DVD Music.....................................
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Chesky Slates Fall Release Of DVD Music - -July 21, 1997
Chesky Records plans to become the second U.S. specialty music label to introduce DVD music discs intended for playback on DVD movie players.
The New York City-based company plans a fall launch in Europe of one or two titles incorporating two 96kHz, 24-bit PCM channels. U.S. sales could come later in the year.
Although the discs will be playable on existing DVD movie players, the sonic improvements over CD will be most audible on machines incorporating 96kHz 20- or 24-bit DACs.
Some Pioneer and both second-generation Toshiba machines incorporate 20-bit 96kHz DACs. But Chesky said it expects DVD makers to offer more players with step-up DACs when second-generation product is introduced. And some marketers said some improvements will also be audible on current DVD players featuring 48kHz, 20-bit DACs.
DVD movie disc standards give software makers the option of including two channels of PCM audio with sampling rates of 48kHz or 96kHz and 16-, 20- or 24-bit word lengths. It's required that DVD movie players be able to play back all PCM tracks, but players with the minimum-specification DACs will resample the tracks and truncate or round word lengths.
Targeting high-end audiophiles, Chesky co-owner David Chesky said his company will release a "small test run" of one or two titles in Europe in August for sale through audio dealers and perhaps follow up in the fall with a U.S. release, also through audio dealers.
He also said the company "hopes to bundle" discs with movie players in conjunction with hardware makers. Disc pricing hasn't been determined.
Although major record chains sell discs in Chesky's 150-title lineup, Chesky doesn't plan to target this channel at first.
One of the first two discs will be recorded by folk/jazz singer Sara K. The other will be a jazz title by the John Basile quartet. Chesky also said his label plans to produce all of its future discs in the 96kHz/24-bit format.
In Japan, Pioneer said it already markets a handful of two-channel 96kHz, 24-bit PCM music discs playable on its movie players, a spokesman said.
Chesky's disclosure followed an announcement by specialty label Delos that it and Dolby Labs plan to release a DVD music disc that will deliver six discrete channels of music in the Dolby Digital (AC-3) soundtrack format at a suggested $24.98 (see TWICE, June 16, p. 4).
Availability will be pushed back from July 22 to the last week of July or the first week of August because engineers wanted to tweak the tracks, a Dolby spokesman said. The discs will be playable on all existing DVD movie players as long as they're linked to a Dolby Digital decoder.
The Delos/Dolby DVD music disc, priced at a suggested $24.98, delivers hall ambience through two surround channels. The disc contains the highest-quality Dolby Digital signal that DVD movie players are required to play back: a 20-bit Dolby Digital bitstream with a 48kHz sampling rate and 488 Kbps datarate. Many DVD movie discs use a lower datarate to conserve disc space, Dolby Labs noted.
Dolby has also said it hopes the music and electronics industries will adopt multichannel Dolby Digital as a mandatory supplement to whatever high-quality audio format is adopted for next-generation DVD music discs.
Dolby sees potential for a multiformat disc that can be played on next-generation DVD-music machines as well as on existing DVD movie players. The music industry also wants backward compatibility with existing CD players.
The music and audio hardware industries haven't settled yet on standards for DVD music discs that would be playable on future DVD audio players, but the music industry has said it prefers a multichannel format and has expressed doubts about the use of 96kHz sampling rates. A final draft of DVD music specs is expected to be unveiled by the end of the year (see TWICE, June 16, p. 24). |
