Remember SACD? You know, Super Audio Compact Disc? You know, Sony's contender against DVD-Audio? Both provided better sound quality and more channels than CD, and were supposed to replace CD? And remember how both failed in the U.S. market?
An interesting press release crossed my desk (read: popped into my e-mail Inbox) on Friday:
"John Mellencamp's Life, Death, Love, and Freedom, from Hear Music, July 15."
Buried down in the fourth paragraph is this:
"The album will be the first-ever release in the XO∆E (CODE) format. T Bone Burnett [who produced Mellencamp's new album] and his team of engineers developed CODE, a proprietary technology that creates high-definition audio files that are virtually indistinguishable from the original master tapes. The resonance, warmth, and presence that has been realized with CODE is unprecedented in the digital era."
"Unprecedented"? Doesn't that sound, um, familiar? Read on . . .
Been meaning to post this link for some time now . . .
Fans of DVD-Audio, SACD, surround sound, and so forth are hereby encouraged to check out No Taste for High-Quality Audio, published recently in the British newspaper The Guardian. It's a pretty neat summation by Jack Schofield, who begins: "Today, we live in a world where poor-quality audio is becoming the norm." Required reading, and reflection.
Note that Schofield calls DVD-Audio "extinct."
That got me thinking: Is he right?
As a postscript to my Genesis scoop below: Rhino has just announced that Genesis: 1983-1998, the second boxed set of the band's complete studio recordings in surround sound, has been bumped from October 23 to sometime in November. Meanwhile, an expanded, two-CD "tour edition" of Turn It On Again: The Hits will be released on September 11, to coincide with . . . the tour! The North American leg begins in Toronto on September 7. For complete dates (tickets still available!), click here. —Ken Richardson
Or so the masses seem to be saying.
The Compact Disc is indeed 25 years old today. On August 17, 1982, the first discs were born in Germany. They contained Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony, but the first commercially available release would be Billy Joel's 52nd Street. CDs and CD players initially went on sale in Europe and Japan; it wouldn't be until 1983 that the format reached America.
Back then, Pieter Kramer was the head of the optical research group at Philips (which co-invented the format with Sony). That's him in the right-hand photo, which was taken on Monday. He's holding a model of the first CD player.
S&V has already tracked the history of the CD and what lies ahead — see The Future of Recorded Music — so I won't bother rehashing anything here. What I will say is that, personally, I was happy to welcome the CD a quarter-century ago — and happy to say goodbye to the LP and its surface noise, user-unfriendliness, and frequent coloration that was often mistaken for "warmth."
Are we now, in turn, saying goodbye to the CD? Well, from 2001 to 2006, CD sales fell from their historical peak of 712 million to 553 million. That's a drop of 22%. Record companies are scrambling, lousy digital files are proliferating, and the perceived "value" of music is withering away. As Kramer told AP writer Toby Sterling on Monday: "The MP3 and all the little things that the boys and girls have in their pockets can replace the CD, absolutely."
But it has been a good ride for the format. I've enjoyed it immensely — although, truth be told, I've been enjoying my journeys with SACD and DVD-A even more. Whither those formats?
"You never know how long a standard will last," Kramer said. "But the CD was a solid, good standard — and still is." —Ken Richardson
Here's a tip of the Yankee cap — or whatever hat you're wearing, baseball fan — to Phil Rizzuto, the Bronx Bombers' shortstopping/broadcasting Scooter, who died Monday night at the age of 89.
If you're looking for the sports story here . . . well, by all means, go to the obit in, natch, The New York Times. But I'd like to recall the music story, too: Phil's classic appearance in "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" on Meat Loaf's 1977 album, Bat Out of Hell.
Extra! "The multichannel sound available for homes has arrived for the car." So says a teaser on the front page of the Automobiles section in this Sunday's edition of The New York Times.
This must be news indeed to engineer Elliot Scheiner, for example, whose DVD-Audio-equipped ELS Surround system for Acura has been available for three years. Meanwhile, nowhere in the Times article — "Summer Tunes That Come from Every Direction" by John R. Quain — does it even mention that DVD-Audio discs have always been playable in surround on car DVD-Video units.
It does mention, however — and get ready for this — that "some formats adhere to a so-called 5.1-channel format (the point one referring to a center, or low-frequency, channel often handled by a subwoofer)." As of now, that howler hasn't been corrected on the newspaper's Web site.
Sad to say, I guess we should expect these kinds of things from a paper that still calls its car section (repeat after me, in your best Tony Curtis-in-The Great Race voice): Au-to-mo-biles.
To its credit, the article includes aftermarket options like Sony's SACD-equipped MEX-DV2000 (see post immediately below) and Pioneer's DVD-A-equipped AVH-P7800DVD entertainment system. It also mentions pre-installed systems in cars by Mercedes-Benz, Cadillac, and yes, Acura, as well as the only car unit that will play both DVD-A and SACD: the Bose Media System (shown above) in the Ferrari 612 Scaglietti.
But really, these times demand the Times these surround times demand Sound & Vision! —Ken Richardson
That's right, if you've been waiting to play that multichannel Tapestry in the car, now you can finally do it. A full six years after the dawn of surround SACDs, Sony has introduced the first car SACD player, the MEX-DV2000 (above, $280). I initially heard rumblings about this way back in January, but now, apparently, it's a reality.
And on Sunday (why Sunday?), Sony announced that another SACD-equipped car unit is coming in August: the XAV-W1 audio/video system (left, $800), complete with touchscreen panel.
For more info on both models, click here.
Despite so many industry people insisting how music in surround is destined to "take off" in the car, it sure is interesting that it took Sony this long to mobile-ize SACD.
That's right, you read it here first: The next installment in Rhino's boxed-set series of the complete Genesis studio recordings has been scheduled for October 23, according to a label spokesperson. That date "could move," however.
As detailed in my review of the previous box (Genesis: 1976-1982), this one will encompass the band's final four albums: Genesis, Invisible Touch, We Can't Dance, and Calling All Stations. As such, the box should be called Genesis: 1983-1997, as originally announced — although an entry on Amazon.com lists the import version as Genesis: 1983-1998.
As before, that import will offer each album as an SACD+DVD, with a high-resolution, six-channel mix on the SACD. Rhino's version will be CD+DVD-Video, with the surround mix in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 96-kHz/24-bit 5.1 on the DVD.
All of this means that we'll now have to wait until 2008 for what we're really waiting for: Genesis: 1970-1974, from Trespass to The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.
By the way, I went directly to Rhino for this update because, in a recent Billboard.com post, there was talk of a coming Genesis book as well as a live DVD and a live CD from the current tour — but no mention of the next box of studio reissues. —Ken Richardson
After the 1973 original LP and the 2003 surround SACD, now comes the, um, hard-rock version of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon.
Just kidding! The hard rock here is actually a 3x10-foot section of a brick wall from a 175-year-old warehouse in lower Manhattan.
As a recent AP story speculated: "Could the design be a cryptic marker of mystical beliefs? A tradesman's signature? A bit of architectural shorthand? Or a creative way to patch a hole?"
Or . . . something that impressed an ancestor of Roger Waters on a trip to New York? Who knows! Hey, I realize that the location of the Manhattan building was on Pearl Street. But, y'know, Pearl Street is smack-dab between Wall Street and Water Street.
The lunatic is on the blog! —Ken Richardson
P.S. When that SACD was released, Sound & Vision was the only magazine to land interviews with both the engineer who remixed it, James Guthrie, and the engineer who didn't, Alan Parsons. Check 'em out.
P.P.S. And yes, folks, it is indeed The Dark Side of the Moon, not Dark Side of the Moon. Check your original LP!
