What happened to Blu-ray Audio?

Ok, but then why the happiness at the prospect of optical formats evaporating?

I often did, but more and more of my jazz heroes are gone, it's not affordable beyond going on rare occasions and as I get older I'd rather relax at home than battle with traffic or endure rudeness in large crowds. When I did go, I would often ask the artist to sign a copy of the record jacket or CD booklet, and affix a copy of the ticket stub to the album as a way of reminding myself what it was like to see them live while listening to the recording. Again, something that would be lost with digital media.

I hear you. I just think much is being lost in the transition and we are giving up something valuable for the sake of convenience. But maybe I'm too nostalgic.

Yes, and that's commendable. But this puts you in a tiny minority of consumerism, while the majority will dictate the market forces that tech goliaths justify to shape our future.

 

This all sounds rather dramatic, but I'm not sure where you're going with this. I listen to music on my phone when I commute, but only then. What does this have to do with the future, Elon Musk, and "tech goliaths"?

 

I admit I'm being a drama queen but I am concerned about recorded music replacing live music, and then digital bits in the ether replacing physical media. At some point, you get away from what music is supposed to be all about and we each may as well be the proverbial brain in the vat. It's all quite dehumanizing.

 

I don't think the demand for live music is ever going to recede.

In terms of physical media, I love LPs, but have zero sentimentality for CDs. An LP is the music, where as a CD is just a container that digital music comes in. Its hard for me to consider a CD "physical media" just as its hard for me to consider the bag the groceries came in as "food".

 

That's weird. I think of CDs and LPs identically as carriers of music. And I love physical product, don't stream or download etc.

 

I remember when SACD first came to my attention back when The Dark Side of the Moon was released on hybrid SACD... I was thinking that this was a new transition from CD to the next medium, and that within a few years everything would be released on hybrid disc. I remember going to Best Buy and seeing a small display stand in the CD section that had 10 -15 new SACD releases.

A couple years later after I had upgraded some equipment, including the addition of a Denon universal SACD / DVD-A player, I went into BB and asked a couple employees where the Super Audio and DVD-A discs were, and they just looked at each other confused. I guess that's when I realized these were not the new CD.

If I had to guess I would think Blu-ray Audio is another attempt to make high-res audio a little bit more mainstream, given that anyone with a BR player can enjoy it, but ironically this format seems to have even less support.

Let's face it -- we don't even live in an MP3 download world anymore, let alone a high-res physical disc world. Spotify, Pandora, and Apple Music on-demand is how the masses will listen to music for now on. And that makes a lot sense for most people.

 

I cannot recall ever buying any music at BestBuy ever. I guess that I am fortunate to live in a big city where there were many real LP/CD stores and where there still are a few. The reason is that, as you know, BB is a mass marketer and..............

...................mainstream doesn't care about high-res..............................

.........while those us who do care are not part of mainstream.

 

I had a wake up call on this recently, as I maintain a playlist of oddball tracks where I never purchased (or repurchased) the album for any legitimate reason, and found that one of the tracks (possibly Bowie's cover of Growin' Up) disappeared from all the services. Next time I might purchase the track.

 

Shame if the format stops, not a fan of it, but it's a good option. Wish folk would have the same enthusiasm for dead duck in the water SACD.

 

Yes and I wish SACD would have been the agreed upon hi-res format, rather than reinventing a new way with Blu-ray audio.

 

Right, but my point was that a mass marketer was at one point rolling out high-res audio as though it was expected to have mass appeal. I believe it was a surprise to the industry that the mass market no longer cared to upgrade their music collections even when offered 5.1

 

Nah. They gave it only lip-service from the beginning because they know their market.

 

Having just listened to the Nirvana Nevermind Blu ray I would suggest that using poor quality masters (with worse sound than the their CD counterparts) will have played a part. What a waste of money, unless you need your ears bled that is!

 

Well, it seems obvious at this point that Blu-Ray Audio never made the big break and most likely never will... On the other hand, a good deal of classical titles are being released on BR-A, so it seems to me that an serious alternative to SACD is establishing itself in this field.

Personally, I'm on a two-channel system, so I couldn't care less about 5.1. Yet, I found I really like the BR-A format. I have a good number of them, and so far I'm very pleased with all of them.

Universal Japan released a set of ten Jazz classics on BR-A in 2015. All of them sound excellent to me. None of them has any bonus titles (which I like). Included are ART BLAKEY -MOANIN' (the AP SACD is oop) and a Mono version of ART PEPPER MEETS THE RHYTHM SECTION. For all I know, all previous releases of this Art Pepper album were Stereo. Even in comparison to my great sounding japanese SHM-SACD, I actually prefer the mono mix. Some of these are still available and currently on sale at CDJapan for under $10. You can hardly go wrong at that price.

