T-Bone Burnett Brings High Definition ΧΟΔΕ (CODE) to John Mellencamp's Life, Death, Love, and Freedom
Published July 14, 2008
A: Nope. It's going to be packaged as a CD/DVD set, priced as a standard CD. Amazon pre-order price (as of today) is $9.99.
Q: I only listen to music on my iPod. Am I out of luck getting the fancy version of the album on my iPod unless I want to go to the headache of trying to rip the DVD's audio feed?
Actually you're not. The DVD comes with four copies of the album:
1 - A DVD which will play in most DVD players
2 - A 24/96 WAV file which is supported by iTunes (but not the iPod)
3 - A ΧΟΔΕ AAC file (which is supported by iPod)
4 - A ΧΟΔΕ MP3 file
Even the two "lossy" formats (AAC and MP3) are going to be an improvement over a lot of the AAC and MP3 files most listeners have encountered according to Burnett.
Q: How is this different than the shitty DVD-Audio format they tried foisting off on us a few years ago?
A: This is where my technical expertise runs a little thin. What I can tell you is that DVD-A were encoded in such a way you needed a DVD player capable of reading the DVD-A layer of the DVD to get the optimal sound. Very few people had such a DVD player and people weren't inclined to get one.
The CODE DVDs – like this one from John Mellencamp – will be readable by most DVD players and should play at the optimized resolution.
Q: Okay, so I've heard you blab on about the technology. Is the music any good? I mean, it's a Mellencamp CD, right?
A: I haven't heard a single high definition note from Life, Death, Love, and Freedom, so you're on your own. Fellow music editor "Iguana" Glen Boyd has already published a review of the album and I'm likely going to publish one myself, as soon as I get to hear it.
Josh Hathaway is a Senior Editor for BC Magazine. He is formerly an award-winning journalist and broadcaster and publishes the BC Network site Confessions of a Fanboy.
- T-Bone Burnett Brings High Definition ΧΟΔΕ (CODE) to John Mellencamp's Life, Death, Love, and Freedom
- Published: July 14, 2008
- Type: News
- Section: Sci/Tech
- Filed Under: Music: Recording, Sci/Tech: Personal Tech, Sci/Tech: Physical Sciences
- Writer: Josh Hathaway
- Josh Hathaway's BC Writer page
- Josh Hathaway's personal site
- Spread the Word
- Like this article?
- Email this
Save to del.icio.us
Comments on this articleComments
This is the direction the industry should have gone rather than promoting a format war between SACD and DVD-Audio. Everyone is so concerned about copy protection and market domination of format royalties that they have lost sight of true technology improvement. SACD was inferior to even the CD format and had a higher residual distortion. That was argued at the time of promotion by it's format promoters but is now common knowledge.
To move to 24/96 DVD is a major improvement but may be too late. With Blu Ray upon us, things may move in that direction. I hope that this takes off but with little concern for higher quality by the general public and their overwhelming support for compressed files for their MP3 & Ipod players, there is little hope. The current economics will have an impact as well.
Add your comment, speak your mind
(Or ping: http://blogcritics.org/mt/tb/79005)
First let me state that I'm a recording engineer and label owner that has been capturing and releasing HD Audio content since 2000. I've been very curious about this particular release since the PR hype started over a month ago. I was even interviewed by another journalist who was also curious about the ΧΟΔΕ (CODE) "format" since I've been involved in this area for years.
I also picked up the CD/DVD-Video disc yesterday and have listened to the CD and the DVD in my studio (a very high end listening environment).
While I applaud the efforts the T Bone and John Mellencamp have made in promoting better quality audio with the inclusion of a DVD-Video disc...this is not a new format and it doesn't represent "a resonance, depth, and presence that is unprecedented in the digital era."
96 kHz/24-bit stereo music files have been issued on DVDs since the introduction of DVD-Video discs back in the spring of 1997. I know because I have doing it with my releases for 10 years.