Does 96KHz Really Sell DVD-A?
By Jordan Tishler
In the quest for ever greater record sales, the music industry is again
turning to new technology for a boost. The DVD-A is our new hope. It is
an enormous storage medium (for a consumer item) and presents us, as content
creators, with numerous options and challenges. Among these options and
challenges are 96KHz sampling and surround sound. Even though the DVD-A
can be encoded with both of these formats, for the near future we will
still have to choose where to allocate our processing bandwidth and our
funds. I feel that 96KHz alone is not worth the expense to the consumer
and will not attract buyers to DVD-A. Hence it is of little value to the
industry. Greater attention must be paid to more innovative forms of content
creation, like surround sound, which provide a new experience for listeners
and will convince people to invest in the new medium.
We should explore the many reasons why the 96KHz sampling rate format has been
proposed to see if they hold water. Generally the reasons can be broken down
into engineering and economics.
Many argue that 96KHz sounds better than 44.1KHz. The actual explanations for
why this might be are varied and largely unproven. They range from psychoacoustic
arguments about "hearing" or sensing frequencies above 20KHz, to hopes
of restoring "lost natural intermodulation" distortion from frequencies
above 20KHz, to the anticipation of less "artificial" ringing or filter
distortion by removal of the "brick wall" filters before the A/D conversion
in a typical 44.1KHz system. Whatever the postulated mechanism is, in fact, blinded
critical listening tests have shown that the "Golden Ears" among us
can hear a difference and repeatedly feel that the 96KHz sounds better.
The economic arguments for 96KHz are perhaps both more persuasive and more insidious.
If you are a large, standard making electronics company and you want to sell
more players now that the CD player market is saturated, you need to sell new players
using different technology. If you are a large record company with a large
back catalogue, you can see this as a chance to re-sell your old material for
another profit! However, just as the electronics company must find a way to market
the new technology as better than the old, the record company must make sure
that better means "quality" and not quantity. Afterall, it does little
good for the new standard to hold your entire back catalogue on one $15 disc!
Conspiracy theory aside, using 96KHz as content benefits the artist as well.
Many producers lament the advent of the 78 minute CD as it has pushed artists
to put more material rather than good material on their releases. I suspect
that most of our favorite albums of all time were rather short compared with
today’s average, but they were packed with goodies! 96KHz could save the
artist who would otherwise now be expected to fill 6 hours of playing time!
So the industry as a whole can see benefit to moving to DVD-A as long as it does
not increase the actual playing time of the disc. The real question is what is
the best new content to use in the process. 96KHz seems to be a "no-brainer";
upsampling is really a purely technological solution. On the other hand, perhaps
consumers will think it’s a "no-brainer" too and dismiss the DVD-A
as uninteresting.
Let us acknowledge the substantial cost of this upgrade to studio owners. We
have all made huge investments in gear at the 16bit 44.1KHz standard only to
have to do it again with 24 bit 44.1KHz. This upgrade at least had the practical
benefit of greater dynamic range which translated into extra headroom for processing
as compared with the delivery format. The 96KHz upgrade actually does away with
this benefit! Consequently, 96KHz seems necessary as a studio upgrade only if
it is accepted as a consumer format.
The crucial question is then: what is it about DVD-A that offers consumers enough
extra to get it to play in Peoria? I believe that 96KHz is not "worth it" to
the consumer and thus we must look to other forms of new content to attract buyers.
I submit for your consideration the following:
Most people still listen to music as "effective" mono sources. They
sit off the median plane either in their living rooms or in the car. Their stereo
speakers are one in the living room and one in the kitchen. Their speakers are
both in the living room but they are listening from the kitchen. They listen
to a boombox with speakers 1.5 feet apart from across the room or in the next
room. They listen on a clock radio. Actually, at various times even I do all
of the above. A recent survey (1997) showed that as much as 86% of "average" Americans
can not tell the difference between mono and stereo.
Medical fact: presbycussis (loss of hearing with aging) begins at age 20! Eak!
By age 35, most people can’t hear much above 15KHz and it is all downhill
from there. This fact does not necessarily apply to professional audio folks
because of selection bias. We should be wary of generalizing to the consumer
from our own experience and musical preferences.
Most people either can’t tell or don’t care about the difference in
sound quality between a CD and the radio! We all know that, aside from the horrible
processing done to the audio by the station, there is data bandwidth limiting
by FM. In fact, the FM data rate (although analog) is roughly equivalent to MP3.
And we know that MP3 is the fastest growing listening medium.
So I ask you: is 96KHz relevant to consumers who don’t care or can’t
tell mono from stereo, who can’t hear the top end, and who are happy with
MP3 quality? In fact, I would remind you that likely your product will be listened
to in MP3 or FM regardless of what sampling rate you choose.
I am far more interested in 5.1 It seems to me that surround offers more bang
for the buck or "gee whiz factor" to the consumer. Even those whose
speakers are in different rooms will get a different experience from 5.1 than
their former dual mono systems. I have heard 5.1 in Dave Greisinger’s (Lexicon)
car and it was very impressive! DVD-A is coming, but its success depends on our
ability to give consumers a new experience worthy of their investment. 96KHz
offers very little to the average listener. Surround sound, on the other hand,
offers new vistas for everyone. I think this is what will inspire consumer enthusiasm
for DVD-A. This is where I’m putting my bucks!
© 1999 Digital Bear Entertainment. All Rights Reserved. No portion
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