Recent Mark Levinson Interview

[MylesBAstor]

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/musi...rk-levinson-for-the-love-of-music-part-2.html

 

[mep]

Interesting...

 

[amirm]

Thanks Myles. That was a good read. I actually met him and this interview was much more coherent than my personal experience with him . While I agree with a lot of what he has to say, he does miss some things. An example is this: "What Sony really wanted to do is stop piracy." That is not true although it may appear to be the story from outside. Sony has/had two distinct divisions: the electronics arm in Japan and the Sony Music in US. Sony electronics designed SACD, not Sony Music. The motivation for Sony electronics was not stopping piracy -- that was forced on them by their Sony Music division. What motivated them, and Philips, was that their joint patents for CD were expiring and with it, huge source of easy revenue. Patents have a useful life of ~19 years. The CD format was introduced in 1982 so the patents predated that a bit. Assuming a general date of 1980, by year 2000 the rights to them would expire. So the SACD was introduced in 1999, hoping to cement it by the time those patents ran out.

 

[puroagave]

interesting quote:

"In my opinion, the high-end audio-cable business is mostly a farce, and in some respects it's based on deception and fraud. The definition of fraud is willfully misleading the public for financial gain, and that's exactly what I believe many of these cable companies are doing. They know it's not real, but they do it anyway. It's unethical, and I deplore it."

 

[mep]

Given his history, Mark Levinson lecturing on ethics is rich.

 

[FrantzM]

Given his history, Mark Levinson lecturing on ethics is rich.

Still .. His point about cables ... Yet he makes cables too so ... Oh! let's drop the issue before it becomes one of these endless debates ..

 

[MylesBAstor]

I

Thanks Myles. That was a good read. I actually met him and this interview was much more coherent than my personal experience with him . While I agree with a lot of what he has to say, he does miss some things. An example is this: "What Sony really wanted to do is stop piracy." That is not true although it may appear to be the story from outside. Sony has/had two distinct divisions: the electronics arm in Japan and the Sony Music in US. Sony electronics designed SACD, not Sony Music. The motivation for Sony electronics was not stopping piracy -- that was forced on them by their Sony Music division. What motivated them, and Philips, was that their joint patents for CD were expiring and with it, huge source of easy revenue. Patents have a useful life of ~19 years. The CD format was introduced in 1982 so the patents predated that a bit. Assuming a general date of 1980, by year 2000 the rights to them would expire. So the SACD was introduced in 1999, hoping to cement it by the time those patents ran out.

I agree and everyone can see it differently. But I also think that Sony shot itself in the foot, when they wouldn't allow manufacturers to include a digital out with their SACD players, because of the piracy concern. And not having enough units out their to allow for editing (sounds like the same thing that happened with HDTV too!) was also ridiculous.

But I also posted it because some people aren't aware that many so-called SACD discs are really nothing than repackaged PCM.

 

[microstrip]

Thanks Myles. That was a good read. I actually met him and this interview was much more coherent than my personal experience with him . While I agree with a lot of what he has to say, he does miss some things. An example is this: "What Sony really wanted to do is stop piracy." That is not true although it may appear to be the story from outside. Sony has/had two distinct divisions: the electronics arm in Japan and the Sony Music in US. Sony electronics designed SACD, not Sony Music. The motivation for Sony electronics was not stopping piracy -- that was forced on them by their Sony Music division. What motivated them, and Philips, was that their joint patents for CD were expiring and with it, huge source of easy revenue. Patents have a useful life of ~19 years. The CD format was introduced in 1982 so the patents predated that a bit. Assuming a general date of 1980, by year 2000 the rights to them would expire. So the SACD was introduced in 1999, hoping to cement it by the time those patents ran out.

Amir,
Don't you think that the surround sound capability of SACD was a major point to Sony? I always considered it one of the most significant features - unhappily only a few quality recordings in surround have shown, the audio market did not embrace it.

 

[Roger Dressler]

But I also think that Sony shot itself in the foot, when they wouldn't allow manufacturers to include a digital out with their SACD players, because of the piracy concern.

I believe that was the concern of the all the content owners, not just Sony Music. Encrypted outputs are supported as a result.

 

[MylesBAstor]

I believe that was the concern of the all the content owners, not just Sony Music. Encrypted outputs are supported as a result.

That wouldn't allow >24/44.1 IIRC.

I remember buying my SCD-1 with the hope of eventually sending it to someone unnamed to have them bypass that feature

 

[microstrip]

I spent an afternoon with Mark Levinson in my Cello days. He was a marketing genius, a music lover and most of all a great communicator. Reading this interview makes me remember his style. No one was allowed to have doubts on his "truth", and he had no problems splitting the world in two sides - the true music lovers, his followers, and the mistaken or fraudulent people.

It is nice to learn that he still has the enthusiasm and energy of the old days. These were great times!

 

[andromedaaudio]

Sounds almost like me a bit

interesting quote:

"In my opinion, the high-end audio-cable business is mostly a farce, and in some respects it's based on deception and fraud. The definition of fraud is willfully misleading the public for financial gain, and that's exactly what I believe many of these cable companies are doing. They know it's not real, but they do it anyway. It's unethical, and I deplore it."

