I wonder what ever became of Soundstream's 100kHz Audiophile card? Back in 1983 when Soundstream was asked if they intended to introduce a format to compete with the new CD format since a 44.1kHz sampling frequency was chosen instead of 50kHz, they said not at that time but they were working on a much superior 100kHz card format as 44.1kHz was too much of a compromise but it wouldn't be ready until the turn of the century.
Soundstream originally projected the year 2000 for the premier of their revolutionary 100 kHz audiophile format using a non-movable 3" X 5" 'hard' card that was to be inserted in a slot and read by scanning instead of spinning.
Imagine if Sony has chosen a scanned card instead of the more trouble-prone spinning disc? There would be no disc reading problems including the dreaded TOC reading errors. I see no reason a card could not hold DSD data rather than high resolution PCM data, it seems logical to me.
Since it's a 3 X 5 stationary card, a DSD player of this type would not be able to play CDs, and if everyone quit making CDs and releasing music only on DSD cards. DSD cards could have replaced CDs totally. Also being new different and smaller, it might have been perceived as super cool!
Also a DSD player with only a card slot would keep all those antique CD lovers out of our hair, making the world safe for all DSD lovers. Just some random thoughts, however I think a high resolution card format might just come in the future, just look at the MP3 memory stick.
r we forgetting something? dbx-700.daddy of DSD.With the sampling rate of 644khz.
ReplyDeleteThis indicates another likely benefit of SACD players: their output would be relatively insensitive to data errors, since a bit error would translate into a mere "LSB" step in the wrong direction.
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