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In Reply to: RE: Why Rebuy? - I'm with you because as good as 192kHz PCM can be it still isn't anywhere near DSD. posted by Hiro on January 02, 2009 at 16:41:28
Just my 2 cents, I believe disc based media will soon be gone and there will not be any new format launches, downloads are the future. They can provide easy access, choice and convenience. Just look at the explosion of mp3.
"I like blood on the floor jazz"
JM
Follow Ups:
Yes, except part of the appeal to record producers of both SACD and Blu-Ray is copy protection. Downloads are antithetical to that. Note that there are no DSD downloads available. Also, the download times measured in hours for a typical household of hi rez multichannel album is probably way too much for most people. 2 channel 96K FLAC or the equivalent may be workable for some, but even there it's too much for most, not to mention a lot less convenient. Add video content, and a Blu-ray download could take the better part of a day to download, typically. So, I think disks and players will be with us for quite awhile longer, at least in hi rez.
Perhaps they may use some sort of copy protected/authenticated bit torrent type scheme for high-res downloads where downloaders are also uploaders instead of relying on one of two servers from the content distributors. It may help to speed things up. If you have used Bit-torrent to download a LINUX DVD-ROM distribution you would know how efficient it can be. Of course, more people have to be on broadband type services too.
Edits: 01/04/09
Peer to Peer means the download is two way instead of one way. I prefer traditional one way communications from Server to my Computer. Going two way is faster but IMHO too risky as it opens up one's computer to attack.
A traditional 24/96 album download takes about an hour with my DSL connection.
Happy listening,
Teresa
I agree. Bit torrent is a technique for distributing material at low cost, because it allows multiple downloaders to share the cost of uploading. This makes sense for distributing large files for free, where there is no revenue stream available for provisioning a server. However, it adds little or no speed to a download from a properly provisioned server.
For a website selling legitimate music downloads, the largest incremental cost of delivering a download is the royalty fee that goes to the musicians (or record label). The next largest incremental cost is credit card fees. The actual bandwidth costs of delivering a download are much less than the credit card fees, assuming the server is colocated near a major Internet switching hub. (Pennies on a 96/24 download selling for perhaps $16.00.)
To a pirate the numbers would look different, of course. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
No, I don't mean to be a pirate and get hi-def stuffs for free :) What I mean is in the future there may (will?) be bit-torrent like scheme where large, copy protected (encoded files signed by the content provider?) multimedia files are "share" between people who have (bought) the rights to use. For instance, I believe Microsoft has a research project called Avalanche that have people looking into this or the BBC iMP. Single point download only scheme is not efficient and put too much burden on a few high-end servers and will be too slow for hi-def materials w/ large file sizes.Even with today's bit-torrent there is a way to only let a few selected people sharing a torrent but the content being share is not protected from any further sharing by creating a "unlimited" torrent (e.g. I can get the file and seed it with another torrent on my own).
Not to mention legitimate software and multimedia files are being distributed with the existing bit-torrent scheme already. I have been getting game patches and LINUX distributions with bit-torrent (explicitly or implicitly).
As for PC security: unless you are never online or never turn on your PCs ever you are exposed to risk ;)
Edits: 01/05/09
Schemes for copy protection require that every single copy be kept under control. If only one copy escapes, then the game is over. This makes all schemes other than complete hardware lockdown unworkable, unless backed by draconian laws. There are always intriguing schemes that appear to work, but they all make assumptions about how the hardware and software are constructed that are not realistic.
SACD has copy protection. It hasn't kept at least one AA inmate from extracting the DSD stream and sending it on to a D.I.Y. DAC. He could just have well extracted the bits and put them in a file. Unless building audio equipment is totally regulated copy protection will never work. It will create inconvenience and increase equipment cost, however.
Bit torrent has legitimate applications, particularly for distributing free material, such as open source software. However it is not particularly cost effective compared to centralized servers except for data that is going to a very large number of points in a short period of time. Hi-res audio data is a niche marketplace and will never reach the required volumes. The economies of server farms colocated at internet hubs are too strong to compete with even free computers, considering the cost of electricity and last mile access.
As to particular dangers of peer to peer protocols, I don't subscribe to this theory. Email and the web are already effective vectors of malware. However, if one visits pirate bit torrent sites one can expect to find malware. But this is no different from the dangers of visiting any questionable neighborhood.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Yes, well, that's the problem. It's too techie for most people, and they do not have the bandwidth. I think hi rez downloading will be even a smaller niche than hi rez disc purchases for quite awhile, not to mention the copy protection issues which will limit the available formats.
Hi-res downloading as done by HDtracks is very easy to use and works well with their 96/24 products for anyone with decent Internet service. I don't believe that higher speeds would be generally practical today except for niche markets. People will wait an hour for a high-res download, but not two hours. And many computer audiophile systems are limited to 96 kHz sampling rates due to the limitations of USB.
It would be marginally practical to ship DSD over the Internet, but there are almost no consumer devices capable of computer playback of DSD data. The available devices are pro-audio equipment. I suspect this will change. I can see it as a fairly easy DIY project to modify existing gear to provide DSD playback capability. However, the "chicken and egg" situation of software and hardware needs to be broken before this could be common.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
I believe a few Sony Desktops and laptops can play some sort of DSD files. Unfortunately I've never had a chance to play with any of these...
I have some software that allows WMP to play DSD files, but it works by converting it to PCM (and only at 44.1 kHz on my system).
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
... I'm under the impression that some Sony laptops/desktops have native DSD decoding capability and don't rely on DSD -> PCM conversion. Again, I have never had one of these so it is just based on something I have read online.
.
And you can still do other stuff while downloading hi-rez such as checking email or posting here.
Happy listening,
Teresa
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