DSD Questions

[astrotoy]

Not sure whether these have been answered before. I may not even be asking the question correctly.
1. Are the DSD downloads, e.g. from Channel Classics and others, the same as if I do a PS3 rip from my Channel Classics SACD, or are they higher in resolution or better in some other way?
2. Are the DSD files in SACD's that are commercially common at 2.8 or 5.6 or both (I think this is referred as 1X or 2X)?

Thanks, Larry

 

[Bruce B]

1. The DSD downloads from Channel is exactly the same on the SACD discs. But, the rips from the PS3 may or may not be the same. Depending on the authoring, you might have missing information from the PS3 rips, especially in Classical music. This is a bug that has not been fixed. READ THIS

2. SACD discs contain 2.8MHz or DSD64fs or 1xDSD files

 

[microstrip]

1. The DSD downloads from Channel is exactly the same on the SACD discs. But, the rips from the PS3 may or may not be the same. Depending on the authoring, you might have missing information from the PS3 rips, especially in Classical music. This is a bug that has not been fixed. READ THIS

2. SACD discs contain 2.8MHz or DSD64fs or 1xDSD files

Any reason why a SACD of the Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence, Verdi - String Quartet costs $17.00 and the dsd file costs $30.00?

 

[Bruce B]

Any reason why a SACD of the Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence, Verdi - String Quartet costs $17.00 and the dsd file costs $30.00?

Jared is not a business man?

I don't understand it either.....

 

[edorr]

Any reason why a SACD of the Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence, Verdi - String Quartet costs $17.00 and the dsd file costs $30.00?

Reminds me of the "convenience fee" ticketmaster charges for electronic delivery of tickets as opposed to sending over the mail.

 

[opus111]

Any reason why a SACD of the Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence, Verdi - String Quartet costs $17.00 and the dsd file costs $30.00?

At a guess - the disc is 'DRMd' (not so simple to copy) but the file isn't.

 

[astrotoy]

1. The DSD downloads from Channel is exactly the same on the SACD discs. But, the rips from the PS3 may or may not be the same. Depending on the authoring, you might have missing information from the PS3 rips, especially in Classical music. This is a bug that has not been fixed. READ THIS

2. SACD discs contain 2.8MHz or DSD64fs or 1xDSD files

Thanks for the clear answers. Larry

 

[frank.hardly]

Any reason why a SACD of the Tchaikovsky - Souvenir de Florence, Verdi - String Quartet costs $17.00 and the dsd file costs $30.00?

I'm only speculating as I'm not in the music business, but have a marketing and economics degree and can only imagine the people running these companies have never attended business school and have never heard of price elasticity nor product positioning. There are prices at which people would start downloading more and maybe even not view it worthwhile to illegally download. At those prices, the demand would increase beyond current high price limited demand and I speculate the file vendors would make much more money and even potentially open new markets for this service. I really don't get why companies like Channel classics charge almost double the price of a physical sacd as for a dsd file. I refuse to pay this even though I have a dsd capable dac. Physical product has all sorts of additional production, shipping and handling cost while a file has bandwidth cost which I imagine costs pennies. Maybe the suppliers have to re-coup development costs for web based delivery or maybe they are trying to extract a first mover advantage so long as they can ( a price discrimination strategy), but as previously mentioned they are limiting demand to a large degree. I've written Channel a note asking for an explanation and was ignored - so I assume business ignorance is a driving factor here.

 

[opus111]

If you go here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7d7Jnx0xc (2hrs long mind, a seminar from 2012 RMAF on DSD) you'll see that $30 is at the low end of what's being promoted as a business model for DSD downloads.

 

[Bruce B]

If you go here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7d7Jnx0xc (2hrs long mind, a seminar from 2012 RMAF on DSD)

Now that is a cast of characters!!

 

[frank.hardly]

If you go here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7d7Jnx0xc (2hrs long mind, a seminar from 2012 RMAF on DSD) you'll see that $30 is at the low end of what's being promoted as a business model for DSD downloads.

