At the Monster Cable-sponsored press luncheon on the press day, Head Monster Noel Lee reiterated that MC was no longer simply in the cable business. He stressed the new mission of MC as one of a total solution to home entertainment, manufacturing power conditioning and stabilization devices, Richard Marsh-designed amplifiers, and even a Monster Action Couch. You can write your own joke about what kind of “action” you can get on a Monster couch; unfortunately, what the couch could do was not elaborated upon. Lee believed that while it was important to increase sales, it was more important to present consumers with quality system solutions regardless of name brand, be it of Monster Cable or not. According to him, this benevolence of market mentality would be a key to survival for the industry as a whole.

Dolby Laboratories made its case for DVD-Audio in its San Francisco headquarters. Held inside the Dolby theatre with 100 or so industry journalists, Dolby chairman, Bill Jasper, first took the podium to briefly recount the historic stages of the company’s development. Afterwards, producers and owners of labels, such as Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group and many others, gave presentations and music demonstrations. Although the main theme was one of multi-channel surround sound curiosity, Dolby’s Director of Consumer Electronics Technology Marketing, Craig Eggers, trumpeted the prowess of 2-channel DVD-Audio, going so far as to say that in comparison to DVD-A, CD was but a simplistic audio format.

He presented an argument directed to “the 2-channel diehard” among the journalists present, that the DVD-A 2-channel music application was of such high quality that it was designed with audiophiles in mind. According to him, audiophiles should not be intimidated by the video and 5.1 audio capability of the format, and should instead regard the extra information, such as artist bio, production specials and the surround mix, as additional content in the presence of the format’s 2-channel audio finesse. To reinforce this notion, he elaborated upon a newly-devised DVD-A functionality named “PGC”, which would allow the user to default the DVD-A player to 2-channel music reproduction in the same manner CD players do, dispensing with the need to navigate through a menu on TV. More details are available in the following internet .pdf document: http://www.dvdforum.org/Recommendation20020528.pdf.

The last 30 minutes of the Dolby presentation was chaired by Bob Stuart of Meridian, who illustrated the chief benefits of the Meridian MLP process inside DVD-A. A soft-spoken gentlemen, Stuart’s presentation skillfully blended information with humor.

I had brief discussions with several reviewers from a prominent magazine who expressed inertia to the surround-sound aspect of DVD-A. For myself, the rejection of more than 2 speakers in the living room by my wife notwithstanding, I could never bring myself to acquire enough amplifiers and speakers for facilitating either Dolby’s 5.1 or Sony’s 9.1 setup, especially when the finance and time required to accomplish it would be mind boggling. Moreover, it is a fundamental disruption of expectations to put oneself in the midst of a music performance, while the rest of the audience was downstage.
Furthermore, I don’t find the prospect of dispensing with significant amounts of money on pitch-identical rear speakers, merely for ambience reproduction—let alone surrounding myself with strange artists—terribly appealing. However, I may purchase Sony’s $1,000 Dream System just for fun.