DVD-A, SACD, HDMI: lots of letters: should you care?

Get ready, get set--let's play format wars. Yes, the recorded media industry is going to do it again. HD-DVD v. Blue Ray. They never learn. Remember, 50% of the time, both formats lose, e.g., Philips digital cassette v. DAT, RCA Selecta Vision v. the Pioneer laser video disc, and DVD-A v. SACD. OK, so it is not clear whether the last two are dead yet, but they are clearly both in intensive care.

It has been announced that first Sony Blue Ray player will not support SACD. Naxos, which has attempted to support both formats, is now ended producing new discs and is dumping the old ones through many places including Berkshire Record Exchange. I get e-mails from Berkshire Record Outlet all the time announcing clearance sales of SACDs from a variety of labels. No DVD recorder to my knowledge supports SACD or DVD-A.

It all comes as no surprise. Both systems were developed on the premise that the average consumer wanted to sit home and listen to a marginally improved sound from discs that sold for almost twice the price of conventional CDs. Oops! Consumers think MP3 sounds just fine and they listen to music only on the run or in the car.

OK, things are not that grim on the SACD side. At least that is what the proponents say, pointing to new releases coming from small labels including the self-published discs being released by the major symphony orchestras. Sales are up because prices are way down, in many cases matching the price of a CD (save for Chandos, alas, which still sells for 50% more). They needed to bring the price down because stores will not support dual inventory of SACD and CD given the microscopic sales of SACD. One can see the situation clearly by going to the Tower Records CD site. Go to "advanced search," select "format SACD," "label DGG," and view by release date. It will become very clear the majors are not releasing material in the format anymore. The last stuff came out a year ago. On the other hand, the number of niche labels is rather high, judging from www.sa-cd.net/titles, but many SACDs come from European labels with no US distribution.

The one exception with respect to the majors is RCA, which brought the price of SACDs to new lows with its Living Stereo series selling for $10 on sale. RCA is apparently having some success. Music lovers, it appears, can never turn down a reissue of Munch and the Boston Symphony with slightly better sound.

Of course, $10 for some of the greatest performances of all time in slightly improved sound is an impulse purchase. $16 for a new performance with a second-rate conductor and orchestra is a different story and that is what the niche labels offer in many cases. The self-published SACDs from the major orchestras can only make things worse for the niche companies, but perhaps these discs will bring up sales of the format.

From the hardware side, SACD presents big problems because you cannot transfer digital signals to an AV receiver or preamp unless you spend $2,000 or more for a combo that uses IEEE 1394 or a proprietary bus. If you pay the price, you still must wonder whether you will be able to replace this equipment five years down the road. Sherwood offers a different path in its $1,500 preamp processor (review forthcoming). You do not have to throw out your current SACD player or worry about the longevity of a proprietary digital connection. Instead, the Sherwood will take the 5.1 analog outputs and convert them back to digital. How high the definition is after all this conversion is hard to say, but it is at least CD quality, with all the advanced features of the equipment intact.

DVD-A does finally have a digital connection with some legs. Unfortunately, that format is in worse shape than SACD. DVD-A is trying to hang on with the new dual disc format that eliminates the double inventory problem (CD on one side DVD-A on the other). Premium pricing often still applies. How successful Dual Disk is can again be established by going to the Tower Record site.

OK, back to hardware. HDMI is the new digital connection system for HDTV. A year ago it was the thing to have on the back of your plasma TV. The problem is that the format is not stable. HDMI 1.0 is now last year's wizbang. One of the things that went clunk with 1.0 was that it carried no audio. Six-cable analog was still required even if video had been reduced from 3 analogs to 1 digital. This year's wizbang is HDMI 1.1, which does carry 5 channels of PCM-encoded audio. DVD-A now has single-cable support, but do not think that is why all the big AV receiver manufactures have moved up to 1.1. It turns out 1.1 is needed for Blue Ray and HD DVD. Both support 5.1 lossless PCM channels at sampling rates of at least 96 kHz, so a single-cable solution needed to be ready when the players arrived.

