[[email protected]]

One might ask why high rez matters beyond a marketing plan. This when cd
blue book is not demonstrated to be distinguishable from it.


Sony has a new line of digital hardware that stores and plays most high rez
formats.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57...news&tag=title

[Audio_Empire]

In article ,
wrote:

One might ask why high rez matters beyond a marketing plan. This when cd
blue book is not demonstrated to be distinguishable from it.


Sony has a new line of digital hardware that stores and plays most high rez
formats.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57...about-high-res
olution-audio-again/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

One thing that they don't say is whether these new Sony
"High-Resolution" Players will handle the DSD format or not. These look
like "me too" products to me.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

[David E. Bath]

In article ,
Audio_Empire writes:
In article ,
wrote:

One might ask why high rez matters beyond a marketing plan. This when cd
blue book is not demonstrated to be distinguishable from it.


Sony has a new line of digital hardware that stores and plays most high rez
formats.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57...about-high-res
olution-audio-again/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

One thing that they don't say is whether these new Sony
"High-Resolution" Players will handle the DSD format or not. These look
like "me too" products to me.

According to the Sony press release link in the article:

"The flagship model, part of Sony?s ES (Elevated Standard) line,
HAP-Z1ES Hi-Res HDD Music Player features a one-terabyte hard disc
drive and DSD Re-mastering engine to convert and enhance virtually any
music files to DSD (5.6M) quality. As with all of Sony's ES products,
build-quality and sound performance technics have been instituted
including, Analog FIR filter, low-phase noise liquid crystal
oscillator, large capacity twin transformers and many more."

It goes on to say all the other new models can play DSD too.

http://blog.sony.com/press/sony-intr...e-and-quality/

--
David Bath - RAHE Co-moderator

[[email protected]]

Some have wondered about sony including some recordings on their new
products. This week's stereophile in their bit about the products says
that 20 recordings will be included.

[Audio_Empire]

In article ,
wrote:

Some have wondered about sony including some recordings on their new
products. This week's stereophile in their bit about the products says
that 20 recordings will be included.

Does it say what music is included, or can the customer choose from
their catalogue?

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

[Andrew Haley]

wrote:
One might ask why high rez matters beyond a marketing plan. This when cd
blue book is not demonstrated to be distinguishable from it.

Sony has a new line of digital hardware that stores and plays most high rez
formats.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57...news&tag=title

It's a Sony. I suspect it's so crippled by Digital Restrictions
Management as to be unusable.

Andrew.

[Audio_Empire]

In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

wrote:
One might ask why high rez matters beyond a marketing plan. This when cd
blue book is not demonstrated to be distinguishable from it.

Sony has a new line of digital hardware that stores and plays most high rez
formats.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13645_3-57...s-about-high-r
esolution-audio-again/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title

It's a Sony. I suspect it's so crippled by Digital Restrictions
Management as to be unusable.

Andrew.

I wouldn't doubt that. Sony has great ideas, but they always manage to
screw the pooch somehow. They either don't follow through with marketing
the ideas (SACD) or they stubbornly refuse to fit the product to the
real marketing demands (BetaMax).

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

[Andrew Haley]

Audio_Empire wrote:

Sony has great ideas, but they always manage to screw the pooch
somehow. They either don't follow through with marketing the ideas
(SACD) or they stubbornly refuse to fit the product to the real
marketing demands (BetaMax).

I don't think SACD was so much badly marketed as badly timed. It was
introduced at the same time as MP3 players, and an important feature
was that SACDs couldn't be ripped. It looked to me (and to many
others) like that was the real purpose of SACD: an unrippable medium.
High-res was just a teaser to get people to buy them.

This belief was perhaps wrong, and the timing was just an unfortunate
coincidence. But with people's listening moving onto the cloud and
digital players, any format tied to a physical medium is a relic, no
matter how good it can sound. If the new Sony players don't allow the
user the freedom to listen to their music where and how they want
those players will fail, and deservedly so.

Andrew.

[Audio_Empire]

In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

Audio_Empire wrote:

Sony has great ideas, but they always manage to screw the pooch
somehow. They either don't follow through with marketing the ideas
(SACD) or they stubbornly refuse to fit the product to the real
marketing demands (BetaMax).

I don't think SACD was so much badly marketed as badly timed. It was
introduced at the same time as MP3 players, and an important feature
was that SACDs couldn't be ripped. It looked to me (and to many
others) like that was the real purpose of SACD: an unrippable medium.
High-res was just a teaser to get people to buy them.

