Blu-ray can become the next audio standard.

[Excalibur-king]

I saw this in my latest Sound & Vision magazine Good read.


http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/rea...-the-blus.html

[Dalese]

My favorite quote from the article...

Take that, you MP3 weenies!

[Teazle]

Now that's what I'm talking about. YES! It wasn't just me. In my heart I know I'm not crazy.


Only thing missing in the article is an appeal for DSD support along with PCM.

[Bobby Henderson]

SACD's Direct Stream Digital process isn't practical for Blu-ray since it is not a supported, standard audio format.

However, Blu-ray can do anything that DVD Audio did. Both Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio formats can support 24-bit/96kHz audio. There's even provisions for 192kHz audio. DTS-HD Master Audio can operate at bit rates as high as 24.6 million bits per second.

I wonder what the install base is of standalone DVD Audio and SACD players. If Blu-ray hasn't already blown past that number (especially if PS3 sales are counted) the format's players will do so in a big way pretty soon. That will lay down the hardware infrastructure to allow high quality music only material to flourish. The trick is getting the silly music labels and performing acts to take advantage of it.

[Sherlock_Holmes206]

It would be nice, but I just don't see it catching on. People love their lower quality MP3's and with CD sales in serious decline I don't see people lining up to buy Blu-ray audio, I hope I am wrong.

[mjbethancourt]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Holmes206

It would be nice, but I just don't see it catching on. People love their lower quality MP3's and with CD sales in serious decline I don't see people lining up to buy Blu-ray audio, I hope I am wrong.

It's a disaster, isn't it? People ridicule me when I complain about shitty 128kb/s mp3s, and dammit you don't have to be a fanatic to hear the difference. People are just blockheads. Our only hope is that musicians themselves refuse to settle for a low standard. I write music, and I can say for myself that (if only any of my stuff were good enough for the market to buy, crossed fingers) I insist on high fidelity reproduction. I know there are a handful of commercial musicians pushing hard for it. It's up to the rest of us to reward them for their effort.

[Stephan.klose]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Holmes206

It would be nice, but I just don't see it catching on. People love their lower quality MP3's and with CD sales in serious decline I don't see people lining up to buy Blu-ray audio, I hope I am wrong.

Nope you are not wrong. I work in the Hi-Fi Dept of a big chain in Austria. When there are many customers there I also have to work mp3 players. I hear a lot of people saying stuff like "finally, I don't have to pay for CD's anymore"..

How do you think these people will react to BD-Audio? They'll ignore it.

On the other hand, a lot of real music fans grow tired with regular CD's and are waiting for some better thing to come along. And BD could just be that next thing

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by mjbethancourt

It's a disaster, isn't it? People ridicule me when I complain about shitty 128kb/s mp3s, and dammit you don't have to be a fanatic to hear the difference. People are just blockheads. Our only hope is that musicians themselves refuse to settle for a low standard.

Frankly, I believe the musicians and their album producers are a big part of the problem.

Very few popular music performers record their albums with high levels of quality. Instead, they're usually badly engineered to be loud. Mixing levels are cranked up and the natural waveforms in the music are clipped to hell. This practice DELETES audio information. The tops of the audio waves are gone. But hey! At least the music plays at a good volume!


With so many popular music titles being engineered in that grotesque fashion it's no wonder at all why lots of people can't seem to hear the difference between some lossy compressed, low bit rate MP3 or AAC file versus the store bought CD. It all sounds the same: harsh.

The next problem is lack of 5.1 content support. Again, very few popular recording acts go to the trouble of creating 5.1 (or 7.1) channel mixes of their albums. About the only time you hear a popular song in 5.1 is when it is part of a concert video or music video collection. You rarely get it from an actual music only disc.

Ultimately, those are the real true reasons why DVD-A and SACD never gained a great deal of popularity. The music performers never gave either format a good, steady supply of NEW music. DVD-A and SACD were never going to succeed if most of the albums available were just jazz, classical music and 30 year old rock albums. It takes more than Nine Inch Nails and a handful of other acts to keep either of those music only formats alive.

Internet download-able music in lossy AAC and MP3 formats didn't kill DVD-A and SACD. Those formats serve an entirely different, portable purpose of music listening. Lossy download-able music files do not serve the purpose of music listening on high quality equipment and in controlled environments. Blu-ray is giving the music industry another chance to deliver on that. The nice thing is Blu-ray will live on regardless of what the music industry chooses to do or not do. I believe the music industry itself is in a major heap of trouble for numerous reasons, with sliding quality standards being one of them.

