Some good news on Blu Ray Audio

So far I have Bob Marley - Legend, Amy Winehouse - Back To Black and The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street (all from Amazon.de except Legend).

All are stereo only, not that I generally expect anything different.

I haven't done (and won't do!) direct A/B comparisons with the other versions of these albums and of course the following are just my initial impressions but I hope to give others an idea of what the Blu-ray Audio versions sound like.

Exile On Main Street is the stand-out disc by a country mile in terms of audio quality. I think even people who aren't fussed on the music itself would agree.

I'd imagine that for most people this would be unexpected, given the album's often-less-than-ideal recording conditions, but it was less of a surprise to me, as I already own the SHM-SACD version and it's one of my favourite discs (hence my double-dipping - I also wanted to be able to rip it to Flac for playback from my NAS and in case my SACD got damaged, lost or stolen).

This disc is presented in 192/24.

The other two discs are more patchy. Some tracks sound warm and dynamic, others bright and compressed. The Winehouse one in particular is frustrating because some tracks really do justice to Amy's unique voice whereas others are a bit muddy and fatiguing to listen to. I am no expert so I find it difficult to explain. As always, it's best to make up your own minds but if you're in two minds about buying this disc I would advise against it without getting to hear it somewhere first if you can.

Back To Black is presented in 96/24, as is Legend.

The latter is, for the most part, a joy to listen to but there's the odd disappointment such as Bob's slightly distant-sounding vocals on Could You Be Loved and Three Little Birds. This BD-A just doesn't offer the same shivers-down-the-spine experience as I get from Exile On Main Street. Sorry I can't give a better critical appraisal than that.

Roll on Nirvana - Nevermind and In Utero and Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left!

 

Nice one! Good news re: Stones disc, I couldn't really care about the others TBH. I've had the Stones one on pre-order for a while now as Grrrr was great.

I really hope this format continues to grow. I do however think its doomed, mostly by those constantly moaning about the lack of 5.1 on them.

Just because its on a Blu-Ray disc doesn't mean it HAS to have 5.1 on it. The best resolution 2.0 channel as-its-meant-to-be-heard mix is fine by me thanks.

 

Does anyone have any Blue Ray Audio disc recommendations they'd say are reference discs for the format? Other than Rolling Stones as I have a load of their sacd's.

 

How is it doomed by people moaning about the lack of 5.1? It'll probably be doomed by the labels not putting a 5.1 track on the discs

got to say multichannel is a huge benefit to buying albums on sacd/dvd-a's...nothing like listening to Linkin Park, Pink Floyd, Elton John, Depeche Mode, The Doors in multichannel. If BR-Audio did release multichannel albums I'd go crazy with my credit card

 

i think the point about 5.1 is a valid one. its about choice. if there are already 5.1 mixes out there in multichannel hi def sound, why not include them as well as the stereo mix? in fact add some visuals aswell if the disc can fit it on ( which in most cases it can) theres no reason why these things cant be added. i want a high def format in audio to suceed, so we get new releases in the same format.. although i realise thats a long way off.

 

How do they rip? Anyone tried and keeping them at full size

 

They rip using DVD-audio Extractor (which offers a fully functional trial version free for 30 days - although if I remember correctly when you first use the trial version there's a glitch whereby it only works if you click 'register' and then cancel).

You will probably need to be running AnyDVD HD too, otherwise the encryption prevents ripping. I'm not sure whether there are other ways around that.

As I said before, I am only ripping so that I can stream the music from my NAS and to protect/back up the long-awaited high-res music I've paid a fairly high price for.

I assume ripping Blu-ray Audio discs for these reasons is covered by the same fair-use principles that cover CD ripping for personal use but if any mods feel uncomfortable with this topic being discussed, please edit the above post and let me know not to mention it again.

As far as the size of the ripped Flacs goes, I haven't a baldy (as hard disk space is too cheap to justify compression these days) but I will check later and let you know.

 

I was interested if they stayed at full size fine and still sounded as good.

