Blu-Ray and Music as Dead as SACD?

Given that its a new medium, music on Blu-ray seems to be doing quite well. It's very early days, though...

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AIX Records plans on a slate of new releases in Blu-ray in 2009. Neil Young has announced that he plans to re-issue his entire catalog in the format next year. I suspect that BD will start as an audiophile format rather than be embraced by the record labels as a mass-market format.

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Rich -- you mention that music on blu-ray is doing quite well, but I'm not aware of any releases to date. What do you have that you can recommend?

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There are several concert discs on Blu-ray with Dolby TrueHD (with video). I think Lear is asking about Blu-ray's potential as a music format (no video).

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Lear wrote:I don't really care whether there is or isn't video (actually video would be nice). But is there a possible future where some new releases come out on blu-ray?

For example, I just got the McCoy Tyner Guitarsdisc. Could such a disc in the future be on blu-ray? I also just got MTT and the SFS doing Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde. It is MC, but in a future world, could that be blu-ray instead of SACD?

If the answer is yes, then when is that future? Who will participate? Is it a good future? What equipment do I need?

As an avid, evangelical convert to hi rez multichannel about a year ago, I would like to give you my own insights and opinions. Forgive my long windedness, but I hope it is helpful.

First, Mch music is alive and well in the form of SACD’s and DVD-A’s right now, although they exist as a small niche in the total recorded music market. There are thousands of Mch titles in these formats. Though DVD-A is effectively dead, SACD has been growing at about 500-800 titles/year (www.sa-cd.net). And, neither format is hard to come by via Amazon and many other online retailers. The overwhelming majority of these releases are classical, most coming from small European labels and also Telarc in the US, with mostly excellent engineering. Depending on your viewpoint, that’s either good news or bad. For my musical tastes, it’s good news. There are a fair number of releases in other genres, but some people, except classical lovers, are somewhat disappointed at the selection. Also, contrary to high end fears as Mch emerged, most releases I am aware of are not “in the round” recordings. The performers appear in front of you, as they should, with a dramatically heightened sense of soundstage width, depth, dimensionality and ambience. If your system is properly set up, there is generally no awareness of the rear speakers until you revert to stereo, which is then extremely dull and lacking by comparison. The sense that your room is now the recording venue and that you are transported there is uncanny in Mch.

Blu Ray was only anointed as the single new disc standard about 6 months ago. And, that was based entirely on its video capabilities, which is where the industry focus has largely remained. Right now, there is to my knowledge, only one music only release – the Norwegian 2L label’s Divertimenti , which is classical, naturally. Andy Quint reviewed it in TAS several issues ago. Note that this is an “in the round” recording, a format I do not prefer. There are some music/video releases, such as live rock/pop concerts, and a few ballets and operas.

But, it seems a sure bet, a no brainer to many, that Blu Ray will emerge as an important new medium . Why? On the supply side, both many well heeled manufacturers (mostly Asian mass marketers) and the movie industry are demonstrating an unprecedented degree of cooperation in fostering the growth of this new medium. They have invested huge sums in it, and they think there are handsome profits to be made from replacing the current standards – DVD for video and CD for music – with Blu Ray. Not only can they get consumers to re-buy older releases in Blu Ray, but I believe that it gives them better control over the distribution of the content. The Digital Rights Management (DRM) of Blu Ray is much stronger than that of the old standards, preventing uncontrolled duplication and distribution. Naysayers often pooh-pooh Blu Ray, saying that hi def, hi resolution downloads directly from the internet will obviate the need for discs and player. But, I disagree because of the DRM issue, which is best implemented via the current system of discs and players. So, there is a strong vested economic interest against downloads for the foreseeable future. I believe the disc and player paradigm will be with us for quite some time in Blu Ray.

On the demand side, Blu Ray players are demonstrably better for video and audio via hi def TV’s and home theaters than DVD was. Prices are falling rapidly to an entry level under $200 for a player. Player sales, though recession affected, are quite strong and multiyear industry sales forecasts call for a real bonanza. Some large electronics retailers, like Crutchfield, are already reporting higher revenues from Blu Ray players than from DVD. Higher quality sound than CD for music-only releases might be a tougher sell, however. So, I do not expect CD’s to go away soon, whereas DVD-only players will be toast within a few years. As we high enders know only too well, better sound alone does not necessarily guarantee popular success.

The Asian electronics mass marketers, who are really driving the push to Blu Ray, have begun to address the music-only issue. They are working on a level 3.0 standard, which is the Blu Ray Music Standard. Blu Ray 2.0 is the current standard and it deals with the marriage of video/audio (movies) and related internet content. Details of Blu Ray 3.0 are still sketchy, but it will at least allow audio playback in the hi rez lossless formats without the need for a video monitor. Current Blu Ray requires the user to select via the video monitor which audio playback resolution is desired, since the discs support many concurrent levels of audio resolution for compatibility with older and newer sound systems. However, Blu Ray music releases should be audio codec compatible with existing Blu Ray players in hi rez Mch.

