"Russ Button" wrote in message
...
Stewart Pinkerton wrote:

I suspect that the future lies in whatever format movie soundtracks
will use. High-end two-channel audio is dying - some would say that
any noticeable twitching is merely rigor mortis.

I've been saying that for some time. Still it is obviously technically
possible to produce media that support higher sampling rates than
the standard used in conventional CDs. I thought that's what was
happening win DVD-Audio and SACD. I'm wrong about that?

Bummer.

I have no interest in surround sound. All I want is better two
channel if I can get it. Is it true that as Steven Sullivan noted,
that SACD is just about putting more tracks on the media for
surround sound? And this is at the same sampling rate as
conventional CD. Geez. We should pay more for more of the
same? Bleah...

No, both DVD-A (at 96/24 or 192/24) and SACD (using DSD) offer genuinely
better audio....greater signal-to-noise in the sensitive midrange area,
better transient response due to filtering at much higher frequencies, as
well as the multichannel option. SACD's *always* have stereo tracks. Some
DVD-A's do. Others just downmix on the fly from multichannel, with
unpredictable results.

As if the sloppy formats of DVD-A weren't enough, DualDisk loosens the
controls even more. As a result, Sony DualDisks (since they won't use
DVD-A) use only 48/16 bit stereo and Dolby Digital surround. And the folks
who had been providing DVD-A sometimes do and sometimes don't on DualDisk.
The only good thing as far as their output is concerned is that DualDisk
does specificy some kind of stereo track on the DVD-V side. No more
"downmix only".

What a f...ing disaster this industry is when it comes to intelligent
decisions at any level above teenybopper.