 

I'm currently in the process of ripping my DVD-A content so that like Jon, I can play back via a streamer (fwiw, a HTPC running Jriver Jukebox) and a standard 45 minute album ripped at 24/96 tends to have a file size of about 750MB. Longer albums or content ripped at 24/192 will result in larger files and shorter albums or content ripped at 24/48 will result in smaller files.

I haven't ripped any of my (five lol) blu ray audio discs yet as I don't have a blu ray drive for my PC, but will give it a go when I do and will continue to rip at 24/96 as standard where possible.

 

The Back To Black BD-A rips to 759MB at its native 96/24. (Obviously you only need the PCM files, not the DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD streams, so the rip is much smaller than the Blu-ray Audio.)

Exile On Main Street ripped at 96/24 too (EDIT: I'm not sure why that happened because I know DVD-audio Extractor is not limited to that sampling rate, having ripped a DVD-A at 192/24 before) and ended up at 1.36GB, obviously because it's a double album.

Incidentally, you can burn 96/24 Flac files to a DVD which will allow you to listen to the high-res content on any DVD or Blu-ray player. That's very handy if you don't have an HTPC, streamer or Oppo Blu-ray player already that can handle 96/24 Flacs, or if you just want to back them up. I haven't done this for a long time but the free program called Lplex looks like the one I used.

 

That's disappointing about the Stones Exile. I can't stand the SHM-SACD, it's taken an album that was meant to sound swampy and dark and made it bright and forced. If the Blu Ray is the same then I'll give that a miss.

Wierd about the Winehouse album. Why would some tracks sound ok and others not? It's a digital recording so there will be no tape drop out, and it was cut recently so even if it was an analogue recording the chances of tape deterioration are nil. Just poor mastering by the sound of it.

Rush 2112 is worth having for the surround (sorry English Bob) even if it does add sibliance that isn't there in the original mix. The stereo mix is good too, although the vinyl version is still the one to have. I'd recommend it for the 5.1 alone, as bearing in mind there was no Quad version, and the sound effects are picked out well in the mix, it's great for it's age. Even the tracks on side 2 of the vinyl (almost forgotten due to the title track) sound good.

 

Sorry to post about this here but I wasn't sure where best to.

If I have a stereo 96khz /24 bit WAV / lpcm recording and I want to play it back on my hifi , what is the easiest way to go about it ? There is no associated video.

I have a blu ray player with analogue audio outputs.

If I burnt the audio to a recordable Blu Ray disc ( which I know my blu ray player can handle) , but there is no associated video, will this be feasible ?

If so , what format should the burning be , would it need to be an ISO image ? And which software ? I think I have Img burn, would that do ?

Also I notice that people have posted about 96/24 rips. What medium are these off (DVD-A, sacd) ? And how are you delivering this to your hifi ? Is it over HDMI to a HDMI equipped amp ?

My amps are legacy so I don't have this option. Thanks in advance for any replies to this .

 

Those rips are of bluray audio discs this is what the forum is about. Have a quick read

 

Can they be ripped using MakeMKV like a normal Blu-ray Disc?

Steve W

 

So presumably you have to convert the FLAC to WAV / lpcm first ?

I had no idea DVD players could handle 96/24 audio . Are you sure about this ?

But I think you have answered my question a couple of posts up about the feasibility for blu ray.

 

I've got no issue with adding 5.1 mixes that already exist, or one that the artist / producer has returned to do (such as Tommy by The Who, which is exceptional).

Demanding a 5.1 mix for every release is daft though, like asking Hitchcock films to be done in 7.1 or something stupid from the original mono mix. Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" in 5.1, sound like a winner?

 

They both can and can't. If you burn a standard DVD-V it's still in 24/96 but it's not a DVD-A, and as such doesn't pass through the high quality PCM Audio board found in players of that format. A standard DVD player cannot play DVD-A. Or SACD for that matter. A decent internal Burr Brown DAC can replay up to 24/192 but that doesn't mean it's either in PCM or DSD if there is no filter for either present. A standard DVD player views the Audio files on a DVD as if it were a soundtrack, not dedicated Audio.

