Trying to take some guesses at what the future holds for DIY digital-audio.
Seems like there's gonna be two main camps, real physical media, and no physical media, ie computers & music bought online.
Eventually they may give up on MP3 and move towards higher quality compression formats, or even lossless compression at reasonable bitrates, though of course it will probably cost more. So assuming good media becomes available, You'll see people concentrating on PC-interfacing and so forth, and of course all of this is plain-ol digital audio, so all the DAC work done in the past 10 years applies directly pretty much.
On the other hand, you've got those concentrating on physical media, currently largely CD transports & DACs, but increasing emphasis on modding SACD/DVD-A players. Unfortunately they go to great lengths to prevent you from doing so. It is possible to pull I2S off the circuit boards for DVD-A, and possible to bypass a lot of the output filters in some SACD players, but there isn't going to be much in the way of from-scratch development it seems.
Of course it's possible DVD-A will be broken soon and it will then be within reach of the PC-based solutions, when used in conjunction with 24/192 soundcards and so forth.
SACD is probably going to forever remain a set-top solution, the best we can hope for is applying the usual mods, and when possible, bypassing some of the filters, or am I missing something? The firewire solutions are almost certainly going to be out of reach for DIYers.
I have been working towards PC-based stuff, and crossing my fingers that DVD-A gets broken so I will be able to play them in the future, I have a cheapo SACD player and a few discs ATM, but I'm wary of sinking money into it right now.
So where are you putting your chips? Where are you concentrating your effort? Lets not get into a argument in this thread, I'd just like to hear from as many people as feel like replying 🙂
Seems like there's gonna be two main camps, real physical media, and no physical media, ie computers & music bought online.
Eventually they may give up on MP3 and move towards higher quality compression formats, or even lossless compression at reasonable bitrates, though of course it will probably cost more. So assuming good media becomes available, You'll see people concentrating on PC-interfacing and so forth, and of course all of this is plain-ol digital audio, so all the DAC work done in the past 10 years applies directly pretty much.
On the other hand, you've got those concentrating on physical media, currently largely CD transports & DACs, but increasing emphasis on modding SACD/DVD-A players. Unfortunately they go to great lengths to prevent you from doing so. It is possible to pull I2S off the circuit boards for DVD-A, and possible to bypass a lot of the output filters in some SACD players, but there isn't going to be much in the way of from-scratch development it seems.
Of course it's possible DVD-A will be broken soon and it will then be within reach of the PC-based solutions, when used in conjunction with 24/192 soundcards and so forth.
SACD is probably going to forever remain a set-top solution, the best we can hope for is applying the usual mods, and when possible, bypassing some of the filters, or am I missing something? The firewire solutions are almost certainly going to be out of reach for DIYers.
I have been working towards PC-based stuff, and crossing my fingers that DVD-A gets broken so I will be able to play them in the future, I have a cheapo SACD player and a few discs ATM, but I'm wary of sinking money into it right now.
So where are you putting your chips? Where are you concentrating your effort? Lets not get into a argument in this thread, I'd just like to hear from as many people as feel like replying 🙂
flip flopping
I admit to flip flopping on this issue.
My home theater, which has no diy electronics at all in it, can play any format that comes on a disc, vhs tape or even dv tape for that matter. If a new format comes out, I expect at some point to buy the relevant new player and plug it into my A/V unit but that's mostly oriented to movies and movie sound.
On the other hand, for music listening it's all diy and linux pc-based using wav files ripped from cd's and some internet radio. I expect to be concentrating on this for the next year. After that I'll poke my head up and see what's up with higher bitrates and resolutions and especially surround sound environments.
Don't like online music stores yet because they sell only inferior formats like mp3, aac and wma and I'm hoping there will be more choice in the future. I would like to be able to buy cd-equivalent or better music this way if ownership were simple like buying a cd.
In the future, I'm hoping to be able to buy music that is natively recorded 24/96 multichannel surround so it will mimic the concert hall and place the instruments in 3D. This must be played through a sophisticated processor, which in my case will be a linux box and fir filters running in software.
I admit to flip flopping on this issue.
My home theater, which has no diy electronics at all in it, can play any format that comes on a disc, vhs tape or even dv tape for that matter. If a new format comes out, I expect at some point to buy the relevant new player and plug it into my A/V unit but that's mostly oriented to movies and movie sound.
On the other hand, for music listening it's all diy and linux pc-based using wav files ripped from cd's and some internet radio. I expect to be concentrating on this for the next year. After that I'll poke my head up and see what's up with higher bitrates and resolutions and especially surround sound environments.
Don't like online music stores yet because they sell only inferior formats like mp3, aac and wma and I'm hoping there will be more choice in the future. I would like to be able to buy cd-equivalent or better music this way if ownership were simple like buying a cd.
In the future, I'm hoping to be able to buy music that is natively recorded 24/96 multichannel surround so it will mimic the concert hall and place the instruments in 3D. This must be played through a sophisticated processor, which in my case will be a linux box and fir filters running in software.
Magnatune
"I would like to be able to buy cd-equivalent or better music..."
Magnatune.com provides their downloads in the following formats:
44k/16bit WAV: zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
FLAC: zip file of perfect quality FLAC files.
OGG: zip file of high quality OGG files.
128kb MP3: zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
MP3 VBR: zip of high quality MP3 VBR files.
And they also started providing a CD burning service for those with less than stellar bandwidth.
While their catalog may not be the most familiar, there are some really nice albums in a variety of genres. All albums are available for preview before purchase.
Cody
"I would like to be able to buy cd-equivalent or better music..."
Magnatune.com provides their downloads in the following formats:
44k/16bit WAV: zip file of perfect quality WAV files.
FLAC: zip file of perfect quality FLAC files.
OGG: zip file of high quality OGG files.
128kb MP3: zip file of 128kb MP3 files.
MP3 VBR: zip of high quality MP3 VBR files.
And they also started providing a CD burning service for those with less than stellar bandwidth.
While their catalog may not be the most familiar, there are some really nice albums in a variety of genres. All albums are available for preview before purchase.
Cody
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