Anyone that knows me knows that I'm big into surround sound for music.
It is a huge deal for me. I buy recordings in surround and quadraphonic sound. I convert quadraphonic materials to modern formats for easy playback. I share some of my work with friends also into these things. I tell everyone about surround sound and do anything and everything to try and spread awareness and interest in what to me is an awesome, cool, fun thing.
You'd think I'd be a person that would naturally get along with others that are involved in music and audio.
And yet, time and time again, I find myself completely at odds with the music industry, and just about against anything and everything they do.
The suits running the industry have completely and totally lost touch with their customer base.
Oh, sure, they make money by tapping into the latest fads and trends, and manufacturing and mass producing catchy crap that the teens are into. And hey, I have nothing against catchy crap, I have quite a large collection of bubblegum music, which is the same idea, manufactured music. Some fun to listen to stuff can be manufactured. There are so many different kinds and types of music, and different ways to create and make music.
But the industry has just about ignored all those other ways, and the manufactured music just gets worse and worse, in a system that doesn't award and doesn't care about creativity.
But, this rant isn't about the quality of the music the kids are listening to these days. This is about the music industry fucking up in every way they can when it comes to surround sound.
It all started with a composer by the name of Karlheinz Stockhausen, who made a brilliant observation that sound doesn't come at us all from one point, but it surrounds us. And so when he was composing music, to him the spacial aspect of where the sound you hear comes from was something he wanted to take into consideration with his compositions. And so one of the earliest major works of electronic music was composed and performed in surround sound. "Gesang der Junglinge" was originally created to play on 5 groups of loudspeakers, two in the front, two in the back, and one from above. After the first performance, he determined the 5 channel format was problematic, and reduced it to 4, which is how it has continued to exist to this day. There have been recordings released, first in mono, later in stereo of this work. But, to really hear this work as intended, one must attend a performance in a concert hall with properly setup and calibrated loudspeakers arranged around the hall.
This was in the 50s that Stockhausen made what should've been a major breakthrough in music. But, it wasn't until the 70s that any real attempts at releasing music in a surround format were made. And, they were an unfortunate flop. For two major reasons:
1. The technology wasn't quite ready for it.
2. The industry couldn't get it's shit together and agree on a standard.
There have been many times where the industry has fought over standards and formats, with each company trying to copyright their own idea and reap the benefits of royalties by establishing their format as the standard. But, a format has only succeeded once everyone got on board with it. Beta failed, and due to porn being a huge influence, VHS gained popularity, everyone got on board with the standard, and it took off, with everyone, even Sony, profiting from the sale of playback devices. Sure, Sony could've gained much more if betamax took off. But, they kept charging everyone a license, allowing VHS to swoop in there and offer a cheaper alternative. Sony fucked up, which was a shame, as they had the superior product. And they learned nothing, and history would continue repeating itself for them.
So, when it came time to establish a new standard in audio delivery of recordings beyond 2 channels, it was easy to establish a tape standard. Although, behind the scenes in the studios, that was even fucked up. Consumer tapes all met a standard, Reels of tapes in the studio, however, didn't. I've come across 3 different standards of track assignment layout on reel to reel tapes, all of which make sense for one reason or another. But, that doesn't matter, there needs to be standards. The Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center CD-4 LP is a perfect example of what can happen when people won't agree on a standard. Just about every piece on that record has an incorrect channel layout, and no one seems to have noticed until I came along and managed to talk to the composers and take some notes and do some comparisons. This is primarily because the standard track layout for masters in the studio and consumer reels is this:
1 -front left
2 - rear left
3 - front right
4 - rear right
This is primarily because when making a reel to reel deck that will playback stereo and quad tapes, the front stereo pair are on the same tracks as a plain stereo pair.
In the world of electronic composing, the standard that was developed was this:
1 - rear left
2 - front left
3 - front right
4. - rear right
This makes sense because they're looking at a widened stereo field, that goes around the room from rear left to rear right. Also, this allows them to have their tracks layed out with both lefts together and both rights together, which helped when running sound at a concert.
Ok, this discrepancy in standards is understandable, due to 2 different industries and 2 different backgrounds coming to 2 different standards that make sense for each of them. But is something that one needs to take into consideration when dealing with tapes, and be observant of.
However, when we get different standards, or no standard in one industry, things become a mess.
As it is, there is no real standard that exists today in the music industry for 5.1 surround playback of music. None. Nada. No one has come to any agreement or consensus of a standard. And I believe this has been a problem that has contributed towards surround not catching on.
Right now, the growing and becoming the primary method of music distribution has been digital files. Discs still exist, and will continue to be with us for some years. But, it is easy to see that the direction the industry is moving is more and more towards digital files, and less and less physical medium.
And when it comes to digital files, what is the standard? The mp3 currently.
Show of hands, how many people have ever heard of, heard, or played back a surround mp3?
Ok, I'll put my hand down and continue explaining, since you're all looking a bit confused.
Yes, mp3 does do surround. But, if I sent you a surround mp3 file, would you know what to do with it?
