Category: Music

SACD Not Dead After All, At Least Fans Hope

In my last post, “The Rise and Fall of High Fidelity” I suggested that the Super Audio CD (SACD) was dead.  A reader, Steve Cooney let me know this was not true, and I started researching the subject.  A major online clubhouse for SACD fans is http://sa-cd.net – where diehards keep the SACD fires burning.  Other fans, like Teresa at SACD Lives, worry contrary to her blog’s name, that the SACD is really dying. 

My research taught me that SACDs are still being produced, with almost 7,000 titles created to date, and that some audiophiles still back the format.  So I immediately went out and ordered two more SACDs for my meager collection because they do go out of print fast.  Most of the major SACD record producers have called it quits, but not all, and after Telarc threw in the towel, many of the faithful SACD fans are having a hard time seeing a rosy future.  They cling to the idea that if LP buyers can have a niche market, why can’t they.  There are specialty producers like Linn Records that cater to the high fidelity crowd, but they specialize in classical and jazz music, so popular music on SACD is extremely uncommon.

As far as the royal rulers of music, their attitude towards the masses is let them eat MP3s.  They believe people who listen to Arcade Fire, Kings of Leon or Katy Perry aren’t concerned with quality sound, and they are probably right.  Audiophiles HATE CDs.  They love LPs or SACDS, and Studio Master FLAC downloads, which are more expensive formats, requiring very expensive, hard to configure equipment to play.

Audiophiles, like those at positive-feedback, have always been a small subculture, mainly people who love classical and jazz.  Audiophiles are rich, or middle class fanatics willing to spend a significant chunk of their income on their hobby, so it should have been no surprise to me that these people did embrace the SACD format and have clung to it because it’s about the only show in town featuring the best level of high fidelity.  These guys don’t flinch at $4,000 SACD players, but they are also quick to point out that us poorer folks can find $300 players too, and that many Blu-Ray players, especially from Sony still support the SACD format.

It’s a shame that all Blu-Ray players don’t support the format.  If you build a high definition television entertainment system with surround sound, and have the appropriate Blu-Ray player, you have everything you need to try out SACD audio.  If you don’t, there’s a lot of equipment to buy just to hear what all the fuss is about – and that’s why the SACD format hasn’t caught on.  Or least one of the reasons.

Most new SACDs are imports with $29.99 list prices.  If you balk at spending $18.99 for a CD, then SACDs are poison.  You’d think record companies would be promoting a format that can’t be ripped on a PC (because SACDs can’t be played on PCs users can’t make copies).  Why wasn’t SACDs the answer to CD piracy?

We are living in an age of abundant technology, and the reigning rule of thumb for most citizens of this era is the “Good Enough” principle.  Don’t spend too much money, don’t waste too much time on consumer research, don’t get involved with anything requiring too much learning, just settle for good enough.  SACD technology is expensive, requires lots of consumer research, and a great deal of technical knowledge to use correctly.  iPods and iTunes are cheap and easy, so their sound is good enough.

What I want to know is why high fidelity isn’t cheap and easy?  Most people can afford high definition TV sets, and cable and satellite companies make it reasonably easy to see HDTV shows.  Why has the music industry failed to bring HD music to the masses?

I gave up on SACDs several years ago when I was afraid the format was going to be another Betamax.  I should have kept buying SACDs as they came out and helped support the cause.  I’m sorry I didn’t.  I was sidetracked by streaming music from Rhapsody and other online sources, and figured that was the future of music.  Many SACD fans hope the DSD download will be the future of streaming music, but that mostly seems to be a gleam in their eye right now.

Since sales of CDs are in sharp decline, it could be the the music industry feels the CD will be the niche market for audiophiles as plebian music fans flock to the good enough MP3 file format.  But audiophiles who have gotten used to the extreme quality of SACD don’t want to go back to CD – a format they’ve always hated anyway.  In fact, they may be the ones buying LPs again and improving its market share.  Doesn’t it seem strange to be going back to 1948 technology to get high fidelity?