I don't have 2 hrs, but what was the rationale? Greed? Or insurance premium for potential file sharing?

 

[opus111]

Well I'd say fear, which is always what underlies greed and the need of insurance premiums. Fear that RBCD isn't good enough for audiophiles came across rather strongly in my estimation.

 

[asiufy]

It gets worse. There's a $50 DSD download now. $30 was quite steep, now $50 is plain absurd.
And worse, the rationale behind that seems to be that DSD should be a "premium" product, and if you can't pay for it, stick with the "cheap stuff".


alexandre

 

[opus111]

The antidote to that ploy is equipping yourself with a NOS DAC, then you'll see that what's touted as 'premium' doesn't sound as dynamic as the 'cheap stuff'. But perhaps others don't value dynamics as much in the overall experience as I do.

 

[edorr]

If you go here :http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj7d7Jnx0xc (2hrs long mind, a seminar from 2012 RMAF on DSD) you'll see that $30 is at the low end of what's being promoted as a business model for DSD downloads.

Call me contrarian but this makes perfect sense. If you have 5 or 6 figures invested in a DSD capable system and you hesitate at paying $30 for a DSD download you are not serious about your hobby. What is throwing us off is that sacd was too cheap all along. They are just figuring the right business model for this market. I mean, we have endless debates about the merits of one $50K amp over the other and $15K tone arms. Let's get real here. The $15 download was a rounding error and the $30 download will still be a rounding error. Now let's go back to $20,000 black anodized color options and $50k audio racks........

 

[opus111]

I agree it makes sense to those already on the DSD koolaid - good luck to you! For the rest of the punters, RBCD is just fine.

 

[tailspn]

Call me contrarian but this makes perfect sense. If you have 5 or 6 figures invested in a DSD capable system and you hesitate at paying $30 for a DSD download you are not serious about your hobby. What is throwing us off is that sacd was too cheap all along. They are just figuring the right business model for this market. I mean, we have endless debates about the merits of one $50K amp over the other and $15K tone arms. Let's get real here. The $15 download was a rounding error and the $30 download will still be a rounding error. Now let's go back to $20,000 black anodized color options and $50k audio racks........

Ding ding ding..we have a winner!

The actual manufacturing cost of an SACD is three times the same process for a CD, or about $1.50. The artist and technical production costs for a classical recording range between $20,000 to above $100,000 depending on the size of the group, and their royalty structure. Distribution eats up about 2/3 the selling price, leaving little margin for the label. When you sell hundreds of thousands of CD/SACD's, that's still big money. When the average classical music SACD sells less than 2,000, that's called barely break even.

The major labels, early in the life of SACD, decided that the fast track to getting SACD to replace CD was to go single inventory hybrid, and price it the same as a CD. Then those bright guys quit the game. What's left is a bunch of independent labels who produce very high quality recordings in multiple listening formats, trapped in an untenable pricing structure, selling low/no margin SACD's into a CD market. More than 85% of SACD's sold are played as CD's.

Enter downloads. There are fixed and variable costs, and NO deep pockets. At current download volumes (iTunes and HDTracks excepted), it costs about $12 per download to cover the fixed costs. You add customer support, and you wouldn't believe the amount that's required, the cost is even higher. None of those costs include amortization of the original production costs, or additional royalties to be paid per download. The only thing that will lower the price of all downloads is volume.

The download business is the logical savior for independent labels (trapped in a media whose price can't be changed, with features that the majority of purchasers don't want/use), to continue producing and marketing fine recordings. To be successful requires the high end audio community to be supportive, and buy the stuff!

 

[frank.hardly]

Ding ding ding..we have a winner!

The actual manufacturing cost of an SACD is three times the same process for a CD, or about $1.50. The artist and technical production costs for a classical recording range between $20,000 to above $100,000 depending on the size of the group, and their royalty structure. Distribution eats up about 2/3 the selling price, leaving little margin for the label. When you sell hundreds of thousands of CD/SACD's, that's still big money. When the average classical music SACD sells less than 2,000, that's called barely break even.

