minute, 650-megabyte CD. Because of theirextra data capacity, the DVD-Audio and SACD formats easilysurpass CDs with regard to resolution, clarity, frequencyresponse and dynamic range.The most common SACD is a dual-layer hybrid disc with ahigh-density “semi-reflective” layer and a reflective outer layer.The outer layer is reserved for standard CD audio, allowing the“hybrid” disc to play in lower resolution (CD quality) stereo onCD players. This compatibility with all existing CD playersgives SACD an advantage over its chief rival. On the otherhand SACD discs will not play on standard DVD-Video playersor DVD-Audio players unless they are specifically designed forSACDs.Prerecorded DVD-Audio and SACD discs both come withcopy-protection algorithms to prevent unauthorized duplication.Unfortunately, these same protection standards make itimpossible to send digital SACD or DVD-Audio signals to areceiver or amplifier. Instead, consumers must use the analogRCA-type jacks on the back of players. A few brands, notablyDenon and Pioneer Elite, now have digital audio connectionsinternally from player to receiver. Pioneer Elite uses a one-wayiLink IEEE 1394 connection to keep the audio stream in thedigital domain.As for the future, proponents of DVD-Audio and WarnerMusic Group in particular have been pushing for a doublesided‘hybrid’ DVD-Audio version that would carry a CD compatiblelayer.The SACD camp also is investigating to enhance the formatwith still images and other multimedia content similar to thesupplementary materials found on many DVD-Video discs.Breaking into HTiB’sAlthough simplicity is helping drive sales of theater-in-a-box(HTiB) systems, so is technology. The popularity of HTiB’s —so-called because they incorporate all of the speakers and elec-5 <strong>TECHNOLOGIES</strong> <strong>TO</strong> <strong>watch</strong>37
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