Rick's Articles

Audio Technology - Volume 1 : Issue 6

The Golden Format My editor has been hassling me to do this column for some time now, but whenever I get a spare day I'm off into the hills gold mining. Yeah, you read that right, my particular distraction at the moment is gold mining... fossicking, to be a little more precise. So this weekend, instead of slaving over the computer to write some kind of music technology babble, I was in the bush digging for gold.

Right now I'm spending a lot of time considering formats. Formats are the demons every studio should be wrestling with. It's approaching make or break time for a lot of us, and I don't plan to be the solitary digger out on a claim by myself when BHP come in and strip mine the whole country... Did I say BHP? Oh well, I must have meant some other three letter company.

Anyway, I want to tell you a thing or two about formats, but I can't think of the best way, so let me start at the beginning - or at least back in the mid '80s. When I first started making records, I walked straight out of school and into the studios at Festival Records. In hindsight the timing was perfect because a new format was just arriving. I can remember in my first week, one of the old-timers asked me if I had heard of the compact disc laser system. At the time it was science fiction to me and everybody else in the place, but it soon happened, the first compact disc arrived. It was The 1812 Overture, and each of us had to sign a book to inspect it. That's all we could do because Sony hadn't started shipping CD players at the time! But soon after we had a player, and could sign for the player and the disc and have a listen.

The old guys in the studio all had a listen and muttered things about the dynamic range, the bit rate and the maximum playing time. Because I was only 17, such intricacies were lost on me. All I could remember when I described it to my friends was it was shiny, it had no hiss, and you didn't have to turn it over. Now, pay attention here because this is where I believe history will be very important.
 

When CDs first arrived, my boss told me nobody would ever throw out their record collection to buy a $2000 CD player I thought he was wrong because I didn't have thousands of dollars worth of vinyl, and I figured if I was going to buy something with my $104 a week it was not going to be outdated technology. Well, I was right and he was very wrong. For a format to work it has to offer something better then the previous format. Simple. CD had no hiss and you didn't have to turn it over. Simple enough for my Mum to use, easy enough for my Dad to buy. Voila! Instant format changer.

So here we are, again talking about new standards and new formats. It's got to the point where the sales weasels are turning up at my door telling me I need to update, I need to be the first, I don't want to be left behind... and there is a certain note of truth in their statements.

Looking at the contenders, it's 24-bit/96kHz versus 16-bit/44.1kHz, it's DVD versus CD, and, oh yeah, don't forget 5.1 surround versus stereo. Something's got to give with these formats, and only the stronger ones will survive. Let's get realistic, if the few people around town who have already bought into these new formats are right, they'll be the leaders in their field. If not, they've just spent a great deal of money for nothing.

Why am I concerned? Well, if we adopt a higher bit/sampling rate, every single piece of digital equipment I have will be boat anchor material. Even though it's one of the highest quality systems in the world, my stuff becomes junk. If we adopt DVD I have to re-invest in a great deal of new equipment - cutting edge stuff with cutting edge problems and cutting edge costs, and I need that like a hole in my bucket. And, if the world moves into a multi matrix surround sound 5.1 system, I've got to get a new work room, new speakers and a new set of thought processes to re-learn what I already know.

The thing that keeps me awake at night - the thing that makes me go gold mining to clear my head - is the next new 'golden' format. The one that scares me the most is DVD 5.1 for motor cars. For me it's the only place where it makes sense, the only place where anyone can see the advantages of the new format. My mother is never going to move her furniture to hear surround sound, but if she bought a new car with a DVD system fitted just like free air-conditioning, presto! We have a winner - left, right, front, back, centre and a sub woofer! Who cares what the bit rate is or what sampling frequency the discs are? If Mrs. Average can buy it, drive in and jive away every three years - then, yes, we have a new format.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm ahead of my time and my bank account has time to catch up. But the day I go to a car show and see a 5.1 surround sound DVD player fitted into the new 7 series BMW, I figure it is three years before they're giving them away free in Hyundais. So that's the day I'm taking a month off and heading for outback Western Australia looking for the next Hand of Faith. Something has got to pay for this new technology - God knows it won't be the increase in business!

I'm serious about the gold mining, the rest is just a column to get the editor off my back. (But if you know somebody at BMW, please don't tell them anything about audio, ever...)

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