New Formats

New Formats

SACD/ DVD-A/ Blu-ray etc
A few Hints on How to avoid the confusion and disinformation

• CD has an assured future. Unlike vinyl which ceased production rapidly CD is profitable to the majors. To audiophiles, 16-bit CD players and discs continue to improve beyond the intuitive glass-ceiling. Designers assure me that there is more improvement in development. Filterless DACs (of Audio Note and Zanden fame) are now filtering down to affordable players. But people should not be manipulated by preferred technologies: since 1983 one fashion after another has prevailed.
• Formats will be decided by high level corporate strategy—with audio quality as a very low priority. Blu-ray, for example, will not be launched without an obvious benefit (gimmick?) to consumers or to manufacturers (anti-copying?). Blu-ray is now here and thanks to the Playstation 3 is available for a reasonable cost and some films have started appearing in that format. I have not yet came across an audiophile targeted Blu-ray player for the moment so the jury's out on the audio front.
• CD today is better than SACD four years ago: but SACD today has also progressed significantly. CD will outlive the high-resolution formats and has an assured future. For commercial reasons (it is a universal format) and for audiophile reasons (the resolution is much higher than anyone believed just a few years ago).
• Especially for classical music, SACD is a serious choice and has become a standard format. The Hybrid format really justifies your decision to buy/ postpone/ forget an SACD player: any decision is correct for you!!
• DVD-a is more frustrating. A minefield in itself. Potentially the resolution and dynamics are much superior to SACD, so the format is very exciting. However, it is open format and much more precarious. That means compatibility problems, varying levels of disc authoring. Dual discs can mean various things. A DVD-a may play on a particular machine but not at the highest resolution. In many cases, a DVD-a will really reproduce as a DVD-v to assure compatibility (which is a huge let down). I can’t dismiss the format, because a well-mastered 24/192 stereo (not multi-channel) DVD-a is staggeringly impressive. By far the best-sounding format.

The Ayre C5 costing £4,495 solves all your problems. Sonically? It has astonishing resolution, involving performance on CD/SACD/DVD-a (and DVD-video giving audio output only) with no format compromising the other. You just insert a disc and press Play. The C5 identifies the disc and plays it. What more do you want? To check the alternative layers or groups, to choose personal favourite sound, you can navigate through these, manually. But you don’t have to. Ayre suggests labelling your DVD-a with your preferred setting. The C5 has won Product of the Year awards substantiating our own admiration and recommendation of this wonderful and truly Universal disc spinner.

CD/SACD Players

The Shanling SCD-t2000C/UK at £2,250 supersedes the SCD-t200 from January 2006. You must buy the UK version, and it is worth checking with the UK Distributor as many dealers import Asian versions costing less. The new model is a remarkable machine featuring Shanling’s own processor chip and enhanced audio circuitry.

Coming to Europe very soon, the Esoteric X-03SE CD/SACD player will feature a robust power supply suited to the challenge of our 230volt power supply along with its doubled spikes and impurities. The European SE model will (for a change) cost no more, in other words £4,995 including CE duty and VAT.

As a state-of-the-art CD player with SACD, the X0-1 is the ultimate one-box player and truly worth £8,995. For this price, the operation and performance is at a level of excellence that will thrill you with pride of possession forever. No other manufacturer has aspired to this quality.

Purist CD Players

If your strategy is to optimise CD replay, you will find models offering value and performance outstripping last years’ models! Buying second-hand is not necessarily good value, even allowing for the risks of de-specified and modified disappointments etc. Pound for pound, you are making a big mistake to overlook the following hierarchy:

1. Consonance 120L (filterless DAC)	£695
2. Unico CD Player	£1,195
3. Ayre CX-7E CD Player	£2,195
4. Mark Levinson No 390S	£5,500
5. Gryphon MIKADO	£6,800

According to RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) in 2003 only 0.4 million DVD-Audio disks were sold, 1.3 million - SACD, 1.5 million - LP, and 745.9 million – CD. I may be wrong but the Legacy formats of CD and Vinyl are still looking quite healthy.

Which sounds better?
Neither, did you know that most recordings are made to PCM and then converted to DSD for SACD! DVD-A of course is based on PCM recordings as well. You may prefer one or the other or you may prefer certain types of recordings like Classical (SACD) Rock (DVD-A) on differing formats. With both formats, the instrument separation seems so much clearer, the space is more airy and the definition has wonderful clarity. The accuracy of instrumental timbre and the sense of space is significantly better.

I have heard differences between both formats but I cannot be sure that the differences are characteristics of the players or even of the master recording, the main point is that on good quality equipment the improvement over CD is significant.

I wondered if we should consider vinyl a new format, after all the level of engineering on good turntables has improved considerably in the last 20 years, it seems that record players and cartridges just get better and better as time goes on. The bad old days of recycled vinyl and thinner records and records with bad warps seems to be behind us now. As far as I am aware all new records released are on virgin vinyl, and there are very few bad pressings anymore. It has eventually evolved to being one of the best high resolution formats.