For years now I’ve been listening to streaming music as my main source of music.  It’s convenient and I have access to millions of songs and albums.  It has been way to easy.  But when I do play my SACDs and actually sit and listen to their quality I wonder if I’m sacrificing too much for ease of use.  Maybe “Good Enough” really isn’t all that good?  I could return to LPs like my friend Lee has.  He’s even giving me a turntable to convert me to the cause.

And there’s another issue that my friend Luther pointed out.  He says there is so much content that people don’t discriminate anymore.  In the old days most people had a shelf of LPs (or a crate of them) but a very small number.  They were albums they cherished and knew.  I have over a thousand CDs, maybe even as many as 1,500, and most haven’t been played in years and years, and I can’t even remember what I have.

Wouldn’t it be better to have fewer albums, ones of of the highest fidelity, that I knew intimately?  I should use the wealth of Rhapsody to only find new albums to buy and cherish on my living room stereo instead of using it as my only source of music.  Audiophiles are telling me that true, and they bitterly complain those albums shouldn’t be on CD, but LP or SACD.  If I go by availability, the LP is the answer.

When I sit in my La-Z-Boy and crank up my SACD copy of Blonde on Blonde, and close my eyes and listen, the experience is so much fuller than playing music as the background soundtrack to my activities.  Music deserves our full attention like watching a movie.  Teresa, the writer of the blog SACD Lives listens to music in a total dark room without clothes so she can give her fullest attention to the experience.  Now that’s an extreme audiophile.  Makes me want to have a sensory deprivation chamber outfitted with SACD sound, so I could float in music.

JWH – 10/2/10

The Rise and Fall of High-Fidelity Music

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s when high fidelity was important to music listeners.  I first heard music on a 1955 Pontiac radio – AM mono in all its finest.  Later on I got a tiny 5 transitory radio with a single ear-bud.  The sound was terrible but I didn’t know it.  In 1962 I got a clock AM radio that I listened to for years.  That same year my sister got a portable stereo that I eventually stole.  In 1968 I bought a console stereo with my own money.  In 1971 I bought my first component stereo, and it’s been a series of component setups ever since.  Life was always about stepping up sonically.  Strangely enough, living in the 21st century means stepping down in high fidelity.

Currently I can listen to music on these systems in descending high fidelity:

  • Playing CDs and SACDs on a modest $1400 system with floor standing Infinity speakers
  • Playing CDs in the car
  • Playing CDs on my computer through Klipsch THX speakers
  • Playing ripped CDs on the stereo or PC
  • Playing Rhapsody downloads on the stereo or PC
  • Playing Rhapsody streams on the stereo or PC
  • Playing MP3s on my iPods or Zune portable player through ear buds

I have over a thousand CDs but I seldom play them anymore.  I have ripped 18,000+ songs to 256kbs MP3 files.  I have access to ten million songs through Rhapsody that I can save as 160kbs WMA files or stream live.  Right now I’m listening to the new Neil Young album Le Noise playing loud through my PC’s Klipsch speakers, the most common way I listen to music daily.  It sounds good, but not nearly as good as CDs on my living room stereo, and especially not as good as SACDs.

Why didn’t Super Audio CD catch on?  Probably for the same reason quadraphonic systems didn’t catch on back in the 1970s, because people had to buy too much extra equipment.  On the other hand, people are buying surround sound systems for their high definition TVs, and SACD could have easily integrated into such systems.

I can’t believe kids today love iPod quality sound.  Not only has the SACD quality music been rejected in the marketplace, but now people are rejecting CD quality sound in favor of digital download song quality.  A small percentage of music fans are returning to the LP and turntable, but I don’t know if that’s because of sound quality or nostalgia.

I remember when I was much younger going to audiophile stores and listening to very expensive equipment in custom sound rooms and dreaming of having the money to buy such setups.  Those $25,000 systems made recorded music sound as close to live as I’ve ever heard.  But those showrooms also featured a trick.  When the salesman puts you in a chair in the aural sweet spot and cranks up the volume, you aren’t doing anything but concentration on the music.  People seldom listening to music today with the same concentration they put into watching TV or reading a book.  Why?

