Escalating debates regarding pirated compact discs have been temporarily relieved with the manufacturing of copy-proof discs that consist of new digital audio disc formats. Although praised for their superior sound quality, the new discs put out by manufacturers such as Sony are criticized for being less user friendly than regular CDs. Each format contains digital drawbacks, which include extra encoding designed to lock the recordings on the disc, with the purpose of not allowing digital duplication and ripping to MP3 files.
According to Audio Daily, Philips Electronics, collaborating with Sony, designed the patents in the standard Red Book CD (industrial standards that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats), and announced in February of this year that they naturally disapprove of the new CD copy protection attempts by the recording industry. Though this new medium of copy-proof audio format is beneficial to the big industry, the general worry centers around its popularity. Currently new copy-proof CDs don't play on many different CD players, and therefore manufacturers like Phillips insist that buyers of the discs are benefiting by the sound quality rather than compatibility.
Presently, over 1,000 recordings are now available in Super Audio CD (SACD) or DVD-Audio (DVD-A). Both require special new audio components and produce a five-channel sound with unique clarity and definition, an addition which is both costly and hard to locate. According to CNN.com, distributors such as The Audible Difference in Palo Alto, Ca., are refusing to sell SACD or DVD-Audio players that are hacker-proof until manufacturers such as Sony can ship a complimentary unit that plays both formats as well as traditional CDs in the highest quality sound available.
The two new music formats are considered likely successors to the traditional compact disc. According to The Christian Science Monitor, SACD and DVD-A present new improvements in sound quality over standard CDs, depending in part on the quality of the rest of a listener's audio system, and even the types of music he or she favors.
How does a CD work? CDs can play up to 74 minutes of stereo music or store about 650 Mbytes of data, yet it is just 1.2 millimeters thick. The bottom layer consists of an injection-molded clear polycarbonate plastic. During manufacturing, the plastic is stamped with microscopic bumps, also called stripes, arranged as a very long, continuous, spiral track. Once the polycarbonate is formed, a thin, reflective layer of aluminum is applied onto the disc, to cover the bumps. On top of the polycarbonate plastic is a thin layer of acrylic to protect the aluminum.
Finite laser technology is used to read the stripes. First, a laser shines light on the stripes and then the lens reads the grooves. Light refracts differently on the bumps, so light signals get read in a manner similar to analog data, which in turn is converted into music or in another format.
According to Audio Galaxy, CD players have a very precise tracking mechanism which keeps the laser and lens focused on the very narrow track. This tracking mechanism moves the laser assembly linearly, but data is stored in one long spiral that starts at the center of the compact disc and moves out. As the CD player reads the data, the drive motor must precisely vary the rotation speed of the CD so the data can be read at a constant rate.
DVD-Audio discs can also contain video technology like DVD-Video titles, with limited user interactivity. The capacity of a single layer DVD-Audio will be at least 74 minutes of quality definition and full surround sound audio. Additionally, the disc can accommodate the same audio encoded as Dolby Digital for playing on traditional DVD-Video players.
DVD-Video technology was designed to deliver high-quality audio and video outputs, which like CDs, require the allocation of large amounts of disc space for the data. Because DVD-A is focused on audio, substantially higher levels of sonic quality can be achieved. One layer of a DVD-A disc can store 4.7GB of data, which is about seven times the amount on an audio CD. This larger amount of space allows a DVD-Audio disc to hold either a much larger amount of music at CD-quality.
DVD-A has a sampling frequency 4.3 times greater than an audio CD and has 256 times finer resolution. Additionally, DVD-A projects up to 24-bit quantization and 192kHz sampling as opposed to 16-bit and 44.1kHz for CD. This increased information makes for extremely high resolution and extraordinary dynamic range up to 144dB, versus 96dB for CD.
SACD is a technology known as Direct Stream Digital (DSD), and a way to digitally encode an analog signal that records music at a high sampling frequency (2.8224MHz). Converting the data to one-bit format, DSD increases the audio quality of music by closely following the original wave format of the music. The SACDs sound closer to an album's original compilers and don't have the interpolations usually associated with traditional compact discs.
The high sound quality is achieved in several ways. First, both SACD and DVD can hold more digital information. They do not compress the music as tightly as their traditional counterpart, which gives a recording a broader range of sound. Many SACD and DVD-A discs are also designed to play in a surround sound system. Buyers can therefore hear the audio format out of six speakers instead of two.
A single Super Audio Compact Disc can contain three versions of the music, stored on two separate layers. The high-resolution versions, whether stereo, multichannel or both, are stored on the middle layer, while the CD-compatible stereo is stored on the reflective layer. This means that Super Audio Compact Discs are playable on almost all home, car and portable CD players, but the consumer needs a dedicated SACD player to access the high-resolution sounds.
SACDs, offered by Phillips and Sony, also contain copy-proof mechanisms, which allows a complimentary disc playable on both CD audio and SACD players. Although not user friendly in its scope, these products include a copy protection system, copyright identification code, anti-piracy measures to include source identification codes (SID). This format is also compatible with CD format DVD-Audio discs and carries both audio and video data.
"Until we see a product like that, we're sitting on the sidelines and we're counseling our clients to sit on the sidelines," said Tim Fay, a manager at The Audible Difference who sells stereo technology, in a recent interview with CNN.com.
Sony, who developed the SACD format in conjunction with Philips, will still continue to manufacture SACD players without a diverse range of complimentary digital outputs until an electronics industrial standard is implemented regarding digital audio output.
Consumers, however, are more likely to purchase audio technology, which is not copy-proof, for several reasons such as personal backup and use.
According to the Washington Post, a recent Gartner G2 (an industrial and business analyzer) found that 88 percent of respondents thought it was legal to make copies of compact discs for personal backup use while 77 percent felt they should be able to copy a CD for personal use in another electronic devices. If the industrial standard does indeed change to include copy-proof discs, public knowledge of the switch is mandatory.
"I don't think anybody per se is against copy protected CDs. I think they're against no-labeled copy protected CDs," GartnerG2 analyst P.J. McNealy said in a recent interview with CNN.com.
The average cost of a SACDs is about $18, slightly higher than standard CDs, whose price ranges from $10 to $14. Though relatively expensive, the cost of the SACD has dropped significantly in the last two years, from over $35 to its current price.
The actual hybrid technological mediums offered by Kenwood, Sharp and Sony also play standard CDs and cost around $350. DVD-A discs cost about $24, but the discs play in DVD players that people already use to watch films.
Due to the fact that the DVD-A discs often include added features, users can make use of other features such as music videos. Companies like Pioneer and Sony are also offering home-theater systems that include DVD players equipped with both Super Audio and DVD-A features.
The success of this new technology will be hard to measure. There will always be people looking to hack into the copy-protection devices of DVD-Audio and SACD just as the scheme for DVD movies was discovered several years ago. Until then, compact disc manufacturers as well as distributors, such as Virgin Atlantic, are content with this new copy proof technology.
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