[Firestreak]

Sorry but this is just a pipe dream. I like high quality audio and all but most people can't tell the difference. There's also a powerful advantage to the digital stuff - organization. I have all my CDs ripped to 320 kb/s mp3s, then sorted with artist/album/track information. I can any song I want via my PC, PS3 or out of my car stereo via a portable hard drive - and when I get the Ford Sync system later this year, I'll be able to have all the songs accessed. I have a few SACDs, like 20 or so (mostly from the 15 SACD kinks collection), but I have trouble telling the difference from my MP3s at normal listening volume.

Higher quality is always better, but with a market so small, it'll never be a standard. The only hope is to make the technology cheap enough that studios can put enough content on it regardless, because it will turn them a profit even with a small market.

[Milksnake]

I already have the best format vinyl

[Teazle]

As much as I'd be overjoyed to see it happen, the more I think about it the more obstacles I see to "BD-Audio." Others (in this thread) are pointing to shortcomings in the recording industry which work against high-res music in general. I think those worries aren't all that severe.

The main problem would lie in the Resident Powers arriving at an industry consensus to kill off Compact Disc and replace it with Blu for disc-based music distribution. CD would have to be marked for obsolescence just as DVD now is. (This point was never reached in the SACD/DVD-A conflict.)

I think that Blu-Audio would practically have to be forced on consumers, just as CD was in the 80s-90s. You could never allow the consumer a completely free choice here.

Instead the strategy would have to be to drive the low end of the CD market online, into digital distribution (with the object of saving every penny on the costs of physical distribution and so making the price-driven part of the business more profitable) and to push the rest of the disc business further upmarket (in order to milk the disc-spinning diehards with the promise of higher fidelity audio).

Who knows whether that would actually make a good business strategy. Qualitywise though I could see it happening -- effectively phasing out 16/44.1 PCM on disc for either stereo mp3s as downloads or high-res audio on discs. (Possibly the BD-As could contain mp3 copies as well -- some BD movies now include a portable copy.)

Overall, it doesn't matter whether the consumer thinks CD is good enough or can't hear the difference or whatever; if he can't hear the difference he'll just buy whatever is offered without complaint. Probably the main obstacle is politics -- who's getting the royalties for CD vs who would get them for BD-Audio, which record labels are owned by which CEs who are invested in the formats, etc etc etc.

[Bobby Henderson]

Originally Posted by Teazle

Others (in this thread) are pointing to shortcomings in the recording industry which work against high-res music in general. I think those worries aren't all that severe.

No audio or video format has any chance of success without content.

Blu-ray beat HD-DVD on the basis of content. It's lineup of studio support was superior. The choice of movies was better.

The music industry made at best a pitiful effort to support the DVD Audio and SACD formats. That's ultimately the reason why both DVD-A and SACD went nowhere. I personally know a few people who own high end DVD players capable of SACD and/or DVD-A playback -yet don't own any SACD or DVD-A discs. The music companies never released any DVD-A or SACD discs they wanted to buy.

Originally Posted by Teazle

I think that Blu-Audio would practically have to be forced on consumers, just as CD was in the 80s-90s. You could never allow the consumer a completely free choice here.

I disagree.

The Blu-ray format is steadily growing in popularity despite the fact Hollywood studios have no plans to stop supporting DVD anytime soon.

Also, the music CD was not forced upon anyone. The general public transitioned to the format over a period of about 10 years. Both vinyl LP and cassette tape formats stayed around for years after music CD was introduced in the early 1980s. Stores began to discontinue vinyl LPs by the end of the 1980s. Pre-recorded cassette tapes were available well into the 1990s.

The same sort of transition can take place with audio on Blu-ray. Tens of millions of people will have the BD player hardware by default for movie viewing. The same installed base of player hardware can be used for audio only purposes without the need of having a special single purpose player. Bundled digital copy discs or BD Live-based features on the disc can give customers access to portable, lossy versions of the music.

Blu-ray can provide the music industry with an easily do-able delivery method for high resolution music. IMHO, the music labels will be making a mistake if they make no effort to pursue that opportunity.

[Clark Kent]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

The same sort of transition can take place with audio on Blu-ray. Tens of millions of people will have the BD player hardware by default for movie viewing. The same installed base of player hardware can be used for audio only purposes without the need of having a special single purpose player. Bundled digital copy discs or BD Live-based features on the disc can give customers access to portable, lossy versions of the music.

