Surroundablog

Mark Levinson, Marantz. Lexicon & Sony Europe Issue Dual Disc Advisory Notices

Hmmmm....me thinks the DualDisc technology may be floating face down in Lake Ontario by Christmas...

Consumers beware....DualDisc fails to impress...or even load!

The news was bombarded this week with advisaries from electronics manufacturers warning of their incompatibility with DualDisc technology. A few months back, I wrote of this new and cost effective solution for persons who wanted to get into surround sound. As it turns out, most of these discs simply do not work.....just ask Toshiba, Onkyo, Play Station 2, Sony. Pioneer and others whose support lines were jammed with complaints... It seems that Sony was the first to discover the error, soon followed by Pioneer, then Play Station devotees, Onkyo, and Toshiba.... Soon after these dire warnings were posted, Silverline Records made a dubious declaration of releasing 20 additional upcoming DualDisc titles...yikes... I for one am the proud owner of an Onkyo cd/dvd player that has the capability of handling sacd, dvd-audio and dvd-video. Although I have an extensive library of all of the above formats I will not be investing in the DualDisc phenomena...no matter how many discs Silverline throws at me...

Trapt to release dual-disc version of debut

Before the release of their much-anticipated second studio album for Warner Bros. Records, Trapt will release a DualDisc version of their 2002 self-titled debut. Set to come out on November 23rd,today, Trapt will be issued as a CD/DVD combo that will contain the full original album with a second disc being a DVD in 5.1 surround sound with bonus tracks ("Promise" - a non-album track, and "Lost In A Portrait" from the Punisher soundtrack), 40 images, music videos ("Headstrong," "Echo," and "Still Frame") and live videos ("Made of Glass," "Stories", "Headstrong," and "Echo... Ron Wheeler Editor

RIAA Sales Numbers Up Over 10% in First 1/2 2004 – SACD and DVD-Audio Flounder

WOW...A guy spends a couple of months in the hospital and entire sectors of his hobby teeter on extinction. All I can say is I'm doing my part to nourish high performance audio...just last week, I ordered 12 sacds and a handful of dvd-audio releases...hmmmm, maybe I'm the only one buying this stuff....anyways... written by: Jerry Del Colliano date: October 28, 2004 The music industry is showing some signs of a rebound in the first half of 2004, with full-length CD shipments to retail outlets increasing by 10.2 percent, compared to the amount of shipments over the same time period in 2003. This is the first time in five years that the first half of the year has experienced an increase in shipments. DVD music videos and licensed digital downloads also showed impressive growth, according to new data announced today by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Improvement in the performance of the CD format was not enough to make up for a multi-year period of decline. Compared to 2001, CD shipments to retailers remained down by 4.3 percent, and overall product shipments to retailers are down 9.8 percent. Overall, CDs and all other audio and video music products shipped to retailers increased by 8.5 percent in the first six months of 2004 (289 million units were shipped in the first half of 2004 vs. 267 million in the first half of 2003), while the dollar value of those shipments increased 4.5 percent. When including direct and special markets, the overall percentage growth for the first half of 2004 for units shipped, compared to a similar time frame in 2003, is 4.0 percent (349 million units vs. 336 million). The overall dollar value increase for all units shipped was 3.6 percent. SACD and DVD-Audio sales made up for about 300,000 units each, showing a declining trend from the combined sales number from 2003 for both formats. This is not good news for high-resolution audio. DualDisc (a new format that is half CD and half DVD) is reportedly to be released this month; promo discs are becoming available now. DualDisc is backwards-compatible with hundreds of millions of CD players and nearly every DVD player installed in the markets. The disc can be sold from a CD bin, which allows it to avoid being relegated to the “audiophile” bin at record stores. DualDisc can incorporate DVD-Audio on the DVD side of the disc. To put the success of DVD-Audio and SACD in perspective in 2004, the two high-res formats combined sold as much as vinyl LPs.

Silverline Records to release 20 DualDiscs...but do they work?!

Silverline Records, a division of the 5.1 Entertainment Group, has released twenty additional DualDisc titles for a total of forty-five albums in the month of November. Silverline Records is participating with all major record labels (editor's note: maybe they should've worked with electronic manufacturers instead!) in the launch of DualDisc, a two-sided disc made up of a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. In addition to the album on the CD side, the DVD side (is supposed to) provide the full album in DVD-Audio 5.1 surround sound, and also includes a wide range of special features such as music videos, interviews, photo galleries, web links, concert footage and lyrics.

Welcome (back) to surroundablog.com

For any of you who have stumbled on my site, "welcome"...for others who've been here and I haven't..."welcome back". I missed out on a couple of months of blogophilia because of a bad to the bone infection. All things are somewhat medicated now and I hope to be a regular contributor once more. In t6he cfoming weeks expect more reviews, news and spews on stuff like a new DualDisc version of AC\DC's "Back in Black"..... "

Peter Gabriel relaunches his video collection with new multi-channel mixes OR How I learned to stop worrying about the audio and learned to love DVD-Video...

A couple of years back, Peter Gabriel released his solo works on SACD. They were all (disappointingly) encoded in single layer stereo with the exception of 2002's "Up" which was a multichannel hybrid. News came out this week of Gabriel's recollaboration with Producer Daniel Lanois to remaster all of his videos with a new generation DTS encoder. The result should sound spectacular...all 23 videos will be encoded in 96khz/24bit multi-channel audio. I generally shy away from dvd-video because they sound inferior to the most pedestrian of audio cds. In this case, Gabriel's "Play" should be an audio breakthrough and will draw significant interest from all the audiophiles out there.. read the official DTS press release here...