What happened to Blu-ray Audio?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by floyd, Mar 25, 2017.

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  1. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Or just keep the old player and spend 50 bucks on a bluray player.
     
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  2. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    I get your point. I don't want to, yet again, spend more money on another format. I am just fascinated by the amount of information a blu-ray disc can hold.
     
  3. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    They are all optical discs. Different formats have different mixes. No use in throwing the baby out with the bath water.

    Bluray has so much great information, but so do DVD/CD/SACD/DVDAUDIO....even HDDVD. I say keep some of them all until an upgrade is relevant.

    Some things have never and will never make it to next format so why throw away or start over?

    But to miss out and worse support killing physical but not supporing one that is successful?

    Actually I want to put it another way.

    So I am a huge Elvis fan. One thing I have never done is watch all his movies. When I tried to get into them, lots of the transfers were just horrible. Clambake and Frankie and Johnny are 2 such prime examples.

    Recently they have come out on bluray. Frankie was released jaw dropping great. Now here is the thing. The rest of the movies may not ever see bluray. I have accepted this. I hope, but facts are facts, bluray has shown that distributors are being way more careful with what they decide to release. Obviously with 4K...8K...it is going to be even more noticeable.

    So what does one do. Just collect the rest on DVD. Many of them actually look quite good. If another version comes out, I upgrade. Until then, I enjoy what I have and be thankful that every Elvis movie is on optical disc and looking very nice indeed....

    And example like Clambake is fixed because not only is it in HD sound, but it isn't in that horrid crap non-anamorphic garbage that it used to be in. The same for Frankie and Johnny having improper framing.

    The same can be said of record collections. Upgrade what you can afford, and enjoy the rest of what you have as is. Having a mixture of formats is like a buffet....oh and for the record a PS3 plays SACD's and bluray and DVD and CD. Any bluray player that will play all but the SACD. Not a hard choice in my eyes. Bluray burners cost as little as 20 bucks and strangely you don't need a fast computer. If you are like me, get a printer that does artwork....etc. Just my 4 cents.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2017
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  4. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    I kept my CD/DVD/SACD combo player going even after I addded the Oppo BluRay combo player.

    It was all addition for me. Not starting over.
     
    genesim likes this.
  5. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    Not if one wants "audiophile" level playback. Not many $50 Blu-ray players if any with analog outputs.
    True. Better term would have been "addition" not "starting over".
     
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  6. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    You do have a point there, and one does need to hunt or get an amp that supports HDMI....or like some people do...dual outputs.

    To me, do some searching. Analog output blurays can be had you just may have to hit craigslist, Ebay or IMPORT.

    I cannot stress this enough. Importing has so many more options.
     
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  7. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    A Blu-ray player with dual HDMI outputs is good if one does not have an HDMI equipped AVR/processor for video. Not going to be much help for Hi-Res audio though. No need to look for a Blu-ray player as I have an Oppo 103 and 105D :).
     
  8. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    High res can go through analog outputs. Earlier bluray players had decent DACs.

    But yes, best leave it up to the amplifier to send to speaker proper.

    You have two Oppo's and you are arguing for other people not starting over. :shh:
     
  9. Bingo Bongo

    Bingo Bongo Music gives me Eargasms

    Location:
    Ottawa, Canada
    Guess it's going the way of disc technology! Even video games can be bought without a disc these days (ie:Xbox, Playstation). Online is the future, like it or not.
     
  10. Bill Mac

    Bill Mac Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    I'm not arguing with anyone. You posted earlier that "Bluray is a supplement, not a subtraction. No reason to star over". I posted that in a way one does have to start over (wrong term). I should have said one needs an additional player for Blu-ray Audio playback if all they have is a CD/SACD player. I never started over as I owned universal players before Blu-ray Audio only discs were being released.
     
  11. Blu-ray audio was never really marketed as an audiophile medium after the commercial failures of DVD-Audio and SACD. It was a last-ditch attempt by the big music labels to include something more in big, expensive box sets and get money one last time from baby boomer collectors, before the physical media market dies.
     
  12. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I was kidding. Sorry it didn't come off that way.

    xxxxxxxxxxxx

    Physical media is not going anywhere. Online is no more "the future" than anything else. It is simply a popular delivery system...much like paper....of which since online has came out, there is much more of it printed.

    ...but I am amused by the prediction.
     
  13. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Interesting way to look at it, and sure we print things out from the internet. But paper printing has gone way way down with internet / online activity. Ebooks, texts and emails both ate into printed paper, just ask the post office.
     
  14. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I don't know if you are aware, but Ebooks sales are way down and paper books have actually been climbing up. Just read articles about that not that long ago. It was called screen fatigue.

    Just google that and you will see tons of articles this year. The new generation is driving it just like any fickle fad that the adults laughably think they can predict.

    As for texts and emails, don't confuse people writing more with the death of sent mail. Printed material may not be getting mailed, but rest assured the printing factories in all our homes show that the need to see and hold material is alive and well. People text more than talk. Is this the death of the voice because the land lines are dying?

