“If we are to predict and perhaps guide the progress of today’s new digital audio formats, it may be useful to ourselves seek the guidance of history. And there’s lots of that when we look back at audio and video formats that have succeeded or failed, or, more likely, limped along mired in conflict and confusion for years until superseded by technology that clearly appealed more to the consumer…”

“After the AES Seminar in May I hunkered down with some DVDs and SACDs (I’ve been collecting the latter for over a year) and started to listen critically to both formats. Multi-channel SACD has only been demonstrated at shows, and players and discs do not yet exist for consumers, but will soon, to the dismay of those who bought 2-chennel players (myself included). DVD-Audio, meanwhile, is trying to be all things for all channels (well, 5 of them at least), and some old 70s masters are being remixed to sound fresher for the new millennium…”

“Grant Green was a jazz guitarist who recorded as band leader and side man with the majority of musicians who passed through the Blue Note doors during those special years between 1960 and 1965 (see footnote below). His name appears on over one hundred albums, including thirty under his own name, making him Blue Note’s most recorded artist. Later in the sixties and early seventies he created some of the coolest and hottest rare-groove and small ensemble jazz-funk there is. Some critics even elevate him to the status of forefather of acid jazz…”

“In 1987 a large German research and development organization called the Fraunhofer Institut started work on a perceptual coding scheme for use with Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB). The most powerful algorithm they developed eventually became standardized as ISO-MPEG Audio Layer-3, or, as now abbreviated, MP3 (Layers 1 and 2 are essentially less efficient versions of the same algorithm). The goal of the algorithm was to drastically shrink the data size of digital audio with a minimum subjective loss of sound quality; something which could not be done by merely reducing sample rate and bit depth..”

“… For those of us hoping and waiting for a high-resolution replacement for the CD, however, the situation has recently become even more complicated. While the electronics behemoths were striking committees and issuing press releases about DVD Audio and SACD, the masses have gone right ahead and chosen the next major audio format all by themselves. If the success of DVD-A or SACD was a dubious proposition before the meteoric rise of MP3, it seems like a serious long shot now…”

“…Well, I didn’t see all of it, and I certainly liked a lot of the things I saw and heard. I also have reservations, though I’m not as irritated and angry at Burns as some seem to be. I don’t think he knows a lot about the subject matter, but he knows how to create a series of interesting images and some good conversation on a rudimentary level. Comparison with Leonard Bernstein’s Norton lectures, which were later turned into TV lectures (mostly about Beethoven), is ludicrous…”

“As a longtime Elvis fan (and I can now admit to being as a teenager one of the earliest imitators, or “tribute artists”, as they now say in Memphis), I’ve always been glad to see good sounding re-releases of his best work. A set of German-produced RCA CDs from 1984 was the first set of reissues that did the original recordings justice. Titled Elvis - The Collection, the first of these 3 CDs contained many of the early hits, while the second and third chronicled the string of hits into the 60s. For some reason I seem to have lost Volume 3..”

Andrew Marshall listens to jazz and classical DVD Audio releases from Classic Records and Chesky, straps on the cans for a bevy of binaural recordings and even spins some spoken word in the Summer 1999 edition of his Supersounds Column…