Sonyís SACD Initially Two-Channel Single-Sided,Single ñLayer DSD Audio

Sony Corporation has announced that it would be launching the first Super Audio CD (SACD) players to the Japanese audiophile market on May 21 at a prohibitive price of approximately $4,000 with a later introduction in October 1999 in the U.S. at roughly $5,000. Sony and Philips representatives report that the format will not be limited to the ultra-high end of the music consumers. Marantz says that a player of its own design and construction would probable follow Sonyís into the market later in the year at a lower price.In what initially sounded like a reversal of the formatís promises of compatibility with todayís CD players, Sony Music Entertainmentís initial line of 13 titles (with 10 new titles planned for each subsequent month), to be priced at around U.S. $25`each, will reportedly not be of the hybrid CD-Audio ""High Density"" audio disc construction, but rather will be single-sided, single-layer discs carrying only Direct Stream Digital (DSD) high-quality stereo audio. It was clear that multichannel sound is not supported in Sonyís first iteration of hardware. The titles for the U.S. market are expected to be around 56 from three Sony Music and six independent labels. The reason the SACD player and discs will be two-channel versions, said Sony Senior Vice President, Mike Fidler, is ""because the market for high-quality audio is two-channel"" but also because the recording-industry infrastructure based on SACDís underlying Direct Stream Digital technology ""probably wonít be available until next year, probably late next year.""While Sony is initially positioning SACD as a ""pure audio"" product and currently has no plans to fold in DVD-Audio playback, the company has stated that it is technically possible to implement SACD functionality into products with multichannel DVD-Video and/or DVD-Audio playback capability. Sony is certain to keep their options open measured against software availability and consumer demand. Sony believes that its ""class versus mass"" market positioning will convince the opinion-leading community of SACDís sonic superiority over the rival DVD-Audio format which will arrive in the U.S. late this year or early next depending on the resolution of a finalized encryption scheme and choice of audio-signal watermarking technology. By late next year, multichannel SACD discs and hardware will probably be available with six independent labels supporting the launch ñ Telarc, Audioquest, Delos, DMP, Mobile Fidelity and Waterlilly Acoustics.While the first Sony Music discs will not be hybrids, Sony said most of the 16 titles for the U.S. supplied by the independent labels will be backward-compatible hybrid discs featuring a separate CD-audio layer readable by existing CD players. Sonyís software arm said it is continuing to evaluate the use of hybrid discs, whose production costs were said by Philips to be significantly higher than the cost of making SACD-only discs.Philips has begun pressing hybrid discs for music labels to support the formatís launch and is ""confident"" other disc-manufacturing companies will jump in within a year as Philips learns how to bring production costs down. Philips says it will share the expertise it learns with other disc makers.Other major music labels have held off support of the SACD format until Sony and Philips develop a copy-control regimen to complement its anti-counterfeiting visible-watermark technology and its invisible-watermark encryption technology. The formatís copy-control provisions are reportedly close to finalization said Sony representatives. Until then, SACD machines will lack digital outputs capable of passing through a pure digital SACD signal or even an SACD signal down-converted to CD-audio quality 44.1kHz/16-bit. A standard digital output, however, will pass through CD signals from a hybrid discís CD layer and from standard CDs playing in the machine.Sony will market its player through approximately 500 dealers of its premium ES audio series. Advertising and promotion plans will be announced later this year but won't be as broad-based as the companyís MiniDisc promotions of 1998 because of the productís more narrowly focused customer base and more limited distribution. Sony expects SACD hardware dealers will stock SACD software at launch, joining select music retailers.