sacd again

sorry for all the q's on different types of sacd,

i reacll someone saying that a hybrid disk can also be played on normal cd players, how does a SACD player know to play it as a sacd disk? or do you have to change it
thx
matthew

 

You tell it in the player setup which 'area' of the disc to play by default. e.g. in my case I tell the player to default to SACD 2-channel mixdown because I have an SACD player but not a 5-channel preamp (yet). This is an actual area on the disc. The third alternative on a hybrid disc is the CD area. An ordinary CD player's laser sees only the CD area.

 

AFAIK There are a number of layers on the disc which reflect light at different angles. The CD layer will reflect the laser light correctly for a CD pickup, the SACD layer correctly for the SACD pickup, etc. so the data is stored double density (ie. 8.5(ish) GB in total instead of the standard 4.7). Note SACD format is actually stored on DVD media just to add to the confusion.

 

If that is true then why are the DVD camp having so much trouble trying to make a hybrid DVD-Audio/CD disc

 

Can't say I've heard that one before, either .

If this was the case then why have Sony/Sonopress invested so much money into new printing factories for SACD ?

And, as Techno said, why are there so many issues with producing a hybrid DVD ?

 

I said media not encoding. The 4.7/8.5 GB disc is the DVD media. Perhaps the issue for dual layer DVD/CD is the refraction is the same? I have no idea. The sony pressing factory will naturally lay down endoded information according to SACD standards. The dual layer thing is an aspect of the recent high density Digital Versatile Disc standard AFAIK - I have been corrected - the actual disc media is SDDC (standard digital data carrier) not DVD which is then used to encode DVD, SACD, etc. Apologies for confusion caused :JPS:

 

Don't quote me but I think it's simply getting a multilayer DVD-A/CD disc thin enough so that's it's guaranteed still to play on all CD players.

I don't follow the DVD-A story so much because I tend to prefer SACDs.

EDIT: apparently it's not as simple as that. Rather, it's a chicken-and-egg situation. These are notoriously hard to solve

 

So the problem with a hybrid (multi-layer) DVD-A/CD disc is that some (most?) DVD players will treat it as a CD and totally ignore the DVD content, be it DVD-V or DVD-A.

That's cruel :lol:

The thickness problem comes from a totally different solution to the problem, which is to glue a CD and a DVD back to back. You then have to play the disc the right way up for the player (i.e. CD side or DVD-A/V side).

 

One major factor with DSD encoding is the issue of editability - or rather the lack of it. Notwithstanding the issue for some folks that they couldnt mess with their music collection if they chose SACD (ie. store tracks on Hard drives, create custom discs, etc.) the major interest for Sony/Phillips is this format represents greater protection of their IP as these discs cant easily be burned (if at all (yet)).

Naturally then the high fidelity sound of SACD is not their major win. However I can fully appreciate the importance of their IP objectives. I decided to buy an SACD player and I dont have a problem buying certain (not all) published music in the knowledge Sony and or Phillips profit from it.