A Field of Sound – An essay.

I doubt very much if many, if any, of you are aware that this blog incorporated some while back another blog of mine, ‘Field of Sound‘. I started it as a companion piece to ‘Failed Muso’ so that I could indulge in my passion for multi-channel music, but not wanting to concentrate on multiple blogs, I took it, and another less music focused blog and imported their content into this one.

Back then, in 2008, I wasn’t sure if the time had come and gone for multi-channel audio. Ever since I bought my first Dolby Pro Logic equipped HiFi in the 1990’s, specifically to watch Dolby Stereo encoded VHS movies on, I had wondered about the possibility and benefits of consuming music in a multi-channel way.

My first ‘experience’ of multi-channel audio was in the 70s. I say ‘experience’, in fact it was pretty much a non-experience. My father, bless him, is a man who, certainly back in the 1970s when he was a successful restauranteur, hosting Hollywood stars, top flight footballers and motorsports legends, loved to indulge in all the latest things. We were the first family in our village to have a video recorder, the Philips N1501, the first to have a video camera, some Ferguson affair, and I was the first kid at school to have a digital watch, not that I wanted one but my Dad bought it for me so that was nice. He liked his family to be adorned with visual references to his success. Anyway, criticism aside, this was how he rolled. And one day, he bought a new HiFi, a Dynatron Music Centre Model No. HFC 209…

It sat atop a cupboard in the lounge and was made of solid wood. It was rectangular and had a sloping lid which was hinged on one silver hinge that locked into place once you had lifted the lid up. Under the lid was a Garrard SP25 Mk.IV turntable and a compact cassette deck with faders for recording levels. All of this was surrounded in more solid wood. There was hardly any plastic in sight. The front fascia had the radio tuning scale across the bulk of it and there were some silver lever switches for various options and audio output selections. It had an MFX Filter, whatever one of those was, and one switch was marked “Quadraphonic Sound” and my young, imaginative mind conjured up all sorts of possibilities that lay behind this button. I soon discovered that the HiFi came with more than the two, floor standing speakers either side of it. There was a box with two smaller, satellite speakers in it, but they never came out of the box. Well, they did when Dad wasn’t home and I was brave enough to sneak them out and hook them up. But not knowing anything about anything, I could never figure out what is was all for. Of course, had the internet been invented in 1974, I could’ve easily researched it and things may have been a lot different.

The other sticking point was that Dad didn’t own any quadraphonic material, so for all those years, that unit never did what it was built to do, and this kid never found out what multi-channel audio was until much later on. So, for me, my multi-channel audio journey began much later. In the 1990s, to be precise.

After the DVD revolution, and the advent of Dolby Digital audio, many musical DVD’s were released and many of them, predominantly live concerts, used 5.1 soundtracks and were amazingly immersive. And then came SACD, a format created by the two consumer electronic giants Sony & Philips, both of whom had pioneered many other formats, including the CD, and so this new version of the 5″ shiny disc had all the right credentials to succeed, mainly because the hybrid version of it would playback in regular CD players, albeit in standard Red Book quality (16bit/44.1KHz). And then DVD-Audio came along to muddy the waters up a little bit. The advantage it had was that it could be delivered directly on a DVD disc that could play back in the millions of already installed players, and even if they weren’t DVD-A ready, there was usually a Dolby Digital or DTS 5.1 version embedded on the DVD-Video track

But neither format took off. Word has it that changes in the Sony hierarchy heralded the demise of SACD, with no support being given to producing SACD discs. Increased costs in producing 5.1 mixes with little return in sales proved another stumbling block, and a world shifting from wanting to consume music in a physical way to a virtual way via MP3 downloads saw consumers shunning another method of listening to their music that would involve further financial outlay and that wasn’t supported by their new iPods. And we mustn’t forget what could’ve been. The original specification for CD audio detailed a 4 channel option that, sadly, was never utilised.

When Sony launched the PS3 games console with SACD and Blu Ray support, I truly thought it might just happen. But then in subsequent iterations of the console, rushed out to fix other problems and complaints, SACD support was quietly dropped. Even those consoles that had SACD compatibility had it removed in subsequent firmware updates. It appeared that Sony really wanted to drown the unwanted runt of its litter.