Problem is, Blue Ray and HD-DVD can support up to 14 channels, but HDMI 1.1 does not support that. The upcoming HDMI 1.3 will, but when that will appear on the back of AV receivers is anybody's guess.

Clearly, HDMI is an early-adapter thing at the moment. I do not think it is big deal if an AV receiver supports HDMI at all from a musical perspective. Remember that every DVD-A is also a DVD. Not only does that ensure that you that you can always play your DVD-A as a DVD even if the format goes bust, it also means you can use the standard SPDIF link to transport the Dolby Digital or DTS signal that is encoded on all these discs. To go out and make a big purchase of an HDMI 1.1-enabled universal DVD player and AV receiver just to get a little better sound out of DVD-A does not appear very sensible.

One piece of advice to prevent you from pulling out all your hair: Your present DVD-A player may mute the SPDIF output when it plays a DVD-A, leaving you with no sound when you tell your AV receiver to run in Dolby digital or DTS digital mode. The workaround is the purchase of a $50 DVD player from Best Buy. OK, what about SACD? Well, for some reason that format was not supported by HDMI 1.1. Something called HDMI 1.2a does support SACD, but no hardware (including the ICs to receive the signal) are out yet, and I have been told by the marketing manger of major manufacturer that he is getting no calls from the field to bring HDMI 1.2a to market. I assume HDMI 1.3 will support SACD, since it should be an extension of 1.2, but will you be able to find an HD-DVD player or a Blue Ray player that supports HDMI 1.3 and SACD? We will not know the answer to that question for some time, and it will be even longer before we find out whether HD-DVD or Blue Ray wins the new format war.

Moreover, the answer may be "none of the above" if on-demand movies from a high-speed internet link can be made a reality. Remember, "none of the above" is the answer in 50% of these format wars. DVD was such a success out of the box because all sides choose to go with one format out of the box.

So, what is my advice for SACD fans? For the present time, you are still stuck in the world of analog signal transfer unless you are using a proprietary digital link. That means you can kiss goodbye all the advanced bass management and auto equalization functions coming on-stream in sensibly priced AV receivers. In addition, you are using a format that has no fallback mode for multi-channel music reproduction the way DVD-A has. If the format goes bust, along with your multi-channel SACD player all you will have is a stereo CD in your hand.

My recommendation is to avoid worrying about HDMI for audio. As for the software, go ahead and purchase an SACD if you want the performance. Purchasing it for better two-channel sound is a mirage in my opinion. Many do sound much improved over CD in multi-channel, but it is not going to be the best multi-channel sound you can get from your system since you are forced into the analog bypass inputs unless you are prepared to pay four figures. Will you still be able to listen to an SACD five years from now when your current player goes tilt? That is an iffy proposition, but in the end eBay may save you. As I write this you can actually purchase a Philips Digital Cassette recorder and blank tapes off of eBay.

What am I doing? Purchasing every Living Stereo SACD I can get my hands on for 10 bucks (they do sound better than the last CD iterations because of the careful remastering from the original master tapes and the center channel really works). Why am I purchasing these recordings for what in many cases is the 6th time? You know why--these are classic performances that have stood the test of time for 50 years. At full price, performance or new repertoire (Chandos just released Stanford's Songs of the Sea--can I resist?) is still what drives my purchase. A second-rate performance in multi-channel may be fun once but are you ever going to play that SACD of Mahler 1 again when you have the Horenstein, Walter, and Solti sitting on your CD shelf already?

A final warning about running out to get new recordings of warhorses just because they got rave reviews. I have found most of these recording do not make it to the top of the recommended performance list a couple of years out let alone 50. This was less of a problem when the majors were releasing tons of material, but now any competent new recording of a piece from the standard repertoire may be treated as a major event.--DAR