Back then, in the 1980s, I assumed that one day those $25,000 systems would one day sell for $1,000 or even $500 because of the relentless drive of technological development.  And it would be cool if a $149 iPod Nano did play music like those $25,000 sound room systems, but they don’t.

When people started ripping MP3 music for their computers they decided that their sound quality was good enough.  People marvel at Blu-ray and DVD sound on movie discs, but they no longer want to sit in their recliner and just listen to music.  Music has become the background beat of an on-the-go-life.  People who really love music go to live concerts, and maybe that’s where they expect to hear high fidelity.

The real audiophile fanatics are usually classical and jazz music fans, and fans of those genres seem to be dying off, which might explain the declining interest in high fidelity stereo systems.  But what if some company started marketing a PC soundcard with a simple soundbar that had magnificent dynamic range and filled a bedroom or living with the sensation of being in a small club listening to music live?  Would such a gadget becoming a game changer like the iPod?

Everything is about carrying around tech, iPhones, iPads and iPods – but will we ever return to sit on our butts in the La-Z-Boy tech again?

If we can stream high definition movies over the Internet, why can’t we stream SACD quality sound?  How long will the MP3 file define the sound of music?

JWH – 9/29/10

Rhapsody 2.0 App for iPhone/iPad/touch

This video really says it all.

Now, the implications are something else.  9,000,000 songs on my iPod touch for $9.99 a month sort of competes with what Apple is selling at their iTunes Store.  However, Rhapsody isn’t trying to sell songs to iPhone/iPod/touch users – in fact, if you click the buy button inside the Rhapsody 2.0 App, Rhapsody directs your request to iTunes.  That’s very gracious of Rhapsody.  Or was that the price for Rhapsody to get into Apple’s App Store?  I don’t know, but it works for me.  Why buy songs when you can rent them so cheaply?

I loaded the Rhapsody 2.0 App on my touch, logged in, picked my current favorite playlist, and started playing music.  A breeze.  All the existing playlists I’ve built on my regular Rhapsody account showed up.  Right now you can search on albums and songs within the app, and add them to a playlist for playing, but as this video promises, soon we’ll be able to play songs and albums directly, without adding them to a list.  Although, I’m thinking it might be easier to always use the playlist, but make one called “New Albums To Try” and then when Tuesday rolls around, put anything I want to listen to on it, and clean it out before next Tuesday.

And I tried the trick in the video of downloading my the songs in the playlist and then shutting off the Wi-Fi.  The 55 songs on my Songs Rated 10 played instantly.  Very cool.  I have a first generation iPod touch and it drains the battery very fast when Wi-Fi is on, so this is a great feature for me.

It took me a bit of poking to find the random play and repeat play buttons – they are hidden away on the song time scale that only shows up if you touch the screen near the top of the album cover.  When a song plays you get cover photo to look at, and behind it if you hit the info i button, you’ll get a short essay about the artist.  Overall, the app does everything I want but I’m expecting some nice surprises in future versions.

Rhapsody is a subscription music service and most music fans don’t cotton to that marketing model.  Those that do love it.  It’s another reason why Apple allowed Rhapsody in their app store, because renting music is so unappealing to the masses.  This latest version of Rhapsody (the service, not the app) is cheaper and has more features. 

And it makes a lot of sense to stream music to a phone where people have limited storage space.  I’d need a 128GB iPhone to store the songs I own.  Streaming 9 million songs works just as easily with an 8gb phone as a 16gb or 32gb model.  Because the Rhapsody 2.0 app lets you pick out albums using your mobile device, you don’t even have to mess with a desktop other than to sign up the first time.

Rhapsody is great for people who like to try a lot of new music.  It doesn’t take much effort to try out 20-30 new albums a month, and of those, I might add 10 songs to a playlist.  I won’t own those 10 songs, but I will have tried a lot of new albums.  It’s pretty cool to read your favorite music review magazine and just play the album while you’re reading the review.

