Surround 2000


		by Guido Henkel

	Last week we had the opportunity to visit a small conference called “Surround 2000”. It is an event that was designed to bring together leading people from the music industry as well as from the field of home entertainment to discuss current developments in the audio side of the industry, as well as to get an overview over the latest products and technologies.


	A number of exhibitors were on location at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in the heart of Hollywood, showcasing what they have been working on for the past months. Studer, Hafler, Yamaha, Euphonix, t.c. electronics, Genelec, Apogee and DTS were only a few names visitors could spot on the showfloor. I was especially impressed with Euphonics’ “System 5” digital audio console, a solid-state mixing console that is boasting with features, yet remains very clear and rather intuitive, despite the 360 separate input channels the one on the show floor had. Apart from that, where else do you get the chance to do your personal mix of Fleetwood Mac’s classic “Rumors” songs. I love the console but it is just way out of my league, so the good old “Studiomaster” console I own has to serve.


	A number of set-ups in various rooms gave visitors the opportunity to listen into some of the latest developments - after all what would an audio show be without the listening experience. In some places you could do almost real-time DTS down-conversions of program material and burn them to CD right on the floor, while in other suites you were invited to listen to the latest in speaker development. Although the show wasn’t overly large, it was easy to be blown away by the sheer caliber and quality of the experiences. Most of the applications on display were designed for the production side of the industry however as opposed to consumer equipment that may find its way into home theaters or living rooms.

	This little expo was accompanied by seminars, covering a number of different topics and most of them were clearly designed to raise the awareness of multi-channel productions within the industry. Although the movie side of the industry has long made the switch to multi-channel surround developments, ranging from Dolby Stereo to full blown THX EX

productions, interestingly the clearly more audiophile and demanding music industry has yet to make this step. With the exception of a few releases, music productions are still locked down in the rather antiquated stereo pattern. However, change is on the way, and “Surround 2000” brought together the leading people in both industries to share their thoughts and experiences.


	The official launch of DVD audio in a few months will mark this change in the industry that has been consistently working with the CD “Red Book” standards for nearly two decades. DVD Audio opens up new opportunities for the major labels in a variety of ways. First and foremost, the DVD Audio format, which is very different from the existing DVD Video format, will allow multi-channel audio and allows for a lot of flexibility in using it. To ensure the highest possible quality, DVD Audio’s specs ask for 96 kHz sampling rates and above, at a 24-bit resolution. This ultimately results in an increase in dynamic resolution of recordings, as well as an increased faithfulness in the aural reproduction itself as harmonic distortions will be significantly reduced when compared to the current CD Audio standard.


	Fortunately the DVD Audio Group that chiseled out the DVD Audio specs also made sure to keep some kind of compatibility with the current DVD Video standard. After all, in the beginning most people are likely to listen to DVD audio releases through their multi-channel home theater equipment as opposed to buying complete new home audio systems for the purpose of listening to music alone. Over time this may change but for the time being it is important to have some kind of compatibility to ensure instant gratification. Over time the lines will undoubtedly blur when player generations appear that will be able to handle DVD Video and DVD Audio releases alongside with Sony’s SACD discs regardlessly which format the disc is actually in.


	To ensure current compatibility, all DVD Audio discs contain a “video zone” that is compatible with the current DVD Video specifications. Publishers can use this section of the disc to place music videos, Dolby Digital encoded versions of the music tracks, slide shows or anything else on the disc to make sure users with only DVD Video equipment will still be able to enjoy part of the presentation. However, how to use it and whether to use it at all is open to the studios themselves and will certainly become one of the most misunderstood features of the format, very much like DVD Video’s multiple language, multi-angle and subtitle capabilities.


	DVD Audio has long been delayed and currently the bottleneck seems to the unavailability of powerful tools to author these discs, not unlike what we had seen during the birth of DVD Video. The industry is in its infancy, taking its first steps and improvements are made on a daily basis. Much of the experience gathered through DVD Video authoring will be applicable to DVD Audio productions but a lot of the production parameters are completely uncharted territory for most studios and producers.

	That is also part of the reason why we will see a gradual migration from traditional stereo recordings to multi-channel presentations in the music industry. As some representatives from major music labels pointed out during some of the extremely informative seminars of the show, there are a great number of issues that need to be resolved. Production costs of

surround music productions is much higher than those of stereo recordings to begin with, while at the same time the installed customer bases is significantly smaller. The industry really hopes the installed base of over $10 billion worth of home theaters will help making the transition easier. Another concern is will people ultimately adopt the format? After all most consumers are completely happy with the quality CD can produce, and it is in fact absolutely sufficient for most people. Unlike in the video industry where the presentation quality of VHS simply wasn’t sufficient enough to please slightly more demanding audiences, CD recordings hold up to most discriminating ears still to this date. Whether consumers will be able to appreciate the increase in quality remains to be seen. Will consumers change their listening habits to accommodate surround environments, is another question the studios need to learn about. After all, listening to a surround recording requires you to sit down in a fixed spot and listen tot he music. In as fast-paced a society as we are, how many people will change their listening habits to the point that they sit down and listen to an entire recording, pretty much the way we initially did when home stereo and heaphones came around.


	All these questions were raised during an extremely interesting seminar and answered by representatives from Universal Music, Capitol Records and BMG Entertainment. This discussion left a strong impression made raised the awareness of many problems and challenges the industry is facing as it makes its transition to the new format. Last but not least, as Capitol’s Michael Frondelli pointed out, the artists themselves need to create musical visions that drive and exploit multi-channel productions. Simply re-mixing catalog titles is not enough, and the industry needs some driving visionaries that make a strong impact to get the capabilities of surround productions into people’s minds.

	Another seminar touched upon the more technical implications of DVD Audio. Marina Bosi from DTS explained how DTS can help get bigger and

supposedly better results out of the DVD Audio specifications. It will be interesting to see how DTS will position itself in the new world of audio, where the actual specs are much better than DTS’ current capabilities. I believe it is important for the company to start employing alternative lossless compression technologies that yield better compression ratios than the current lossless DVD Audio MLP compression algorithms in order to maintain their edge in the market. They will not be able to convince by quality any longer - as they were able to in the past - as their compressed material, although near lossless, is inevitably less attractive to audiophile listeners than DVD Audio’s current abilities.


	Another extremely interesting speaker was AIX’s Mark Waldrep, who is working in both fields, DVD Video and DVD Audio. AIX has so far produced about 650 DVD titles and was actualyl the first company to author a complete DVD Audio disc. It was a test disc to show off DVD audio for the first time at a trade show that was created blind-folded without a player to test its functionality, as Waldrep recalled. Luckily it turned out to be quite operational and served as a promo disc on the show floor. But Waldrep had many other anecdotes and experiences to share with his colleagues. He explained many of the do’s’ and don’t do’s of the DVD trade and used problems that occurred in the DVD Video segment to explain comparable issues in the DVD Audio world. He pointed out some possibilities DVD audio offers to engineers, artists and authoring facilities to make sure it will become and attractive medium that has a lot of value for consumers.



		AIX CEO Mark Waldrep captivating the audience with his vivid descriptions


	What was obvious from this show was that the entire entertainment industry, from movie studios to music publishers all the way to computer game publishers are on the move into the age of multi-channel sound production. It was a great opportunity to see, learn and hear many of the innovations that lurk on the horizon for consumers. We even had the chance to listen into a 10.2 channel surround presentation that was mind-boggling. With the additional channels comes a dramatic increase in spatial integration, and although it is nothing we will see in home theaters anytime soon, it is good to know that some people out there are already working on extensions of the current state of the technology.


		November 10, 1999


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