February 25, 2004

I received an email from a reader in Seattle who tells me about his experience with the new DualDisc that is starting to creep out. It was quite a detailed message although it went the distance in explanation and experience. Rather than tamper with the content, I've elected to stay with the original length. Here it is for your DualDisc edification:

"...exactly a DualDisc is and how it works. If any readers have any experience with one, let us know."

DualDisc was test marketed in Seattle and Boston recently. I live in one of the test markets and here's my experience.

I'll split this into Part 1 and Part 2:

Part 1: In the Store

I spotted a tri-sided display at the end of an aisle up near the front of the store, with a silouette of a head and a picture of an eye and an ear and the exclamation "CD & DVD ON ONE DISC".

The racks attached to the display had several of the titles being tested. No Sheryl Crow, but I was mildly interested in David Bowie's "Reality" (not as good as "Heathen" IMO) so I picked it up and was pleased to find the DualDisc people are using some new fangled CD case, same size as a CD case, but with a really cool transparent latch on the right. Also the rightmost edge is softly curved. But essentially same size.

Once it was in my hand, I was approached by a man who had been standing a few rows away observing, and asked to take a ~7 page survey about what I had in my hand in exchange for five dollars. The survey was focused as much on what attracted me to the kiosk as the product itself. The survey then asked if I knew what I was buying, on a scale of Definately to Sort of. Did I understand what was on the DVD side (again on a sliding scale of understanding)? I had to be honest that I was not quite sure. Until I had it in my hand, for example, I assumed it was CD on one side, and DVD-A on the other. So I was and continue to be surprised that it is not.

The survey asked what kind of extras I wanted to see on the DVD side. Did I want concert footage? Sure. Did I want music videos? Maybe. Did I want multichannel music in high resolution? Absolutely (and in fact this seems to be one of the marketing angles for the DualDisc -- nearly every album had a sticker proclaiming the multichannel nature of the music on the DVD side). Did I want Rom materials for my computer or weblinks? Nope! Did I want nude picture of Avril Lavigne's bottom? Hell, yes (so sue me).

What made me want this product the most?

"I'm always looking for multichannel material, especially from current artists!" I wrote. (Nudge nudge - doing my part to get the labels to focus on multichannel mizes for music from recent decades rather than for only moldy oldies). I *expected* that the DualDisc's multichannel music would be what impressed me most.

And with that, I was given an evelope with five dollars inside. Total cost for my dual disc? $16.99 list on sale for $12.88 minus $5 for taking the survey. Good deal.

Part 2: At Home -

I've listened to the DualDisc of David Bowie's "Reality" now, and watched it. I am impressed. I am convinced that this is may be the easiest way for artists who have an interest in elaborate (but perhaps unmarketable) music videos to easily get their videos out to fans.

Having both the multichannel album and the videos on the same DVD side of the disc really "empowers" my computer (playing on the DVD drive of my computer through to my monitor and surround receiver). It's like the concept of "album" now means "a database of the album and some really neat films." I could see where I'd get a DualDisc from artists who are really into video, like David Bowie or Kate Bush or whomever (guess my age).

As for the sound quality, I felt that the 5.1 multichannel was not as deep and rich an experience as a real SACD or DVDA disc. It sounded like a CD but with multichannel. I've heard rumors that on many of these DualDiscs so far they kept the sound quality of the 5.1 mix down to "just slightly better than CD quality" so as to leave room for the video materials, and perhaps to discourage theft of the digital audio.

Therefore if I only cared about the music, I'd prefer to buy a multichannel SACD. The multichannel audio on the DualDisc's DVD side just wasn't high fidelity enough...once you've heard SACD you don't want to regress to anything less excellent!

So the audio wasn't that impressive. I still loved the product. Why?

The video material on this particular disc is an extensive - and extremely good - long form music video (about a half hour in length), very surreal and trippy. This film portion wasn't in 5.1, it was just Dolby Surround, and that was actually fine. The video impressed me more than I expected.

Part 3: Conclusion -

In the days after the DualDisc experiment began in Boston, one particular DualDisc was sold out at every store involved in the test. That disc was David Bowie's Reality. The other artists' discs seem to have sold about half their stock, which is probably a sucesss. Why was Bowie's disc a huge success while the others were only moderately succesful?

They all (I think) touted their multichannel audio, as they should. So what was different about the Bowie disc?

Probably the fact that Bowie is an artist who is as focused on video as audio. And his disc reflected that, with a half hour music video. Fantastic. Trippy.

And recognizably not the kind of thing that could be sold seperately with any confidence on the part of the label. Now at last there may be an official conduit to get otherwise-unmarketable video material into fans hands!

I don't expect I'll ever play the CD side of the DualDisc, but if it helps the labels change over from CD to a better format, good!

However, the multichannel mix needs to be in much higher resolution, or else the need for SACD (or DVDA) will continue.

Thanks to Will Bueche for his observations. MusicTAP hasn't had any experience with DualDiscs ourselves but we'll be sure to pass along the info when we do.