I do wonder, though: For a format apparently so unpopular, many OOP titles are offered at suprisingly high prices. Any explanation, anyone?

 

Really quite simple as the titles are OOP and no longer available. Some desirable Blu-ray Audio titles such as Quadrophenia and Patricia Barber's Modern Cool actually sell for those high prices. While others don't due to the prices being way too high as they're not very well regarded.

 

Thanks for the heads up - CD Japan seems to be clearing all their Blu-ray music discs out. I ordered a few.

 

As long as blu-ray players are made blu-ray audio will be able to at least be a specialist niche in the audio market. Unlike SACD which was an 'add on' to some CD or DVD players when introduced any blu-ray player can play the all content on blu-ray discs. I would be nice if there were more discs like the XTC surround series or those that came out were kept in print, or not attached to a super deluxe mega box sets but I have so far been unable to be hired by any of the remaining record companies to influence release schedules so I can't offer a solution. But as soon as that Sgt. Pepper box comes down in price I will be all over it!

 

It's simple economic laws.

One, lots of asking prices these days aren't remotely near where the supply and demand curves meet. Ebay, etc is no longer a marketplace; it's where sellers throw mud at the wall - for months and months - in the hope it sticks just once.

Two, even if a few copies of a title sell for, say, ten times standard retail prices, it doesn't mean the hundredth - or even tenth - copy of a new pressing will sell at that price. Or will sell at all.

Three, although some luddites here still stick religiously to physical discs, most of the world has long ago moved on - first with downloads, now with streaming (I personally still haven't gone to streaming yet so count me as part of this group). The financial cost/benefit risk in pressing up a few thousand discs increases daily.

Don't confuse the exception for the rule.

 

In case of Nirvana, maybe this album was supposed to sound like that in the first place?

I am aware that everybody else seems to think they were the hottest deal since the invention of sliced bread... Somehow, it never caught on with me. I still remember the frequent fights with the back then girlfriend, when Nirvana first started out. I used to brush it off as 'hardrock' and she would shout at me that this were no hardrock at all, that it's 'grunge'. Uh-huh.

Anyways, I guess I have been pretty lucky so far with my BR-A purchases so far. No complete failures yet.

 

I hope for hi-res formats to continue. SACD, Blu-ray, DVD and downloads. I don't want to be stuck with lousy streaming.

As for blu-ray. Properly filmed and recorded live concerts are fantastic on blu-ray. I really hope they keep those coming.

 

One thing is sure: Even if Patricia Barber's Modern Cool BR-A sells for $100 or more, it is a 2012 release, so it's nothing that could be considered 'rare' by any standard. I must admit to being a collector, but a three-digit amount for a five year old BR-A is entirely out of the question for me. As you pointed out correctly, the majority of ebay listings are utter nonsense. Then again, there's a new sucker born every minute. (And it's safe to assume that P.T. Barnum never actually said that.)

I know that downloads are the order of the day, but I don't see physical media vanish for a long time to come. It will be a niche product, but there will always enough of the 'old-fashioned' types left to allow a specialized market to exist.
When I sold my vinyl collection in the early 1990s, NOBODY would have guessed that vinyl could come back. Ever.
At the time, a lot of expensive Psychedelic albums were re-released on vinyl in limited editions. They were aiming for an audiophile niche market, and nobody thought of a mass market for these.

Now the newest trend in the world of high end audio is tape machines, which I still find hard to believe. Acoustic Sounds offers refurbished tape machines for $10K, and tapes to go with it for $450 a pop...

There will always be a niche market for physical media, and while I never even considered going back to vinyl, I still love to go through a physical collection and to pull out an album I want to play. No streaming or downloads for me for now.
I will not go back to tape machine either, though. No rewinding for me.

 

True, and a great shame. Hybrid SACD was the format that really could have brought music lovers and audiophiles together had it gone to market 10 or even 5 years earlier...

 

Those of us who consider high-res PCM to be superior to DSD would still remain divided about hybrid SACD. Hybrid SACD is not the great unifier.

 

What would have happened differently if it happened 5 or 10 years earlier?

 

Three possible game-changing scenarios come to my mind:
1) It might not have been nearly snuffed-out by a format war with DVD-Audio.
2) Physical media was not on its way out yet.
3) Pro tools had not been invented yet to allow mixing and mastering engineers so much power to process (ruin?) their PCM recordings so easily while never leaving the digital domain..