Some good news on Blu Ray Audio

I have just ordered this one, just shut my eyes and picked it. DEREK AND THE DOMINOES - LAYLA (BLU-RAY PURE AUDIO DISC)

 

***! it looks like "Exile on Main Street" has been delayed again to 11th November. Are they still recording it or something?

 

I'm listening to Sea Change by Beck as I type and so far, I like it. It's got a great organic and airy feel about it I can see why it was a popular and desireable SACD. I'm glad I never shelled out big bucks for the SACD though, because the Blu-ray edition is a comparative bargain with a great sound at a fraction of the cost of the SACD. This release is a nice two fingers up to the greedy buggers who seek to exploit latecomers to the SACD party!

 

And this just arrived, not played it yet but like the replica vinyl sleeve.

 

Nice one Nexus. I bought the CD/ DVD-A version as I intend to rip the album to my PC. Still waiting for it to arrive though. Please let us know how it sounds once you've given it a spin.

 

Lol! not. Delayed again to 25/11 - this is not going very well is it!

 

Should be with you soon, mine (although I'm not supposed to know!) arrived on Tuesday.

 

I've got Layla for sale, in the blu-ray classified ads if anyone is interested.

 

If anyone is after Bob Marley - Legend, I have a new copy for sale in the classifieds :
For Sale - Bob Marley - Legend - Blu Ray Audio - NEW | AVForums

 

Got the Queen NATO Blu Ray from Fleabay. Wasn't that bowled over tbh. I couldn't really tell that much of a difference over the DVD-A. This is why, as I suspected, you need a High end Blu Ray player with a quality DAC to really do these discs justice.

 

Has anyone heard either of the Nirvana discs ? If so, what is the sound quality like ?

 

Yes I have Nevermind...I was quite underwhelmed

 

Thanks JUS. I don't think i'll bother with that one then.

 

The SuperDeluxeEdition website has got an interesting interview with the boss of HFPA :
INDUSTRY SPOTLIGHT: Pure Audio boss on plans for the blu-ray format | superdeluxeedition

It's good to see the interviewer pushing him to be more transparent with the source of the transfers used and also add value to the releases with 5.1 mixes and/or bonus tracks.

 

The interviewer was related to Paxman was he? That was an unusually tough interview for the music/Audio business.

Refreshing to be honest...

 

I'm afraid that interview fills me with no optimism what so ever.

There's no point in labelling something as 'Pure Audio' and targeting audiophiles if you use the same hopeless CD masters created with half a ton of audio compression applied.

All the people who they think will potentially buy it with their set top boxes, PS3/4/Xbox One's, will not care about quality, and so will never be interested in a 2 channel only product either. Larger volume take-up will only have a chance IF they include surround versions, else why are people going to pay £15 or more for a high resolution version of a brick-walled master that they can get on iTunes for a third of the price and will sound just as horrible?

I'm afraid the guy's got his head stuck up his behind.

IF they want High Resolution audio to work, it needs 5.1 versions to hook in a wider market than 2 channel audio geeks, and the 2 channel stuff needs to be audophile grade, i.e. retains the dynamics of the originals and detail prominence as intended by the artists at the time of original release. See here for some interesting stuff on the Queen A Night At The Opera DVD-A production. Clearly, some artists care about what you get to hear in the stereo mix... (Even if their current Universal back catalogue has been brickwalled.)

Currently mastering is closer to re-mixing as the 'clever' software is making stuff louder and at the front that was never intended to be there. The musicians might as well say **** it, here's the the multi-track (if they know what one is ... ) fill your boots and do what you like with it to the record company...

I want high resolution audio to survive and maybe one day replace CD, and therefore I think a good start would be to take all the excellent DVD-A/SACD mutlichannel stuff and release it properly on BRA. If nothing else it would make some damn fine transfers available to more people (without having to pay silly collector prices) for little initial outlay. IF interest comes, then they can start re-investing in new mixes and content.

The problem the record companies have is getting people to listen to albums again. If they don't start to try and address that then it's doomed frankly as there will never be enough new decently recorded and put together stuff to fill a Blu-ray audio disc. I can't imagine there will be much life in a format that is effectively "Now that's what I call hi-res XXX". Which is where we seem to be heading.

And all that's before you get to worry about whether your system can actually play the content back at it's supplied resolution without down-sampling it somewhere in the audio chain... Frankly though that doesn't matter if the content is rubbish in the first place.

 

I'm going to be optimistic here.

I don't think the majority of people either notice or care.

So, at some point someone is going to say, let's just stick the tapes on the disc as best as we can, and provide a 'knobble' function to make it appeal to the loudness wars generation.

