DxD


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diegorivera2

Member
While perusing the Disney website this morning I stumbled across the new DxD, Disney Extreme Digital, functionality and by default the new disney.com site.

Once inside the DxD area, click on the music tab at top and then choose Walt Disney Records on the right; you probably won't find much here that's of interest to this group except for one nugget. View the 50th Anniversary 'video' (at the right) and at 0:20 mark you'll see a stack of vintage LPs that made my heart skip. Following that there's a montage of LP covers and then it transitions to CD jewel cases. At the 2:22 mark it all goes downhill but it's a bit fun before that to see those album covers.

I noticed one will be able to purchase content from this site (Coming Soon it promises) and am interested to find out how this complements/augments/detracts from the current iTunes arrangement.
 
BJWanlund

BJWanlund

Member
That wasn't bad at all.

I almost gasped when he went to his record collection!!!

BJ
 
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Uncleed

New Member
Here is my question. Why can't Disney set up a website where you can order the obscure albums and they burn them to a CD and mail it to you? I hear Itunes isn't of CD quality and I don't see why this kind of online Kiosk wouldn't be a winner for them. Once the files have been remastered and added to the database it's just a matter of print on demand and popping it in the mail. Maybe Randy Thorton could answer/suggest this?
 
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diegorivera2

Member
Quite simply, the costs are far too high for an enterprise like Disney to do such a thing when the return (measured in dollars) would be so meager.

Think about it: the cost of management approving such a product; the cost associated with obtaining any rights; the cost of re-mastering the material; the cost for appearance/packaging; royalty fees; the raw material and vendor/supplier goods; the legal, accounting, and back-office time for any item made available for sale; the production costs for the third-party used to manufacture the finished product; and the hundreds of other things that large corporations need to do when they bring a product like that to market.

This is why the iTunes agreement makes perfect sense for Disney: go to market with a partner who has equal or greater name recognition, dominates their segment, and work with them to deliver your electronic product. In the end, we get mostly what we want: Disney classics for which there is limited market demand with the trade-off of the lowest common denominator in terms of quality. (Please note I said limited demand, not passionate demand; if passion were to win we'd have lots of lossless material to purchase.)

All in all, I say we're far ahead of the game compared to where we started. Drops in the ocean my friend, that's what we are.
 
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Uncleed

New Member
Why can't Disney partner with a company that does print on demand CD's like CafePress? If Cafe Press can do it then why can't Disney? Print on demand doesn't cost very much to run, that's why it works. If all of this stuff can be approved and remastered for Itunes the only differing factor in my proposal is burning it to a CD.


Again, how I see this working is Disney sets up a site like this Itunes thing where you can order any album you want. Then once they have your order they make your CD. THere is no warehouse space needed except to house the blank discs and cases and even then this could be handled in a rather small space. I don't see why this isn't a viable option.
 
BJWanlund

BJWanlund

Member
Never satisfied, are you Uncleed?

I'll just burn a CD and re-rip it into a more pleasing format.

BJ
 
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Uncleed

New Member
But if you burn them to CD and rereip it it still doesn't make it any better in quality because the original download wasn't CD quality.


You make it sound like I"m being picky when all I'm asking for is high quality releases in a viable format.
 
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diegorivera2

Member
Uncleed,

I think BJWanlund is merely suggesting he'll purchase CDs and then rip to mp3 rather than downloading mp3s from iTunes in the first place - provided those CDs exist.

The fact of the matter is most of us here want high quality downloads with a wide range of material to choose from. That said, I don't see the economic incentive for Disney to cater to our needs; for the vast majority of the public the current delivery format works perfectly well. Unless there is money to be made it wouldn't serve the shareholders to do anything else.

Even though we are a niche market we're not a highly profitable one and Uncle Walt no longer calls the shots. (Oh how I wish it were different.)
 
BJWanlund

BJWanlund

Member
iTunes is CD quality, but AAC and MP3 have far too much compression for me. If I download a iTunes track/album, I'll just burn that to CD, re-rip it into iTunes, and voila! CD-Quality tracks!

(I'm using the Apple Lossless encoder, in case you didn't know...)

BJ
 
BLM07

BLM07

Member
Are you sure about that BJWanlund ???
 
Z

Zarpman

Member
BJWanlund (and anyone else who is confused)

Tracks purchased from iTunes are encoded at 128kbps AAC (which some claim to be as good as 192kbps MP3, but that is another debatable topic). When tracks are encoded at any lossy compression rate (which includes the 128kbps AAC tracks on iTunes) certain information deemed "unimportant" or "undetectable by the human ear" is thrown out to shave down the file size (again, another debatable topic, but I'm trying to stay on-key here). When you burn these tracks out to an audio CD, this information does not get re-added. The tracks are now in CD audio format, but they are still missing the information thrown out by the encoding process. When you re-rip these same CD audio tracks using a lossless encoder (such as the Apple Lossless in iTunes) the information is still missing, so you now have a bloated file size (Apple Lossless attempts to preserve this missing information, whether its actually in the file or not) with just as much information as the original 128kbps AAC you purchased from iTunes in the beginning.

Unfortunately, if Apple supplies 128kbps AAC on the iTunes store, there is no way to create higher-quality tracks from these files alone. The only way to get true CD quality sound is to rip direct from a CD (that was created using a high-quality master, and not from lossy AAC or MP3 files) or petition to iTunes to offer higher quality downloads. The work-around suggested by BJWanlund is a lot of work for no real gain (unless you are satisfied with having Apple Lossless files on your computer/iPod regardless of the actual sound quality).

Here's hoping DxD is as promising as it sounds. If Disney plans on creating its own music store with higher quality downloads, and most importantly if it catches on and sells many songs, then perhaps Apple will see that audio fanatics like us are willing to buy more (or maybe even pay a bit more) for a higher quality track than what is currently offered. Retail is all about demand, and if it isn't there then the retailers won't be pushed to spend the extra time, money and bandwidth to push the envelope for what could be a failed project.

- Z?rp-a-dee-doo-dah!
 
BLM07

BLM07

Member
;) I'm not confused, I've been dealing with lossless audio for the past couple of years, I was just wondering if BJWanlund knew.
 
BJWanlund

BJWanlund

Member
I know the Apple Lossless secret now...;)

BJ
 
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