Blu-ray can become the next audio standard.

[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.