Extremely easy. Extremely effective. Quick. Cheap (all but free). Everyone gets what they want.

Steve W

 

Agree with the majority of that. The only thing I would add is that hi-res audio is by no means free of the same issues that blight CD. Compression, slap dash mastering, dismal masters used and so it goes on. I wish Yes's CTTE SACD was the exception, but sadly I have many rubbish sounding Hires discs. The SHM-SACD's are the biggest scam going. I was 'told' that they were using OM's for the SACD's but they quite clearly aren't. People rave over them, my mate that has a load of 'em can't give them away - because I don't want them! I took a few off him, played them a few times, wondered what the hell all the fuss was about, then offloaded them to some mugs on Ebay.

Until engineers and artists have the final say on what the final pressing is to sound like, not the record companies, the album as a format is doomed. Even Steven Wilson admitted he'd like to re-master the Porcupine Tree DVD-A's as they've been compressed. If a guy with his skill still can't get the sound he wants on releases, well...

Steve, the masters often do sound great, sadly though they do use the 'knobble function' and the result is a compressed mess. As you say though, for the majority that's fine.

 

By no means was I saying that all DVD-A/SACD was perfect, but there were plenty of good releases that are now only available at silly prices through collector or auction sites, that if re-released on BRA would be a great way to get people on board for little effort.

As for your 'knobble' Steve, if they used TrueHD then the built in modes like night can immediately provide that MP3 experience if required...

 

It seems bizarre doesn't it? For example, Roxy Music Avalon (probably the best SACD I've ever heard) fetches silly money on Ebay, yet if they'd kept it in production it would still be selling. You get the feeling that the record companies were never fully committed to Hi-Res, and it's a miracle it's lasted this long. But then it took those business geniuses until it was nearly too late to realise downloads were a killer way to make easy money.

I have always wondered, since the very dawn of Surround, why on earth they bother with the crap pre-set modes? None of them add anything to the experience.

 

There's a whole host of ready made titles that they could easily release if they were serious. Instead they've pushed titles like Nevermind and In Utero based on crappy compressed masters that clearly some jumped up twerp in marketing thinks are really sick because they're new....

Now Universal have Queen on their roster they could re-issue The Game, which was superb on DVD-A and DTS 24/96 surround mixes already exist for just about all of Queen's Greatest Hits 1 and 2... Those would surely be instant big sellers, especially if they included an unmolested stereo hi-res track (i.e. not their awful 2011 remasters as found on all the Japanese SHM stuff.).

Like you say other big sellers like Dire Straits Brothers in Arms, Eagles Hotel California, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Roxy Music, several Sting titles, even some interesting Foo Fighters stuff... why don't they just get it out there again.

Not sure how much current chart stuff would benefit from hi-res surround sound but I would have thought stuff like Rhianna and Lady Ga Ga might well work, and would certainly help raise the profile.

I think you'd be surprised how many people have the view that they've paid for six speakers so want to hear noise coming out of them on principle, regardless of whether it's meaningful noise... silent speakers are the audio equivalent of black bars to some.

 

All of which makes you wonder if Blu Ray Audio will go the way of hires audio and fade into a niche market. As you say, it may be the musical equivalent of vomit, but the likes of Ga-Ga and Rhianna would sell enough copy to make it visible. However, persuading 'artists' of that genre would be a lot harder to convince of the need as their audience is mainly download with a sprinkling of CD.

On your other point, as there are only three record companies left now, it wouldn't take much talking to get a catalogue going of viable titles.

Oh, I wouldn't be surprised at all. I've seen too many customers going 'oh and woo' to surround setups going through the various demo modes (all of which were hideous) to think otherwise. I'm just glad none of them thought to switch the screen on. Had they done so our assistant managers video copying sideline would have been revealed in all it's 'erm, 'glory'.

 

It will if they don't appease the 5.1 market. High quality 2ch digital is a smaller market than vinyl.

I got the XTC Nonsuch disc today and I have to say I'm impressed, it's very well put together and sounds great.

Shame there seems to be a dearth of decent analogue players out there... Everything seems to have gone either two channel streaming (all with their own different control programs) or cheap HDMI multichannel.

 

There are a few about. The Denon range from the BD 2012 up, Marantz from the 7007 up, the Oppo's, but as you say, otherwise you are looking at older machines. Tbh I'm using a Denon 3910 and an Arcam 137 and they are both fine on multichannel for me. I would 'like' to own a high end BD Player, but cash is limited at the moment.

 

The Denon 2012 it pretty good on blu ray concert videos, big big difference from my Sony 360.