    Now the peer reviewed checks and balance published value mentality is another story.

    Me guaging the USPS is not my concern. Go to UPS and Fed Ex statistics and you will see that until they inked deals with USPS they destroyed the feds in volume. Again with Amazon Prime and everything else changing...how do you track what is "printed material"?

    Letters...yeah people don't do that...again like a lot of renters..most if given a choice initially wouldn't have done it to begin with. Is that really a gauge?

    I couldn't care less about the interface...be it pens, keyboards quills.... crayons. What public wants one way or another is accountability and legitamacy. Emails have provided that with time stamps and message copies, but as technology grows where you can alter this or that, so to people will decide to drop it.

    It is like a bunch of people got together and decided what has happened in the last 20 years is the deciding factor for the next forever while ignoring everything that has come before.

    Printed material like recorded music are just fine. With every stream, there will be plenty of adults that will one day want to figure out a way to preserve what they heard. Age tends to do that and change the fleeting fad mentality.

    One poster said that new hipster will see a renewed interest in CD's one day...I can see that, especially when so many of them will still be here for the next thousand years playing fine.
     
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  15. JMCIII

    JMCIII Music lover first, audiophile second.


    Tullman, trouble is, most Blu-Ray Audio discs are only 24/96.... Given that the format can hold so much, it begs the question, WHY???!!!
     
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  16. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    The bigger question is why does a format that has so much space... not being utilized in every conceivable way? When you release one album at high rez and leave most of the rest of it blank then charge insanely high price for it, is it a wonder that it "fails"?

    A bluray is pittance to manufacture, yet streaming is pushed to the point of it being mp3 quality because of the servers not being able to handle full traffic.

    It is quite simply the push for production companies to control everything while many sheep are more than willing to follow this model.
     
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  17. JMCIII

    JMCIII Music lover first, audiophile second.


    That was my point exactly. Why waste space? Why not put Blu-Ray audio out at 24/192 at the very least? The space is there...... Oh well, when did the major music companies EVER show good judgement where the chance to turn a buck is concerned?
     
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  18. cdash99

    cdash99 Senior Member

    Location:
    Mass
    Blu Ray Audio was marketed as being the equivalent of “in the studio” for a group of buyers that wanted good sound, but were intimidated by or uninterested in the idea of purchasing or installing hi end DAC’s for the purpose of shopping at HD Tracks or similar shops.

    Adding additional features, such as 24/192 tracks is not a consideration. Some of the disc’s space is taken up by multiple formats such as PCM stereo, DTS, and Dolby. I’m sure the royalties associated with three layers of tracks pushed the cost up somewhat, relevant to the content.
     
  19. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    Or piracy and crappier streaming quality was looked at as the better option.

    Meanwhile the record industry watched the profits drop to nothing, now they are scrambling trying to do anything to sell music. Of course bluray will still be there because there is no competition in sight.

    Meanwhile, movies continue to sell with many more millions in revenue for home sales and continue to absorb the buyers that used to support music better.

    People like Taylor Swift or Garth Brooks who continue to gripe about not being paid for their work have legitimate concerns and the perpetrator, discounted licensing.
     
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  20. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic
    Blu ray audio seems to be following the same path as SACD. I see them quite often in music DVDs particularly of classical music / opera and specialty restorers like Criterion.
     
  21. tomd

    tomd Senior Member

    Location:
    Brighton,Colorado
    I could be wrong there does seem to be a slight uptick of Blu Ray Audios (bundled with cds) for classic album Anniversaries at least with Rhino/Warners.Recently there's The Smiths-Queen Is Dead,Eagles-Hotel California,and REM-Automatic For The People.On the other hand UME has seemed to "drop out of the Blu Ray Audio market" and Sony has never been in it.
     
  22. genesim

    genesim Forum Resident

    Location:
    St. Louis
    I think Criterion and other dependents not being stocked in box stores is the choice of the suppliers.

    They make their money and the some.

    The difference with SACD and DVD-Audio is that they never had the player home adoption like bluray. Ps3 helped that, but facts are that people like having rbust streaming boxes with memory and more than one function.

    The players are there, but bulk utilization must be put to pilot before i count it out.
     
  23. fuse999

    fuse999 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Texas
    My Bluray outputs 24/192 on HDMI, which I'm not capable of processing, and only 24/96 on the optical Toslink. No S/PDIF or USB available. So I don't use Bluray very often.
     
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  24. Sevoflurane

    Sevoflurane Forum Resident

    You won’t get 24/96 via Toslink by playing a Blu Ray. Licensing restrictions etc force manufacturers to limit this to 16/48.
     
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  25. Mr Bass

    Mr Bass Chevelle Ma Belle

    Location:
    Mid Atlantic

    You are correct about the better distribution of Bluray boxes. Ironically SACD capable universals are becoming more plentiful after Sony abandoned the format.

    My point was simply that Bluray seemed to be following the same trajectory of a niche product like SACD. The wider availability of Bluray boxes actually amplifies that point since people still don't care that much.
     
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