(I hear you all grumbling "yes, delete it, and stop reading your stupid blog entries")
Also, I'm completely against mp3 being the standard of audio distribution, as it is inferior to CD in all ways except one, convenience. With today's technology, there is no reason mp3s should even continue to exist. We now have a format, and have for quite some time, called flac, free lossless audio code. Flac files are bigger, but they don't throw away the majority of the data that you will never get back, like mp3 does.
Sure, for most people mp3 is good enough. But, a good industry shouldn't cater strictly to the lowest common denominator. Us audiophiles have supported the industry with our many purchases, and shouldn't be ignored. If you want to take us along with you into the new era of less physical media, then you are going to need to make flac a standard, not an exception.
Of course, flac does allow for 5.1 surround playback. And I do know how to create 5.1 surround flac files, and I know how to play them back. But do you?
If I were to stop making dvds, and release all my hobby conversions via flac files, I can just hear the questions starting of what in the heck they are supposed to do with that. Because, the only way most people have to listen to surround, if they have a way to listen to surround at all, is on the home theater system, which has been taylored for 5.1 surround playback of movies. Which means the primary format that allows surround easily is compromised.
Dvd is the most common way an average consumer would be able to playback surround in their home. And most of those will only do dts or dolby digital, which are lossy compressed formats. Which, in this day and age with the technology available to us, shouldn't even exist anymore.
Sure, bluray is catching on, and can do surround lossless, but it's still an exception rather than the norm, so if one wants to get their things in the most homes as possible, when it comes to surround, you're still living in a dvd world.
Yes, the music industry did try to utilize the available technology in the early 2000s and make a new disc based audio system that allowed better than CD sound quality and surround sound. But, they fucked it up big time. They released 2 competing formats, didn't promote them, and hardly released any titles for them, causing them to fizzle out and be niche formats that still somewhat linger on.
This has allowed one compromise to exist, when it comes to distributing 5.1 surround sound to consumers, the dvd-a/v hybrid disc. A disc that will play in dvd-audio players with lossless mlp compression, but is backwards compatible with regular dvd players to play in dts and dolby digital.
Of course, this has become a nightmare in dvd authoring. Now, don't get me wrong, I can author a disc, and it's not too complicated once you get the process down. But, today I found myself questioning.....why am I still doing this?
I've gotten to a point where I'm fucking sick and tired of dicking around with menus for audio discs. The CD...you put it in the player and just push play, and music comes out.
Why am I dicking around with menus?
At this point, I'm moving away from physical media myself. I still buy CDs, but the first thing I do is rip it to flac on a 2 TB hard drive which contains flac of all my CDs, and iso images of all my dvd-audio, and some music dvd-video. Which means, when I create a new disc, I don't even burn a disc anymore, I save an image of a disc on my hard drive.
I'm creating emulated physical media, just to stay compatible.
Why do I do this?
Because the fucking music industry can't establish a standard in 5.1 audio playback.
They didn't stand behind the SACD or DVD-Audio, so neither of them is a standard one should consider a reasonable expectation for a consumer to be able to playback.
They haven't established flac a standard in surround playback, or even stereo playback. Sure, lots of things can playback flac, but can you play it in an ipod? Why not? Huh, apple? If you're so fucking cool, why can't you playback the obvious choice for a lossless standard? What, apple lossless? Please. You're not an authority in audio standards, your just a creater of colorful devices that do things that aren't new, with a really good marketing department.
As it is, I'm limited to what I can do with flac. My oppo bluray player will playback flac, and 5.1 surround flac, but it won't do it gapless, which means I either have to listen to gaps in between every track on Dark Side of the Moon, or rip my albums into one huge flac per disc and lose the ability of selecting what song I want to listen to on demand. So, dvd-audio has continued to be the only viable standard for me in my system, I'm stuck emulating an old physical format that never caught on.
The only affordable device I've found that will do gapless flac is boxee box, and with a little research I found out that it won't do 5.1 properly, because it hasn't been programmed to playback the standard channel layout properly. This bug was reported a year ago, and boxee has continued to ignore it. Way to go, assholes.
Which means, if one wants to listen to 5.1 surround flac, you need specialized equipment, or a computer hooked up to your audio system (still counts as specialized equipment I suppose), or you need to know how to author a disc from it.
So, that leaves me stuck. I'd like to say to hell with this ancient technology, to hell with dvd, to hell with dvd-audio, to hell with menus, to hell with disc images, and just convert everything to flac and only create flac.
But then, those that I share with would for the most part not know what to do with the flac I provide. Which is understandable, I still can't find a way to use it without having to deal with conversion.
So I say.....come on music industry.....get with it. Establish a standard in flac. Ditch mp3, go flac all the way. Or at least make it a standard option. Also, establish a standard in 5.1 surround playback of flac, make devices that are able to detect and playback flac properly on home theater systems.
Yes, it would take time for a standard to work it's way into people's homes. But, if it's ever going to happen, it needs to fucking start. Establish the standard, make equipment that does it, release files in the format. Get the ball rolling already.
Do it.
NOW!
NOW!
NOW!
NOW!
NOW!
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