Various attempts at a downloadable mutli-channel format fell on deaf ears. Fraunhofer came up with MP3Surround, the open FLAC standard supported 5.1 files, as did the .wav format, but a combination of huge file sizes and an internet not yet fully capable of accommodating such bandwidth comfortably meant that nothing ever fully came to fruition. And how were we expected to consume multi-channel audio on the move with our ubiquitous generic MP3 players and their stereo limitations?

And yet, here we are in 2013, with a die hard community of multi-channel audio lovers and a used market of players and discs doing healthy trade on places such as eBay and manufacturers still producing disc players capable of handling these formats, even though it does seem to be us ‘audiophiles’ that are the only ones buying them. Sadly, many discs command astronomical prices, but bargains can still be found and there seems to be a healthy “swap and trade” ethic amongst us hardy and staunch supporters.

But will we ever see the majority of consumers adopt multi-channel audio enough for artists and labels to want to produce all that they do in a corresponding format? I mean, quadraphonic sound didn’t take off and was considered a novelty, even though today there are many people still running quad systems or converting quad mixes to digital multi-channel formats, such as the amazing bootleg DVD-A of the Alan Parsons mix of Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon’ or official releases such as the deluxe edition of Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ that features a Dolby Digital 5.1 mix based on the 1974 quad mix. As recently as last year, Bowers & Wilkins released a 5.1 FLAC download of Mike Oldfield’s seminal classic ‘Tubular Bells’ for £15 (£20 got you stereo FLAC/ALAC versions too) via their Society of Sound website and Steven Wilson, musician extraordinaire, front man of ‘neo-prog’ band Porcupine Tree and solo artist, released his latest solo album, “The Raven That Refused to Sing (and other stories)” in stereo, hi-res and 5.1 mixes, using DVD & Blu Ray to deliver the multi-channel audio experience. Which raises the point of Blu Ray as a potential medium. We’ve begun to see some hi-res multi-channel audio discs appearing and Blu Ray makes total sense. Its discs can handle the inherently large file sizes that a hi-res, multi-channel mix comes with. Blu Ray is showing one of the most rapid format ‘take-ups’ ever seen, mainly (and somewhat ironically) due to the proliferation of Sony PS3’s. I often lament how SACD might have suffered the same rise to acceptance had Sony stuck with it on the ubiquitous console.

But we’re still not picking up multi-channel and hi-res audio as a group of consumers. And we probably won’t all the while the labels and artists put out releases in these formats so few and far between. Whilst doing some research, it didn’t take much to unearth, via Google, a wealth of high resolution and multi-channel audio downloads which are clearly contravening some copyright laws, I am sure. Some are blatant rips of existing material, some are stereo to multi-channel conversions (I dread to think what these sound like. A bit like the effect Dolby Pro Logic gives, I guess) and some are lovingly restored quadraphonic mixes, converted into a modern day 4 or 5 channel DVD-A disc. It is these ‘bootlegs’ that I have the most empathy with. These seem to be done by genuine fans who are lucky enough to not only own a quadraphonic recording of an album, be it on vinyl, 8 track or reel-to-reel tape, but to possess the technical skills to transfer them in ways that, if rumours are to be believed, sound better than official efforts. People who own the bootleg version of Alan Parsons quad mix of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side of the Moon‘ on DVD-A say it is better than the official 5.1 SACD mix, released officially (Parsons’ quad mix has since seen the legitimate light of day on the Immersion Box Set release). The same has been said of Black Sabbath’s ‘Paranoid’ and numerous others. Some people are even clever enough to rip the multi-channel audio from such games as The Beatles Rockband and compile highly authentic 5.1 mixes of a band who surely would’ve adopted multi-channel audio had it been available back in the 1960’s.

So, the proliferation of this legally questionable material suggests there is a demand for it, but for reasons known only to them, the artists and the labels are reluctant to get behind it fully. Just imagine if the latest teen sensation released their latest teenage girl focused gusset moistening long player in 5.1 and then went on a massive promotional push. As painful as it might be to hear that detritus coming from 6 or more speakers, what effect might that have on persuading others to follow suit? Could it be a catalyst or would it be a potential flop? I have yet to meet anyone who didn’t prefer a 5.1 mix over a stereo one and so many households have basic 5.1 systems already installed. This is where Blu Ray is perfectly poised to open the floodgates. It has the capability to deliver hi-res multi-channel audio across a single, unified format. It ticks the boxes of most audiophiles and luddites in equal measure.