HDMI is a red herring. The Audio transport of the HDMI system was an afterthought and not a good one.

Note that FLAC is a container not an Audio format. DVD creator simply converts the FLAC file directly into a DVD-V Audio format. You aren't actually playing FLAC files on the DVD.

 

I always thought the only difference between DVD-A and DVD-V was DVD-A is encrypted and uses MLP compression to encode the various surround formats.
For stereo LPCM 24/96 there should be no difference in audio quality. All modern Blu-ray players are capable of decoding internally as part of the spec and the resulting output is lossless/bit-perfect.

 

Nope. Standard DVD-V Audio playback is at a much lower data stream rate than DVD-A. Essentially it is treated as the 'less important' medium by the player compared to the Video element.

As such there is considerable difference in replay between standard DVD-V playback and DVD-A regardless of replay bit/hz rate.

Blu Ray players can indeed playback at 24/96 but as a dealer on here pointed out no Blu Ray player is up to the required spec for true Blu Ray audio and only one DAC in existence is.

Which came as a bit of a shock I must admit...

 

Sounds like a good argument for ditching physical media

 

I think it was Windhoek who said exactly that. If you have a decent, fast HDD, the access is more accurate, faster and with less errors. You then, as he does, push it through a good quality DAC with 24/192 filters and you get high quality streamed digital audio with potentially better sound than with optical media.

If I can get a High Quality DAC it's what I want to do with my Digital media.

 

Yep, the only discs I play now are single layer SACDs and blu ray audio discs. I've already ripped my CDs to FLAC and am in the process of doing the same to my DVD-A collection. When that's done, I'll get on with ripping my SACDs so that one day, the only thing I'll 'play' is LPs

 

I have just read of the Arcam irDAC outboard DAC that supports 192kHz/24 bit with burr - brown DACs and a USB port, they claim jitter is virtually eliminated.

Is anyone in this thread using one ?

 

There's really no points for a high res version of music. CD is good enough.

What would be great is it being used for 5.1 songs. That could be fantastic providing the songs are mixed from the ground up in 5.1, and then downmixed to stereo.

 

CD is a very poor music storage and replay system. 16/44 recording is acknowledged by sound engineers as missing out a serious amount of musical information. CD in itself has inherent issues in the DAC chain that mean you aren't getting an accurate picture of the music, and never will. On the mechanical side, the reason DVD was developed was that CD pickups are slow, prone to off centre issues and the laser is not as tightly defined as DVD and even better Blu Ray. Hence more data (music or otherwise) can be stored on the latter discs.

The business didn't develop DVD and Blu Ray because they fancied it. It's because CD (a product of the 70's) was already outmoded by the early 90's.

Hence Sound engineers worth their salt record music in 24/96 (and higher) and downsample for CD.

CD has already been used for surround (quad) it didn't take off. The medium simply isn't good enough for it.

 

and SACD/DVD-A (DTS as well?) has been used for Hires and those didn't take off either

I think both 5.1 and hires only appeal to a small audiophile/HC market...unfortunately. I can't see the masses all of a sudden being interested when they are content compromising on a lower res solution than cd (mp3) played through cheap ipod docks and the like. Its... sad but true (now the Metallica black album is fabulous on dvd-a 5.1 )

 

Keeping the Metallica theme going, yes it's sad but true, but nevertheless a fact, that Hires Audio hasn't yet caught the public's imagination.

I suspect though, you are correct, as I've said the same thing myself (on this thread), that mass acceptance of Hires Audio is not going to happen. At best they will corner a niche market, and I fear that Blu Ray Audio, unless they start bringing down prices soon, and like it or not, start introducing 5.1 options, that it will fail too.

What people often don't appreciate is that Audiophiles are like Hobbits. They are small in number and appreciate the fine things in life, but they are massively out numbered by those who couldn't give a crap.

 

Note to self..must shave feet.

 

I've been shaving mine for years...