Sunday, December 05, 2004

If it’s stereo, why do I hear it behind me?

It’s actually a psychoacoustic phenomenon. Some of the acoustics, though not all of them, from the original recording session, made their way onto the disc, into the player, out the speaker, and into your ears. These are cues like difference (L-R), frequency spread, delay, and echo. In some cases, you may even be able to hear sound as if it’s bouncing off an imaginary ceiling. “But it’s only coming from two speakers!” Well? You only have two ears, not 5.1 ears!

Saturday, December 04, 2004

Why not use DSD for Blu Ray movies?

While Blu-ray is trying to settle on audio codecs, why don’t they consider DSD or DST as an alternative, at least? It’s far superior to Dolby Digital.

Friday, December 03, 2004

How About a “Universal Disc”?

We have universal players; why not have a universal disc format? Here’s how it would work. There could be a double-sided disc with SACD Hybrid content on side A, and DVD-Audio/Video format on side B. That way, if you didn’t have a universal player or couldn’t afford one (like me), you would be able to play that one disc in any player to the best possible sonic advantage.

All that is required is a double-sided, dual-layer-per-side physical format. After that, the sky is the limit, people!