It’s also convenient to have all your favorite songs and albums tagged into playlists for quick and easy access.  Think of an artist, group, album or song and type it in the search box.  If Rhapsody has it you can play it.  I’d say 90-95% of what you can think of is available.  There are a few famous holdouts, like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin.  If I could convince Rhapsody to change anything, I’d ask them not to sell songs and albums from artists that don’t stream.  I don’t like paying to promote their work.

Generally where Rhapsody and other subscription services are weak is for finding out of print albums.  Of course, no one else is selling them either.  This is why people should still buy CDs.  Any time you find an album you really love, buy it on CD to save forever, because even in the digital world where keeping things in print would be a snap, albums disappear into obscurity.

JWH – 5/2/10

Why is Apple Killing Lala?

I love Lala, the online music service, and it grieves me that Apple is shutting it down.  I’m not sure how many people love Lala too, but there were three of us in my office.  I get up every morning and put on Lala, and I go to work and put on Lala, and when I come home I put on Lala.  I’m playing Lala as I write this essay.  I’ve been listening to music since the 1950s when my first source of songs was my Dad’s 55 Pontiac’s push button radio, and Lala has been the best system I’ve ever found for playing music.  I’ve been seeking song finding Nirvana for over fifty years.

If you haven’t lived with Lala you won’t know what you’re missing.  Apple is renowned for innovative technology, and when I first heard it bought Lala, I figured it knew a good thing when it saw it, and maybe Apple just wanted to make iTunes the perfect killer app.  But it looks now like iTunes is a different kind of killer app.  The best gossip I can find suggests Apple merely bought Lala for quick access to its cloud music technology.  That’s like killing a person for their kidneys.  Or was Lala music sales model really a threat to iTunes?

Most of the news stories about Apple shutting down Lala didn’t spend any time mourning Lala.  Anything Apple does is big news, but that’s all.  I just don’t think people know how cool Lala really is, and I want praise Lala before its forgotten, and maybe explain why Apple is killing it off.

It’s all about ease of use.  Lala is far easier to use than iTunes, far cheaper, and even more important, it’s far more exciting for finding new music and sharing that excitement with other music lovers.  All is this is much easier on Lala, I kid you not.  On Lala you can play any song or album for free once.  When the new albums come out on Tuesday you can play them all on Lala for free.  (Or could.)  How fantastic is that?  See an album with a neat cover, well give it a try.  See an album with a funny name, give it a play.  Remember flipping through bins of albums wondering what the music was like from looking at the album covers.  Well, with Lala, it was only a matter of taking the time to try them.

But even more important than that, was how cheap it is to buy web songs on Lala.  A dime a song and you can play it forever, or until a giant corporation comes along and stomps Lala.  I’d load up my Lala wallet with $20 and whenever I heard a song I like I hit the Add Song button, and ten cents would disappear from my wallet.  If I really loved the song I’d click another button and add it to a play list.  The year I’ve been a member of Lala meant collecting just the songs I loved and making playlists.  I could play my friends playlists and not spend a cent.  I could play stranger’s playlists for the same great price.  But if I found a song I loved, it was one click, one dime, and it was mine to keep playing.  And I never had to worry about backing my songs up, or finding the song in iTunes, or in Windows Media, or on which computer, or on a shelf, or where I left that CD.  Lala was perfect for keeping my songs organized. 

Like I said, ease of use is the key factor here.  I own about 1,500 CDs, and I have them ripped to 18,000+ songs in my Windows Media library, but it’s far easier to use Lala.  I also subscribe to Rhapsody and have access to millions of songs.  But I’d rather use Lala.  In fact, it was easier to pay Lala ten cents for songs I already owned than play them somewhere else.  Hell, Lala was even willing to give me credit and link my 18,000 songs to my Lala library, but I didn’t want to do that because I loved Lala and I wanted to give it money and I didn’t want my Lala library cluttered up with thousands of songs I didn’t want to play.

Damn you Apple!!!  I’m playing Lala right now and Laura Bell Bundy started singing “Please” and I went to add it to my collection, but the Add Song button is gone.  Luckily I didn’t ditch Rhapsody when it came up for yearly renewal this month.  Now I’ve got to figure out how to configure it to be easier to use.  Having unlimited access to millions of songs sounds great, but it takes work to manage them.  Lala is great at managing my library.  I had already paid Rhapsody and could play the same songs there as I was paying again on Lala for ten cents a song, and I was more than willing to spend my money again on Lala because it was so easy to use, and because Lala is so great at sharing.

