FT. Nov 1999. Meridian and DVD-Audio
Agreeing technical standards for new audio
and video formats is a long and arduous process, bringing together
huge multinational corporations, each with their own views on
how things ought to be done and each prepared to fight its corner.
When the technical specifications for DVD-Audio, a high-quality
audio variant of the successful DVD-Video (Digital Versatile Disc)
format, were announced in April 1999, for example, it was the
culmination of several years of meetings involving representatives
from companies including IBM, Intel, Royal Philips, Sony, Matsushita
and Time Warner.
Yet the key component of the new format, the audio encoding process
which delivers the high quality audio on which DVD-A will be marketed,
was developed not by one of these industrial giants, but by a
small UK hi-fi company, Meridian Audio.
Meridian's MLP (Meridian Lossless Packing) system was selected
after a four-way beauty contest with systems proposed by companies
much larger than Meridian, "some of them larger than Mexico"
quips Meridian chairman and technical director Robert Stuart.
Mr Stuart has long believed that any pure audio version of a high-density
disc format such as DVD must embrace multichannel surround, as
opposed to two channel stereo, sound.
But when he presented these views to the Japanese companies developing
high-density disc formats in 1995, he was met with a stony silence.
"Corporately" says Mr. Stuart, "Japan was extremely
wounded by the experience of quadraphonic sound (a failed surround
sound format), and many people we talked to said: 'oh no, people
don't want surround, it was a disaster for us, we're never going
back there.'
"They also don't have the experience that we've had in America
and Europe of home cinema" he adds. "With small rooms,
people just don't build surround sound systems, generally speaking,
in Japan. So there was no kind of experience to build on or to
see what it could do for music."
Despite the Japanese companies' indifference, however, Mr. Stuart
decided to start speculative development work on MLP in 1996.
He had a good idea of the sort of capacity which would be needed
on what was to become the DVD-Audio disc, and he knew that some
form of encoding would be required which would pack the data more
efficiently, without altering the final decoded signal in any
way, in order to achieve both the desired quality of sound and
a 74-minute playback time.
With over 80 minutes of 6-channel (surround) 96kHz (sampling frequency),
24-bit (resolution) playback time and 120 minutes of 2-channel
stereo at 192kHz, 24-bit, this is exactly what MLP offers. CD,
by comparison, offers a sampling rate of 44.1kHz and only 16-bit
resolution.
"We could see what was needed on the disc and there just
wasn't room" says Mr. Stuart. "There were all kinds
of things being discussed about ways of squeezing more and more
on, like having bigger sample rates at the front than the back
and all these things that were really ways of avoiding the issue
that what was needed was lossless compression. So we decided to
develop it, quite speculatively. We expected, frankly, that it
would be a waste of time and effort, but we did get the breakthrough
because the music industry did decide that they wanted it."
This breakthrough came in April 1998, when the requirement for
a lossless compression system emerged from the DVD Forum. With
two years' development work on MLP under its belt, Meridian was
well placed to win the beauty contest, though there was still
a lot of work to do in writing it into the DVD-Audio format and
working with Dolby Laboratories, whom Meridian has appointed to
licence the MLP system.
Mr. Stuart admits that the intensive work required on MLP did
have an effect on Meridian's core business of manufacturing high-end
hi-fi.
"We had to expand our R&D team quickly and we had to
reorganise, because we had a new business interest and I was having
to devote a significant percentage of my time to it" he says.
"I had to promote and guide people up within the organisation
faster than they might have done, but it's done them good. Now
we can refocus back but with a much stronger team."
As he does so, Mr. Stuart admits to fond memories of the battle
to have MLP adopted for DVD-Audio.
"That time will remain with me forever as an incredible experience"
he says. "We were pitched in with huge corporations. It was
like a battle. There was a lot of idealism, of adrenaline, we
fought companies 2,000 times our size, we sat through endless
meetings, we were praised, we were mistrusted, we made lifelong
friends, we threatened some, we irritated others, but incredibly
we ended up where we set out to go."
But with the first DVD-Audio players and discs set to go on sale
in Europe just before Christmas, some members of the DVD Forum
have not given up the fight yet. Sony and Philips have developed
their own rival high-end audio format called Super Audio CD (SACD).
SACD players are already available in Japan and will arrive in
Europe in the spring. When quizzed about SACD's prospects, however,
Mr. Stuart is dismissive.
"Does anyone know how to spell 'Elcassette?'" he asks,
a reference to Sony's ill-fated attempt to improve the sound quality
of the audio cassette by developing a larger version of it in
the mid-1970s.
"We think it's very unfortunate that two audio formats are
being launched at the same time" he continues. "Personally,
I don't think there's any reason for [SACD] to exist, because
it doesn't offer any advantages."
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