Intrada Soundtrack Forum

Question for the Intrada folks.

Will you consider releasing scores in Hi-Res formats (24bit / 96Khz, DSD)? I would love your take on this.

Thanks,

Ran

This has not been planned by Intrada yet. The subject has been often discussed, including in this . This would be a great thing to produce film music multi channel HD disc, because the film composers has been thinking their music for multi channel purposes for decades. But this seems to be costy and won't have enough audience in a time where sound engineers master their CD to be heard in a car (wink) or where people get all their music in mp3 on their iphone...
I would love to see that though!

I do not care about multi channel. It would be nice to get studio masters quality playback.

You do not care, but this is what people care about the most on DVD or Blu-ray discs regarding the audio specifications.
Sadly, film music CDs is a niche market. If you wanna make HD discs, it's a niche of a niche. So you end up with producing a costy HD disc only for very small part of 3000 potential buyers. We should ask Varèse why they stopped producing SACDs...

It does not have to be a physical media. Many sites offer Hi-Res downloads as FLAC, WAV or other formats. SACD media requires a SACD player while Hi-Res files require a computer. Now compare the number of people with a computer to the number of people with an SACD player....

DVD-Audio is a format that only plays in DVD players, true, however, the SACD format allows for both High Def (optionally in surround) as well as normal red book Stereo audio on the same disc!

If you guys did get the license to Jaws, it would be a great way to release the rare Quadrophonic mix of Williams' original LP-rerecording for the first time in the digital era! You could do it like this: A 2-disc set, with the first disc containing the original LP in Stereo, followed by a new stereo fold-down of the quadrophonic mix on the red book layer, and a 4.0 presentation of the full quadrophonic mix on the SACD layer. With Disc 2, of course, containing the actual film recordings of the cues, hopefully in chronological order this time

**

For those who don't know, there was a Quadrophonic LP of Jaws sometime in the 1970s - and it wasn't just the same mix as the LP expanded to 4 channels, it was a completely new remix that actually included alternate takes to the stereo LP in places! Here's a shining example from one cue (compare the end to the version on the MCA CD)



It would be wonderful to get a legal release of this mix, on an SACD so those without blu-ray players could still hear it on normal CD players!

That would be so cool to unearth those old quadraphonic LPs ! I would die to hear Jaws in quadra...
And let's not forget the Blu-Ray Audio. Many people now have a Blu-ray player!

Hi Ran--

It's really a valid wish to see the HD audio applied to our beloved film score medium so I surely don't want to appear dismissive of it. But I forgot to mention one key factor that currently keeps my hands tied here: almost all of the licenses being granted by major studios to all the soundtrack labels are strictly limited to CDs only and prohibit other uses including downloadable formats. So the system in place will need to adapt, both from the licensing side as well as the audience demand side. It's a pretty big hurdle at the moment.
--Doug

Principally, I am all for high resolution audio formats. However, I see the advantage in the higher resolution. I remain unconvinced that there is any particular advantage to a multi channel format over a good stereo imaging?

I mean, yeah, it's nice and gimmicky in a movie theater to have surround sound from the back to the front, but when listening to music I'd find it rather distracting to have some sound coming from behind me or wherever. When I go to the Philharmonic Hall, I am also not sitting in the middle of the orchestra, and for good reason (that's not where the best sound is).

In any case, HD audio formats would be nice for new recordings (or recordings that are up to par). For many older soundtrack recordings HD formats will add nothing, as they cannot be made to take full advantage of even current release formats, simply because the masters don't sound all that great to begin with.

I don't see HD audio formats getting more relevance at this moment in time, for various reasons. The one advantage they offer is obviously better sound, it's an advantage, I admit, but this advantage is offset by a number of considerable disadvantages.

For starters, you need a pretty good hi-fi system to begin with to actually have clear listening advantages when upgrading to a high resolution music format. For many, the money you need HD audio players and recordings would be better invested in a better amplifier and mightier speakers first, as they are a prerequisite for actually experiencing any meaningful HD sound upgrade. High end stereo systems already provide excellent sound from regular CDs or LPs, HD audio just takes it a notch futher from there. But to get the notch, you should have a high end system first.

So the second disadvantage is obviously: HD formats cost more money. In many cases, current stereo systems will have to be upgraded, and audio Blu Ray discs are likely to cost more than their compact disc equivalent.

Another big caveat (and that's another big one): many HD audio releases are copy protected. Sorry, but I do not see many people -- me included -- to switch to buying recordings that cannot even be converted to Apple Lossless (or other hard disc formats) without hassle or technical savvy. I mean, how am I gonna play them in my car if I cannot even convert them to MP3?

So as much as I'd welcome HD audio format recordings, I just don't see them playing a major role any time soon.

I would say that if you just hear the music, you won't find any difference between SD and HD sound. But if you listen carefully to the HD sound, you will hear many details that you can't on your CD. The sampling rate and the bitrate being better (it means that you get more musical informations per second) allows your ears to focus on a certain detail much more easily. It depends on your attention to the small details. That's what I like with HD sound.