Whenever I discover a song I love all I had to do was hit the Share button and send it to my friends.  And they could play it once for free, or add it to their collection for a measly dime.  And that’s a great bonding experience.  By the way, thanks Apple, you are at least letting me replay songs in my month of mourning without taking my dime.  I would add “Please” to my Songs Rated 10 playlist, but that button is gone too.  I’m playing it for the third time in a row.  Steve Jobs, why are you taking this all away from me?  Is it greed?  Must you destroy anything that is better than something you invented?  Do you merely want to crush the competition?  Do you even know the beauty you destroy?

The rumor mill says Apple is killing Lala for its cloud technology that allows users to add their songs to their online library.  This will be great for iTunes users.  One of the HUGE negatives of iTunes is if you lose computer you lose your music.  Web streaming is so freeing because you don’t have to worry about maintaining your music files.  I’m guessing Apple won’t offer web streaming, but they will sell you a song, and they will validate any songs you own, and then let you play those songs from the cloud.  I bet Apple plans to combine the purchase model with the streaming model, so you won’t be renting music, but you’ll get the advantage of streaming once you paid for the song.

The trickier part is whether or not they can load the song onto your iPod.  That ain’t streaming.  But iPhones, iPads and the iPod touch have WiFi and broadband and they could stream music.  One of the greats features of Audible.com is they remember everything you ever buy, and even if they lose the right to keep selling a digital audio book you still have the right to download it again if something happens to your computer.  iTunes never offered such a wonderful backup feature, but Lala type streaming comes close to that.

If Apple kills Lala and then puts all its features into iTunes 10 then I won’t hate Steve Jobs so bad.  I doubt this will happen.  There is no reason why iTunes couldn’t let users play songs and albums once for free like Lala.  There is no reason why iTunes couldn’t sell web streaming songs for ten cents apiece.  Zune offers streaming on a portable device.  You pay $15 a month and can wireless stream any album to your player.  I have a Zune, but I don’t like playing music through ear buds.  I like hearing music through big speakers.  And I dropped my Zune subscription because their desktop software wasn’t as good as Lala or Rhapsody.

Apple could recreate all the features of the Zune Marketplace with its Lala technology and offer streaming to portable players, but that would be the end of selling songs for $1.29.  I’ve written many blog posts begging my readers to try streaming music and got damn few takers.  People are all hung up on owning songs.  Paying Rhapsody $10 a month is even a bargain compared to stealing music, but people can’t even comprehend it.  The work of stealing and maintaining the songs is so time consuming that only someone with no money would consider a stolen song a bargain.

Does Steve Jobs want to stomp out rental music?  If the music companies were against it, why do they let so many services offer it?  Lala was much cheaper than Rhapsody.  I spent $40 during my year on Lala, and $120 at Rhapsody.  At Rhapsody I could listen to the millions of songs as often as I wanted.  At Lala, I had to pick which songs I wanted to hear again and pay ten cents for unlimited listening to each.  I played more new albums at Lala because it was easier, and I only bought a few hundred songs because that’s all I discovered I really liked enough to want to keep playing.

We’re getting closer to a new paradigm for owning music.  Unless you’re a music nut you might not understand these distinctions, but here’s the evolution of music ownership.

  1. You bought and owned the physical 78, 45, LP, CD, cassette, 8-track
  2. You bought the physical CD, but could rip it to MP3
  3. You could steal MP3s, illegally possessing the file
  4. You could buy MP3s without getting the physical album, legally owning the file
  5. You could rent unlimited access to all music but you didn’t own anything
  6. You could buy the streaming rights to a song, but keep it in the cloud, so you own the right to hear the song as often as you want, and you don’t have to worry about maintaining it
  7. And it looks like you will be able to buy the song for download, but also have unlimited streaming rights.