But with CD sales in terminal decline, Joe Public has declared that their music must be delivered in bits and bytes over the internet and not over a counter. And I have to agree that it is infinitely more convenient. But then what standard should be used? What format? And how would such multi-channel material work on regular stereo devices? And with the increased files sizes, many devices might be rendered useless, capable of only storing one or two albums, something that MP3 almost fell foul of in the early days. We now have 128GB iPad’s, so 128GB iPhone’s and 128GB iPod’s can’t be far around the corner. The 160GB iPod Classic is still in production and high capacity SD cards are getting close to similar capacities. The internet is now faster than ever before. ISP’s are removing all bandwidth restrictions at a rapid rate. Very soon, the infrastructure to support hi-res multi-channel audio will be in place. If we can ensure that a surround file format plays back in proper stereo (or better still, binaural) on our mobile devices, and proper, discrete 5.1 or better in our cars and homes, we could finally see universal adoption.

I see the universal adoption of hi-res multi-channel as looking a lot like a 4 lane motorway, with each lane representing an essential piece of the music consumption chain. In lane one, we have the internet, lane 2 is the format, lane 3 the file sizes and lane 4 the hardware. Once all of the vehicles in these lanes hit the required ‘speeds’ and draw level, then we’ll get what we’re after. We know the internet is almost there, and file sizes are improving all the time. Hardware is pretty much there too. Computers have an abundance of 5.1 speakers and sound cards, many are now 7.1. Home cinema systems are very commonplace and so all this leaves is the format.

There are two excellent audio formats that are both lossless and can support multi-channel. Firstly, there is the excellent open FLAC format. This sounds great and is open source, meaning access to its algorithms is easy and flexible. So why not use this? Well, here’s where I get contentious. It is fair to say that the global adoption of digital downloads as our preferred method of acquiring and consuming music is largely down to Apple’s iTunes. It set the benchmark, it did the deals with the labels and it became the biggest player in the world in this market. So it exerts a huge influence. And it is because of this that, in my very humble opinion, it must take the lead. Now, this is all well and good, but the iTunes application, be it on your computer or mobile device, does not support the open FLAC format. It does, however, support ALAC, the Apple Lossless Audio Codec. This is also an open format. It can also handle multi-channel. And, because if this, it is the best format to take the lead in digital,downloadable hi-res multi-channel audio. If Apple make the bold, first move, they could finally kick start the revolution. It’s often stated that Steve Jobs was a huge fan of hi-res audio, but knew that the big bucks were in regular, convenient, familiar and comfortable stereo. Maybe Apple have a plan? Us mere mortals shall never know until Apple deems it to be public knowledge. But the pieces are all there. The vehicles in my hypothetical lanes are all lining up.

For now though, people like me, and there are a lot of people like me in the multichannel, hi-res fan club, will keep plodding on, snagging what material we can. This past fortnight, I’ve managed to buy about 12 multi-channel albums, for an average price of about £8 each, many of them new and still sealed. My eBay watch list is about 7 pages long, keeping an eye out for bargains. Sadly, because of the fact that these albums aren’t produced in great numbers, some people like to take advantage of that fact and some equally sad and foolish individuals like to perpetuate their predatory practices of selling such discs at hugely over inflated prices. For example, an individual on eBay was recently asking for £110 for a copy of the Frankie Goes to Hollywood compilation “Rage Hard: The Sonic Collection” in SACD format, featuring a hi-res 5.1 mix. £110??? I had to smile when that auction ended and the item hadn’t sold. However, they re-listed it a day later at £99.99 and I am sure someone will eventually pay them this amount, therefore keeping the general asking price at ten times what it sold for at MRSP. But, conversely, I’ve managed to get four R.E.M. albums in DVD-Audio for around £10 each, and even found a Pink album in 5.1 for £2.49 the other day, although that might be more about the quality of content 😉

I can’t predict the future, but I’m hopeful that it won’t be long until that future is being heard as clear as a bell and all around.