 

OK, I'm late to this tread, but to address a couple of the points raised in the early posts:


The current CD 44.1 kHz sampling frequency has it's roots in the limitations of clunky 70's video recorder technology.

The early digital pro audio recorders initially used for digital mastering (late 70's) were modified video recorders (initially U-matic), using the space normally used by the video for the digital audio stream. The (US/Japanese) 525 line 30 frame NTSC standard only had room for 14bit 44.056 kHz audio and (European) PAL 625 line 25 frame only had room for 14bit 44.1 kHz audio.

When Philips were developing CD in Europe it made sense to adopt the same 44.1KHz sampling frequency, so that digital masters could be transferred straight to CD. (44.056 KHz masters could just be sped up by 0.1% - resampling wasn't an option in those days.) Luckily they decided to go with 16 bit.


Yes, 24 bits should be better than 16 bits, if it made use of the extra dynamic range for increased headroom on the audio peaks (as studios do during the recording process - recording around -20dB).

However on modern releases all the audio is crushed up against the 0dB maximum, with compression, limiting and clipping. Most of the recent "Hi-res" 24 bit downloads that I have purchased (mainstream R&B and Pop releases) have also had the same 0dB crush as their 16bit CD versions, and sounded just as bad. (This is why vinyl sounds better. - There isn't a hard 0dB limit. Vinyl mastering normally retains all the peaks missing on the CD/download.)

 

@RobbieD, the latter is exactly how, not one, but every Audio engineer I've talked to has described current mastering. There are some people clinging to the view (to defend CD) that vinyl is mastered the same way, but not one single engineer I have spoken to says it is. So who knows best, recording engineers or CD's defenders who are 99% non experts? The 1% are usually music professors who know only that Digital Audio 'should be better', not recording experts. Oh, and Hydrogena...

Some friends on another website wrote to two top recording engineers to get their take on the matter, and they came down heavily on the side of 'remasters are too often crap' view due to poor mastering, compression and the often forgotten issue of source degradation and the limitations of pre noughties Digital recording.

One of the engineers told us about the changes in tape type in the late sixties and early 70's and the catastrophic effect that has had (although baking can extend the life of those tapes), and of course there's the old chesnut of why bother re-mastering 16/44 recordings, which started in the 80's and then took over completely in the 90's?

You cannot, repeat cannot, put in what isn't there, and a lot isn't there in a 16/44 master. Upsampling does not improve 16/44, as again, you can't put it what isn't there. We are not talking video where upsampling improves image quality, it's not actually filling anything in, more sharpening up. You cannot do that with Audio. The most you can do with a 16/44 master is do a MFSL and smiley EQ it.

The fact that they are using compressed masters for Blu Ray Audio is utterly depressing, as this is pretty much the last chance for high quality Digital Audio. With CD dying out (no loss), unless Blu Ray takes off we will be left with rubbish MP3's and dodgy hires downloads with dubious origins.

 

I'd rather have a CD than crappy lossy mp3....

However with present mastering I just don't buy at all... Vinyl had it's issues too when it was mainstream, mostly poor quality pressings on thin plastic and too many songs crammed onto one side.... The current state of vinyl on decent weight plastic and care taken over it is only due to its resurrection as a mainly audiophile format.

I guess the question is how long will it take the music industry to realise there's probably a bigger digital audiophile market out there? Their track record is not good.

 

Who wouldn't? Oh, wait a minute..

Every medium has issues, vinyl's though were deliberate. The record biz has a way of producing crap versions of a medium when a new (far more profitable) one is on the way. Sound familiar?

Modern vinyl still has issues, largely due to it being a cottage industry now, but if you clean properly most of them can be ironed out. However, the vinyl market is really for second hand LP's from the Golden Age of vinyl, and that's pretty lucrative right now. By shopping around I can buy in stuff I want for (mostly) reasonable prices, and sell off what I don't on Ebay for some pretty hefty fee's.

Modern Vinyl though, has the massive advantage in that it can't be compressed as Digital Audio can, thus if you want a decent version of a modern album vinyl is pretty much the only way to go.

Unfortunately the last part of your post is not the case. The Hires Digital Audio share of the market has lagged behind vinyl's modest recovery since day one, and is now way behind. Not good when you consider how small vinyls market share still is, even with the resurgence in interest.

The problem, from my own experience, is that when you hype a product as 'perfect sound for life' it makes for a hard sell when you try and improve on 'perfect'. From the majority, going on CD's (now serious) decline in the face of new Digital downloads, and Hi-res's lack of impact the message is you can't.