Post by Andy October 19, 2004 (1 of 6)
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I read recently in audio magazines/web sites that the forthcoming Blue Ray discs will make SACDS and DVD-A obsolete. Is this correct ? I understand that initially Blue Ray will be a video format, but a high resolution audio only format will follow soon. Wonder whether it will be better sounding than SACDS. As I am thinking of buying a SACD player in the near future, very confused by the appearance of yet another high resolution format !
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Andy said:
I read recently in audio magazines/web sites that the forthcoming Blue Ray discs will make SACDS and DVD-A obsolete. Is this correct ? I understand that initially Blue Ray will be a video format, but a high resolution audio only format will follow soon. Wonder whether it will be better sounding than SACDS. As I am thinking of buying a SACD player in the near future, very confused by the appearance of yet another high resolution format !
Well, look at the SACD titles available today, try to imagine what will be released in the future, (remember we're seeing not just the addition of titles every month, but also the addition of more and more record labels), and decide if there's enough out there to justify buying a player, which run from $150 to $12000. If you can find 356 titles you like, that's 1 a night for a year.... Blu Ray is just being introduced to the market, if that. Imagine how long it will take for movie software and audio software to make it to the shops--what do you want to listen to *today?* A couple of problems that may make audiophiles shy away from Blu-Ray from an audio point of view: 1) The "real estate" on the DVD can be used any way the producers wish; you'll never know--from release to release--what audio options will be available to you. (Same problem with dual disc.) 2) It has been decided that Blu Ray will include hi-rez PCM. Many engineers and audiophiles don't like this encoding/decoding process, even at it's higher bit-rate. SACD has a buyer base and the blessing of many respected engineers and machine makers. 3)Blu-ray, like DVDA requires the mixing of audio/video components and many don't want to do that.
Blu-ray has its own hurdles: the mass-market will have to be sold on the idea of replacing their DVD machines and movie collections. Audiophiles will do that, will mom?
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Post by mdt October 19, 2004 (3 of 6)
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jdaniel@jps.net said:
Well, look at the SACD titles available today, try to imagine what will be released in the future, (remember we're seeing not just the addition of titles every month, but also the addition of more and more record labels), and decide if there's enough out there to justify buying a player, which run from $150 to $12000. If you can find 356 titles you like, that's 1 a night for a year.... Blu Ray is just being introduced to the market, if that. Imagine how long it will take for movie software and audio software to make it to the shops--what do you want to listen to *today?* A couple of problems that may make audiophiles shy away from Blu-Ray from an audio point of view: 1) The "real estate" on the DVD can be used any way the producers wish; you'll never know--from release to release--what audio options will be available to you. (Same problem with dual disc.) 2) It has been decided that Blu Ray will include hi-rez PCM. Many engineers and audiophiles don't like this encoding/decoding process, even at it's higher bit-rate. SACD has a buyer base and the blessing of many respected engineers and machine makers. 3)Blu-ray, like DVDA requires the mixing of audio/video components and many don't want to do that.
Blu-ray has its own hurdles: the mass-market will have to be sold on the idea of replacing their DVD machines and movie collections. Audiophiles will do that, will mom?
I think Blue Ray is the equivilant of SA-CD in the video world, not its opponent. SA-CD has made it possible to bring hi res audio to the consumer.In the video world high definiton recordings canot be stored on DVD-V, so in the same way that SA-CD has done it for Audio Blue Ray will make it possible to bring HD-Video to consumers. It also offers the posibility to couple picture and sound BOTH at top notch quality.
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Post by nickc October 19, 2004 (4 of 6)
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Andy said:
I read recently in audio magazines/web sites that the forthcoming Blue Ray discs will make SACDS and DVD-A obsolete. Is this correct ? I understand that initially Blue Ray will be a video format, but a high resolution audio only format will follow soon. Wonder whether it will be better sounding than SACDS. As I am thinking of buying a SACD player in the near future, very confused by the appearance of yet another high resolution format !
From what I understand Blu-Ray is primarily a video carrier allowing movies to be broadcast in the holy grail of video resolutions, 1080P (1080 lines progressively scanned). A Blu-Ray disc will hold I believe about 50gb but Sony are developing 200gb discs at the moment! I don't know what this will mean for audio but as I am an optimist I will always keep my fingers crossed!
Cheers
Nick
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Post by nickc October 25, 2004 (5 of 6)
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nickc said:
From what I understand Blu-Ray is primarily a video carrier allowing movies to be broadcast in the holy grail of video resolutions, 1080P (1080 lines progressively scanned). A Blu-Ray disc will hold I believe about 50gb but Sony are developing 200gb discs at the moment! I don't know what this will mean for audio but as I am an optimist I will always keep my fingers crossed!
Cheers
Nick
Further on from this I got this from Blu-ray.com (BTW this is just forum talk not reality...yet!)
"Panasonic's 50GB Blu-ray recorder has 192kHz/24bit DACs, but it's not been made clear yet if these are going to be used with BDs or if they are are purely to support DVDAs and higher sound quality. As virtually all Sony CD players play at least stereo SACD, it is likely that second generation Sony machines will offer backwards compatibility with SACD - although again it's not yet clear if SACD audio will be produced on BDs.
Raising the DSD sample rate by a factor of four to 11.2896MHz would still allow nearly 2h 30m of stereo DSD (1h 30m of DSD 5.1) on a 25GB disc – more with lossless compression - with a data transfer rate of 22.6Mbps (two channel) and 35.5Mbps (5.1), but would push the ultrasonic noise-shaping compromises required of standard SACD using DVD technology out of the equation and better realise the potential of DSD technology."
I pray that some day we'll get there...
Cheers
Nick
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Post by zeus October 25, 2004 (6 of 6)
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nickc said:
I pray that some day we'll get there...
Why? Higher bit-rates at record time may provide some leeway for production (I gather this capability already exists) but I don't see much benefit for the listener. With most things there are diminishing returns and I wonder whether we've reached this point already. Any equipment vulnerable to DSD's noise shaping artifacts would have been weeded out by this stage.
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