I thought step #5 was the ultimate, but ended up loving step #6, which is the sales model that Lala used.  I’m guessing Apple will modify #6 and make it #7.   But instead of buying the streaming song for ten cents, you’ll buy the song for $1.29, and I guess either keep it in the cloud or download a copy for your iPod.  I wonder if Apple will make a deal with the music companies to get you the legal rights to be able to download that song as many times as you like.

Model #5 came in a number of flavors.  Rhapsody and Napster started off charging one fee for web streaming and a larger fee for the rights to put rental music on a portable player.  Lala didn’t rent music, but sold it in a two-tier pricing.  Ten cents for unlimited streaming (#6), and 79 cents for a download (#4).  I’m guessing the Apple and the music industry will consider ten cents too cheap for the rights to listen to a song for the rest of your life.

I have to wonder if you subtract all the manufacturing costs of CDs, the shipping costs, the warehouse costs, the distributor’s costs, the retailers costs, how much does a song really cost, that is if you remove all the cost factors that don’t go into a digital download.  I’m guessing a physical song was probably 20-40 cents of your $12-15 you spent for a CD.  People used to complain bitterly over the prices of CDs, so a $1.29 for a song is actually more expensive if you factor in actual costs. 

Rental pricing is different.  If I played a 1,000 songs for my Rhapsody rental of $10, that’s only a penny a song.  But if I only play 100 songs, those songs cost me ten cents each.  But if I play the same 100 songs next month, it’s another ten cents each.  The beauty of Lala was its pricing of ten cents per song for unlimited streaming.  Plus it had the inherent side affect of tracking the songs you love, and this beats two problems of rental.  You only pay for the song once, and Lala’s tracking of ownership also was a kind of tracking.  I can listen to 6 million songs on Rhapsody but I have a hard time keeping up with just the ones I love.

Steve Jobs is no dummy.  He knows the future of computing is the cloud.  He knows people will get tired of “buying” the same songs over and over again.  I have some songs I’ve bought on vinyl twice (they wore out, or I lost them), CDs twice (first release, then remastered release), once on SASD, then again on MP3, and by more than one rental service.  Ownership doesn’t appear to be forever when it comes to music.  That’s why I like the idea of rental music, why pretend otherwise?

This rant about Apple destroying Lala is getting too long.  But I hope you get my drift.  Lala was a great model for finding, playing and sharing music, better I think than any other sales model I’ve discovered.  I can’t but believe Steve Jobs will take a step backwards from this model, but I’m sure he sees a music sales model that will dominate in the future, something beyond what iTunes uses now, and maybe one that might last awhile.

JWH – 4/30/10

Songs Rated 10

I am home today because of a snow day, and I felt deliciously sleepy, so I put on my Songs Rated 10 at Lala.com, turned up the volume, kicked back in the La-Z-Boy, covered up with a warm fuzzy blanket and let my mind float away with the music.  I absolutely LOVE listening to my favorite tunes when I’m half asleep, drifting in and out of slumber land.  I play the music loud so it constantly jerks me back to near wakefulness, usually as each song begins, and then I slowly fall back into unconsciousness.  This is as close as I can get to listening to music high anymore – it’s been decades since I  mixed music and smoke.

My Songs Rate 10 playlist are cuts that I can listen to anytime, in any order, and repeated endlessly.  My lullabies currently represent 47 songs from various genres dated from 1965-2009.  Click on the link and you can see and even play the list.  This is the magic of Lala.  They let anyone play a song once for free, so it’s a great site for sharing music.  I wonder if anyone else in the world has this particular list of 47 songs?

These songs resonate in my mind in a way I can’t comprehend.  Somehow these songs are on the same frequency as my emotions because when I play them they make my feelings well up and become highly sensitive to the music’s words and notes.  Their rhythms stimulates my thoughts, their melodies flow around my synapses freeing old memories.  My mind releases random images stored away in neural chemistry that float to the surface of my dreamy consciousness.  I’ve often thought this is the state of mind I want to be in when I die, so I’d just drift away, returning to the blackness of nothingness while my awareness floats between two notes.

JWH – 1/8/10