Blu-ray can provide the music industry with an easily do-able delivery method for high resolution music. IMHO, the music labels will be making a mistake if they make no effort to pursue that opportunity.

I agree very strongly. While I don't think Blu-ray audio will ever be as successful in pure sales numbers of cds(which themselves are declining) I think once Blu-ray becomes a mass market item it can support popular music releases.

[aviman33]

No Way!! This is a new era. People like their music in portable formats and on their phones, PC and Ipods. For most people music on disc is an PIA. Unfortunately music on BD will never get more popular than SACD, which is not saying much.

[Teazle]

Originally Posted by Bobby Henderson

Tens of millions of people will have the BD player hardware by default for movie viewing. The same installed base of player hardware can be used for audio only purposes without the need of having a special single purpose player.

This is the big difference, really. For CD vs vinyl, SACD/DVD-A vs. CD, DVD vs VHS, BD vs DVD -- in each case the consumer is asked to buy dedicated hardware to support the emerging format. Even in the case of DVD-Audio you needed a special player; you couldn't use your "old" DVD-Video player.

I hope Blu-Audio will eventually ride along in the "Trojan Horse" of Blu video.

[welwynnick]

I've been advocating Blu-ray audio for more than a year, so I agree with this thread. No, it won't take over from CD or MP3, but it doesn't need to. If only we could have a single, successful HD audio disc format in place of two unsuccessful ones, it would be great. I think Blu-ray audio has a number of things going for it:

It's not a new physical format, so new players aren't required. Audiophiles can simply buy posh ones if they want.

Blu-ray has a great brand (why it beat HD DVD) and a much better public image, awareness and perception than SACD or DVDA.

Its a single format - as we know, two competing formats are devisive where the public are concerned, and Blu-ray audio has the opportunity to wipe the slate clean and start out fresh.

When SACD and DVDA came out, players had to use 6 cables for analogue multi-channel audio - assuming the amp that accepted them. This time round those sort of application barriers are increasingly unlikely to be there. So Blu-ray audio will conveniently slot into the users infrastructure in a way that SACD & DVDA didn't.

Nick

[Sidewinder]

I never had the pleasure to really listen to a SACD or a DVD-A, but I do own some DVD-As like "Reptile" from Eric Clapton which I played on my normal DVD player. What I heard was just wonderful, even though it was just plain 5.1 DTS. Being enveloped by the various instruments and vocals, it's simply a whole new level of music listening. I can't imagine how an x channel PCM soundtrack sounds like, it must be overwhelming.

Since then I wanted to build up my own DVD-A library but soon found out that the format would be dead soon. Then came the announcement of the PS3 with a new disc format called Blu-ray, I knew that it would win the film format war, it was just a matter of time. Thanks to the capacity and the specifications of the BD I began to hope for a successful revival of HD-Audio.

The chances this time are far higher for a new Audio disc format to succeed:

- no competition from another physical media
- no need for a dedicated Audio player
- CD sales on the decline, being slowly phased out in the future (5-10 years) by (crappy) Mp3 downloads

which leaves us with a huge gap in the high fidelity market waiting to be filled with BD-A. I'm sure this gap will be big enough to fill the pockets of the music industry.
Those movie buffs willing to place >6 speakers in their living room, would all be able to take advantage of the superior sound BD offers from the get-go. No need to buy a new player to try it out, just put the BD-A in the good old Blu-ray player and listen to the music.

Of course this won't be a walk in the park, but pushing DVD from it's throne won't either.

[Beta Man]

Can't wait for the Neil Young Archives

[Ectoplasm]

I own about 20 SACD's. About half of those are not worth owning. Mixes are not good, and lack in base. I shouldn't have to worry about whether I own an SACD player with bass adjustment or whatever... they should have just worked from the get-go.

My blu-rays of concerts sound really awesome. I think blu-ray could become the next audio format, but the problem is that the companies will want to charge too much money for them.

[prerich]

Originally Posted by Sherlock_Holmes206

It would be nice, but I just don't see it catching on. People love their lower quality MP3's and with CD sales in serious decline I don't see people lining up to buy Blu-ray audio, I hope I am wrong.

You're not wrong - you're very correct dear Mr. Holmes. Furthermore audiophiles won't line up for multi-channel audio either. Many prefer 2 channel systems - sans subwoofer. It's just not feasable.