This belief was perhaps wrong, and the timing was just an unfortunate
coincidence. But with people's listening moving onto the cloud and
digital players, any format tied to a physical medium is a relic, no
matter how good it can sound. If the new Sony players don't allow the
user the freedom to listen to their music where and how they want
those players will fail, and deservedly so.

Andrew.

I don't think that being not "ripp-able" had anything to do with SACD's
failure. People interested in SACD wouldn't be interested in MP3 at all.
Besides, very soon after Sony introduced the format, other record
companies were producing hybrid disks that would play as regular CDs
when played on a standard CD player and would play as a SACD on an SACD
player. When the CD layer was played, that could be ripped. The first
generation of Sony SACDs were SACD ONLY, and that was Sony's marketing
error, and was typical of Sony's arrogant marketing. They lost the
Betamax Vs. the VHS "war" for exactly the same kind of arrogant
marketing.

Sony demonstrated Beta to RCA who wanted to license Beta as their home
recording format. When RCA told Sony that they liked the format EXCEPT
that they needed for Sony to modify Beta so that it could record 120
minutes (the original BetaMax format was 90 minutes of record time
maximum). Sony responded by telling RCA that what they demonstrated was
THE WAY BetaMax was and they had no intention of changing it. RCA then
said thanks but no thanks and chose VHS over Beta because it could
record 120 minutes. Eventually, Sony came out with Beta 2 which was half
the speed and would give 180 minutes on a standard tape, but by then, it
was too late. Likewise, Sony never made hybrid SACD/CD discs initially
and by the time they decided to allow it, the audio world had decided
SACD was too limiting. It''s the same arrogant marketing stance and it
seems that they never learned that Sony NEEDS to follow the market, not
try to force the market into following Sony.

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

[Andrew Haley]

Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,
Andrew Haley wrote:

Audio_Empire wrote:

Sony has great ideas, but they always manage to screw the pooch
somehow. They either don't follow through with marketing the ideas
(SACD) or they stubbornly refuse to fit the product to the real
marketing demands (BetaMax).

I don't think SACD was so much badly marketed as badly timed. It
was introduced at the same time as MP3 players, and an important
feature was that SACDs couldn't be ripped. It looked to me (and to
many others) like that was the real purpose of SACD: an unrippable
medium. High-res was just a teaser to get people to buy them.

This belief was perhaps wrong, and the timing was just an
unfortunate coincidence. But with people's listening moving onto
the cloud and digital players, any format tied to a physical medium
is a relic, no matter how good it can sound. If the new Sony
players don't allow the user the freedom to listen to their music
where and how they want those players will fail, and deservedly so.

I don't think that being not "ripp-able" had anything to do with
SACD's failure. People interested in SACD wouldn't be interested in
MP3 at all.

I think you're denying my existence.

Besides, very soon after Sony introduced the format, other record
companies were producing hybrid disks that would play as regular CDs
when played on a standard CD player and would play as a SACD on an SACD
player. When the CD layer was played, that could be ripped. The first
generation of Sony SACDs were SACD ONLY, and that was Sony's marketing
error, and was typical of Sony's arrogant marketing.

Indeed. Mind you, dual-layer hybrid SACDs weren't all that easy to
make at the time, and it wasn't clear how well legacy CD players would
cope with them. Producing SACD-only discs was the safest thing to do
from an engineering point of view.

And I still think a major motivation for the SACD was to be
unrippable. If you look at the engineering effort that went into the
copy-prevention features of SACD, there's a lot to support that view.

Andrew.

[Scott[_6_]]

On Sunday, September 15, 2013 7:44:56 PM UTC-7, Audio_Empire wrote:
In article ,

Andrew Haley wrote:



Audio_Empire wrote:



Sony has great ideas, but they always manage to screw the pooch

somehow. They either don't follow through with marketing the ideas

(SACD) or they stubbornly refuse to fit the product to the real

marketing demands (BetaMax).



I don't think SACD was so much badly marketed as badly timed. It was

introduced at the same time as MP3 players, and an important feature

was that SACDs couldn't be ripped. It looked to me (and to many

others) like that was the real purpose of SACD: an unrippable medium.

High-res was just a teaser to get people to buy them.



This belief was perhaps wrong, and the timing was just an unfortunate

coincidence. But with people's listening moving onto the cloud and

digital players, any format tied to a physical medium is a relic, no

matter how good it can sound. If the new Sony players don't allow the

user the freedom to listen to their music where and how they want

those players will fail, and deservedly so.



Andrew.



I don't think that being not "ripp-able" had anything to do with SACD's

failure.

Failure? SACD is alive and well in the audiophile market. Lot's of new SACDs coming out each week and many of them are really well mastered. SACDs are about as dead as vinyl. IOW they are the rarest of beasts, physical media that is on the rise.