The major labels, early in the life of SACD, decided that the fast track to getting SACD to replace CD was to go single inventory hybrid, and price it the same as a CD. Then those bright guys quit the game. What's left is a bunch of independent labels who produce very high quality recordings in multiple listening formats, trapped in an untenable pricing structure, selling low/no margin SACD's into a CD market. More than 85% of SACD's sold are played as CD's.

Enter downloads. There are fixed and variable costs, and NO deep pockets. At current download volumes (iTunes and HDTracks excepted), it costs about $12 per download to cover the fixed costs. You add customer support, and you wouldn't believe the amount that's required, the cost is even higher. None of those costs include amortization of the original production costs, or additional royalties to be paid per download. The only thing that will lower the price of all downloads is volume.

The download business is the logical savior for independent labels (trapped in a media whose price can't be changed, with features that the majority of purchasers don't want/use), to continue producing and marketing fine recordings. To be successful requires the high end audio community to be supportive, and buy the stuff!

If I read you correctly, you are suggesting (somewhat indirectly) that the small labels have bought into the idea that the audiophile community's demand is price inelastic (meaning that the volume of sales remains relatively static regardless of price) and hence they can charge a substantial premium without seeing a meaningful reduction in sales. I believe that the market segment who purchase 5 figure components probably are price inelastic and are willing to pay 30-50$/download. But, its not clear to me that this segment is large enough to sustain a long term business model. I believe there are plenty of aspirational audiophiles who purchase on value (i.e. best bang for the buck) and this segment could be even larger if marketed to correctly. But these people are also willing to do the elementary math of what started this thread and look at physical product cost vs. download and view the proposition as a rip-off and will sit on the sidelines until this disparity is overcome. I am heartened by companies such as BIS/e-classical who appear to be offering excellent value and I for one comensurately support them with my purchases.

 

[mep]

How many people outside of audiophile land even know that SACDs exist?? Damn few. Do you think that people who work at the few places left that actually have CD inventory to sell like Best Buy or Target know what SACD is? My point is that SACD was never marketed successfully to the mainstream public like CD was. "Everyone" knows what a CD is, but for how much longer that will hold true remains to be seen. "Everyone" knew what 8 track tapes were at one time, but that was generations ago. The people who bought SACDs intentionally had to be primarily audiophiles who are always on a quest to improve their systems and source material. If the above statement that 85% of SACDs sold are played back as CDs is accurate (and the only reason that would happen is because the purchaser has no idea what an SACD is and doesn't even know that layer exists or what it means), that tells you how small the actual market for SACD is.

And having said all of that, people who purposefully bought SACDs because of the superior sound quality probably aren't going to balk at paying a premium for a DSD download. I paid over $25 for MoFi LPs back in the 1980s.

 

[tailspn]

If I read you correctly, you are suggesting (somewhat indirectly) that the small labels have bought into the idea that the audiophile community's demand is price inelastic (meaning that the volume of sales remains relatively static regardless of price) and hence they can charge a substantial premium without seeing a meaningful reduction in sales.

No, I didn't say, or mean imply that. But for DSD downloads, given the small available/equipped market, I personally would agree with you. I simply stated two facts:

1, SACD's are not profitable, or sustainable at $18 - $22US pricing for the low sales volume original recording classical recording. That's due to the higher manufacturing and production costs, compounded by the fact SACD pricing do not reflect those costs. Since they are also filling the CD market, being a hybrid, they must be priced as a CD. The vast majority of SACD's are purchased by CD customers. The audiophile market hardly exists for independent classical labels.

2, Costs are costs. The sunk cost to establish a download site, with downloader, maintain and service it, divided by the volume of downloads sold, nets a cost of about $12 per download. Then there's the amortized recording production costs, plus mechanics (royalties). What most download sites (label affiliated or not) have done is to offer other labels products on their site, on a gross profit split basis. That does increase volume, increases competition, and lowers per unit sales costs. But none of those are DSD, let alone native DSD recorded.