 

[amirm]

Amir,
Don't you think that the surround sound capability of SACD was a major point to Sony?

It really wasn't. As I mentioned, it was all about patents. What else it did was almost beside the point . Again, I am talking about the Sony mothership. Sony music liked other things about it as I mentioned.

I always considered it one of the most significant features - unhappily only a few quality recordings in surround have shown, the audio market did not embrace it.

It was a clear case of wrong feature for the targeted customer. The target customer who cared about > CD performance was a 2-channel guy. The audience, especially at the time, thought that surround sound was a low-fidelity solution designed for average Joe to watch movies. It did not have a reputation of being the next step beyond 2-channel because of how it was marketed (i.e. movie sound).

My personal experience with surround music was poor. I was not a fan of the being in the middle of band productions of the time where instruments played behind me.

 

[NorthStar]

...But now today, some of the best music recordings are in hi-res audio surround sound, which put you exactly at the right spot in the audio reproduction chain: in the best row of the concert hall, or jazz club, or blues alley.

...Some multichannel SACDs (3.0 or 4.0 or 5.0 or 5.1 DSD), and some Blu-rays (Video & Audio) with a hi-res audio multichannel soundtrack (5.1 DTS-HD MA or 5.1 PCM 96/24). ...And some of the hi-res DVD-Audios too (add 6.0 from Chesky).

______________

...And two-channel stereo up to 352/32. ...Digital HDMI.

______________

* Cables? ...They're all over the map! ...Some making a difference (for the best, or the worst), and others who cannot tell the difference.

______________

** January 2000: http://www.stereophile.com/content/mark-levinson-no32-reference-preamplifier-associated-equipment

 

[Roger Dressler]

That wouldn't allow >24/44.1 IIRC.

Content makers agreed to "legacy" quality for unencrypted outputs. 44.1/48 kHz, 16-bit. But I was referring to native DSD output.

I remember buying my SCD-1 with the hope of eventually sending it to someone unnamed to have them bypass that feature

You had an outboard DSD DAC? What was the input connector?

 

[MylesBAstor]

You had an outboard DSD DAC? What was the input connector?

Nope never happened. Wishful thinking. I think that if Lars hadn't passed away, it would have happened since it was his friend who would have done the modification.

 

[taters]

interesting quote:

"In my opinion, the high-end audio-cable business is mostly a farce, and in some respects it's based on deception and fraud. The definition of fraud is willfully misleading the public for financial gain, and that's exactly what I believe many of these cable companies are doing. They know it's not real, but they do it anyway. It's unethical, and I deplore it."

100% true

 

[Andre Marc]

I

I agree and everyone can see it differently. But I also think that Sony shot itself in the foot, when they wouldn't allow manufacturers to include a digital out with their SACD players, because of the piracy concern. And not having enough units out their to allow for editing (sounds like the same thing that happened with HDTV too!) was also ridiculous.

But I also posted it because some people aren't aware that many so-called SACD discs are really nothing than repackaged PCM.

While there were SACDs that were up sampled PCM, the vast majority are
not. And certainly not any of the Steve Hoffman, Gus Skinas, Mofi, or Doug Sax titles.

There are just as many $50 "audiophile" LPs cut from digital masters..even some from from 44.1. Oh, like the Beatles for instance lol.

 

[microstrip]

interesting quote:

"In my opinion, the high-end audio-cable business is mostly a farce, and in some respects it's based on deception and fraud. The definition of fraud is willfully misleading the public for financial gain, and that's exactly what I believe many of these cable companies are doing. They know it's not real, but they do it anyway. It's unethical, and I deplore it."

Taken out of the whole Mark Levinson world the sentence can be easily misinterpreted. We should remember that Mark Levinson sells a very expensive speaker cable. From the Daniel Hertz site :

Ultimate Reference Pure Silver Litz speaker cable - The absolute ultimate in speaker cable is Daniel Hertz Pure Silver Litz speaker wire, which is very expensive and practical mostly for short runs, with mono amps close to the speakers, for example.


I have no doubt that some cable companies are not serious, but existence of a few bad guys is not enough to support a claim of "mostly a farce". All IMHO.

 

[MylesBAstor]

While there were SACDs that were up sampled PCM, the vast majority are
not. And certainly not any of the Steve Hoffman, Gus Skinas, Mofi, or Doug Sax titles.

Go back and reread what I said Andre. The emphasis was not on the upsampled but the far more prevalent DSD converted to PCM. Go back and read the article and see where Levinson talks about why they had to do that eg. it was impossible to edit in DSD. But you didn't seem to be aware of either happening when you challenged me in another post.

There are just as many $50 "audiophile" LPs cut from digital masters..even some from from 44.1. Oh, like the Beatles for instance lol.

Who cares???? That's not what we're talking about. But as long as you're raising that point, at least with the LPs, you can pretty easily figure out whether or not the disc is from a digital source. Go back and try and find out if an SACD is really PCM or not. Go ahead.