High-Res Music to Your Ears

For a few years now, recording companies have been issuing a small number of new releases in high-resolution audio formats--Super Audio CD (SACD) and DVD-Audio--while releasing a much larger number of remixed classics. In time, these discs could shoulder aside mere audio CDs by offering significantly better music quality, but you'll probably never hear high-res audio on an IPod.

Most high-resolution audio discs cost about the same as their CD counterparts; rarer titles may cost more. Both formats use 4.7GB DVD media and are superior to CDs in nearly all respects, with greater bit depth (typically 24 bits versus 16 bits for CDs), higher sampling rates (96 kHz or 192 kHz, versus 44.1 kHz), and more speaker channels (5.1-channel surround sound versus two-channel stereo). I've listened to this stuff, and it is impressive.

Because some DVD-Audio releases have separate high-resolution DTS Audio tracks as well, you may be able to play them in an older DVD player that doesn't support DVD-Audio or SACD. Just look for a DTS logo on the front of the player.

But why do we need yet another music format? After all, in theory, sampling audio at 44.1 kHz (or 44,100 times per second) and storing it as 16-bit data provides more aural detail than human ears can discern. In fact, though, it still comes nowhere close to faithfully reproduced music. One problem: High-frequency signals often get clipped on audio CDs, and this robs the music of fidelity at the upper end of the audible wave spectrum.

Specifications and figures are nice, but the listener's ears are the final arbiters. When I dropped a DVD-Audio disc containing Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" into my home theater setup, I felt the music as much as I heard it. Sting's "Desert Rose" on his Brand New Day album is hypnotic. Music and voices swirl and wash about you, providing a new perspective on songs you thought you knew.

Part of the magic comes from the addition of surround sound to these discs. Even on remixed DVD-Audio discs like the Eagles' Hotel California and SACDs like Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, you're in the center of the band.

Neal Breitbarth, a longtime studio producer and now a manager with audio equipment maker Digidesign, says that what he's heard from SACD and DVD-Audio impresses him.

"It has a lot of depth to it that you won't find in CDs," Breitbarth says. "The thing you really notice is the sound at the high end [of the spectrum]. You will notice the difference, if you listen to an MP3 versus a CD versus a Super Audio CD."

High-Res Hardware

I checked out two DVD players that can handle both high-resolution discs--the Pioneer DV-578A and the Yamaha DVD-S1500--and liked what I heard. Both can read DVD video as well as the entire range of CD and DVD rewritable disc formats, too. And since both drives also support Dolby Digital and DTS audio, they can dish out the immersive surround sound found on DVD videos. In the informal sessions I spent listening to a 5.1-speaker setup powered by a Yamaha RX-V650 receiver, both players produced music that rose head and shoulders above that of standard audio CDs.

The Pioneer DV-578A is sleek and compact. But I was frustrated by its uninformative front-panel interface, which forced me to turn on the television to do simple things like switch SACD audio modes and turn on surround sound. Still, for $130, you can spin every medium this side of a pepperoni pizza.

The Yamaha DVD-S1500 is a larger, more expensive unit (about $400) that should have even more appeal to music enthusiasts. Though its front-panel LCD is cramped, the display shows enough to let you get most tasks done without having to resort to the TV. I also thought that the DVD-S1500 provided somewhat greater clarity than the DV-578A when playing some SACD titles.

For video playback, both drives offer high-quality, progressive-scan video output over component connections. Regrettably, however, neither offers DVI or HDMI connections, an important and convenient way to move high-resolution audio and video among components.

Will It Play in Poughkeepsie?

Despite their impressive audio quality, SACD and DVD-Audio face an uphill climb. Recording companies are promoting better-than-CD quality music at a time when most consumers are happily compressing tunes to MP3 format. What's more, you can't listen to high-resolution audio on just any equipment. You need a home theater, computer, or automobile (rare) equipped with both a compatible player and a 5.1-channel speaker setup.

Another issue: You can't rip DVD-Audio or SACD music to a portable audio format. Yes, many SACD titles offer a standard-resolution, CD-compatible set of tracks on a second layer of the disc--and I could rip these just as I could any regular CD--but the good stuff remains firmly locked up.

More troubling, many CD players can't play DVD-Audio discs at all. A new disc format backed by several large record companies may resolve that problem. Called DualDisc, the format puts a standard audio CD on one face of the disc and a high-resolution DVD-Audio recording on the other. It's a neat idea that should allow DVD-Audio to match SACD's compatibility. The new discs should begin appearing in the first quarter of next year.

SACD isn't sitting still. There's already talk of an SACD 2.0 spec, said to add video and photo handling to the mix (many DVD-Audio discs already have this capability). There's no word yet on whether it might render today's SACD-savvy drives obsolete. And both camps face an emerging issue: Artists are demanding royalties for each instance of a track on discs that contain multiple iterations of their work. The various sides were still negotiating at press time.