Though some, especially in the dance arena, claim the music industry’s attack on vinyl has been unsuccessful, now it seems conventional CDs may become a target. In the last two years manufacturers and record companies have rolled out two new musical formats – DVD Audio and Super Audio Compact Discs (SACDs) – which some hope will replace the CD. The new formats, when coupled with the right speakers, apparently produce a superior sound with parts of a recording previously buried in layers of music (a drumbeat, an extra guitar, some backup vocals) revealed, crystal clear. They also store considerably more content, with the DVD Audio offering the option to store pictures, lyrics and videos on the same disc.
Retailing slightly more expensively than a CD, DVD Audios can be played on most DVD players. SACDs need a new player, though Sony have made a cheap player available for £300. That said to get the full benefit on the sound quality consumers have to invest in an expensive new sound system, the conventional DVD player or a cheap SACD player doesn’t offer all the audio benefits.
“If you talk to the man on the street, I think most people would say the CD is fine,” David Kawakami, director of the SACD project at Sony admits, "but there has always been a portion of the marketplace that has found the CD lacking in certain respects. The things that they say we sacrificed when we transferred from vinyl to CD are things like warmth and the ability to record air around the instruments. The SACD is basically a three-dimensional experience. Music has depth, width and height, and just as if you're sitting in a concert hall, you're hearing music not only coming directly at you but coming to you ... it's also ricocheting off the walls."
Whether a step up in sound quality will be enough to persuade record buyers remains to be seen, but another feature of the new technology may encourage record labels to push them. The relative complexity of DVD-Audios and SACDs makes them much harder to pirate. While this fact may discourage part of the population from buying the new formats, it may provide an incentive for the labels to subsidise them to help build interest in the mainstream.