I think it is safe to bet that hi rez Mch Blu Ray music is going to succeed, but you can get plenty of excellent classical music in hi rez Mch right now in the growing SACD catalog and from the stagnant DVD-A catalog. New SACD releases will undoubtedly dwindle as Blu Ray music ramps up, until that catalog, like DVD-A, becomes stagnant.

If I have not put you to sleep yet, here are some thoughts on equipment. There are two basic approaches to multichannel: the traditional high end approach and the home theater approach.

A few in the high end had a brief and tentative interest in Mch five or more years ago, but not much has happened there since. The high end has not been proactive at all about Mch. There were and still are some Mch analog line stages from the likes of Audio Research, McCormack, etc. and an excellent SACD/CD player/DAC from Meitner. An Esoteric universal player with atomic clock and 3 stereo DAC’s might be the crème de la crème for SACD. The problem is these are all 6 or 5.1 channel solutions based on the SACD/DVD-A paradigm. The Mch line stages are not able to give you the 7.1 channel capability Blu Ray will support. They also lack, in my opinion, vital features like speaker distance compensation and bass management or at least I see nothing in their specs to indicate that they have them. I know some audiophiles with this setup, and it sounds great with SACD. But, they needed to have 5 identical speakers equidistant from the sweet spot, an often impossible requirement to meet. Also, due to the lack of bass management, all speakers are run full range, even with a sub for the .1 channel. By all appearances, this approach is dead, though there might be some 8 channel line stages that will appear.

I think it's clear the home theater approach is far, far better from many standpoints. There are a fair number of really good audio/video processors(AVP’s) that can take you there. Some high enders like Krell, Levinson, Simaudio, Classe and Anthem have recently released new, costly AVP’s for Blu Ray. Asian mass marketers– Onkyo/Integra, Denon and Marantz - have led the way, though, with full featured, brand flagship AVP’s that perform at a very high sonic standard and, in some cases, at bargain prices. The Asians also lead the way with Blu Ray players at many price points as well as Mch universal machines supporting SACD/DVD-A/DVD-V /CD.

Speaker distance, bass management and other goodies are built in to the AVP’s, many also including the amazingly excellent Audyssey “room correction” EQ. I consider DSP-based EQ an essential for Mch sound, and I would never again be without it. It’s a huge advance. (See Robert E. Greene’s excellent recent article on DSP EQ in TAS.) Hence, the Classe AVP, which eschews this, would be at the bottom of my priority list. The AVP’s all support SACD, DVD-A and Blu Ray lossless 7.1, as well as older sound formats, plus 1080p hi def video, too. With a good subwoofer, side and rear speakers do not need to be as large and costly as the front speakers due to excellent bass management in the AVP’s DSP. There are a host of other advantages to this approach.

Because this is a largely digital paradigm, a lot of our instinctive, undying analog prejudices no longer apply. For example, though maligned on sonic grounds by some in the high end without any hard evidence whatsoever, I am a fan of the digital Mch HDMI hookup between player and AVP. By virtue of using HDMI, I simply do not believe it is necessary to buy a top dollar player with an expensive, extreme analog output stage. So, I am patiently waiting for the Oppo Blu Ray player to appear. I think it will be a benchmark performer via HDMI at a relative bargain price, though lackluster via its analog outs. I seriously doubt that $2k or more for a Pioneer Elite, Denon or Sony Blu Ray player would prove to be worth the extra money in my system. Plus, the Oppo will also play SACD’s and maybe DVD-A’s. The others do not, at this point.

I am suspicious of analog processing by any of these largely digital AVP’s. There is a lot of digital EMI/RFI inside any AVP that could degrade a fragile analog signal. So, I prefer to run my 2-channel analog sources into a separate, high quality, stereo line stage (Levinson) with unity gain, home theater bypass. The front channel AVP analog outs also are routed through the stereo line stage, bypassing its volume control. I think I get the best of both worlds this way.

If you are still with me, I would like to tell you a bit about my discovery of hi rez multichannel. For video reasons, I decided over a year ago to upgrade/merge my stereo system into a hybrid home theater/music system. I fully expected my music listening to continue to be in stereo, while my video watching would be with Mch sound. I added smaller speakers from the same manufacturer – Martin Logan. I find little credence to the high end myth that the center channel speaker should not be a horizontal home theater speaker; mine is. Additional center and surround amps from Bryston and Parasound Halo are quite satisfying, though less exalted and expensive than my front Krell monoblocks. An excellent JL Audio fathom f113 sub was also added. I bought an Integra DTC 9.8 AVP, because it was Blu Ray ready, and it appeared to be a bargain based on its features. I had an Oppo 980 player costing all of $169 for DVD’s, but it also supported SACD and DVD-A. Out of curiosity, I bought the Ondine Mch SACD of the Mahler Symphony No. 6 with the Philadelphia Orchestra. I had been at this concert when it was recorded live. Now, I must tell you I have been a high end audiophile for 50 years since building Dynakits in high school. My pre-upgrade stereo cost over $50K (not bragging, just giving perspective). I have heard many, many stereos costing several times more than my own. My reaction to my first Mch SACD was … Holy Toledo!! Never had I heard reproduced sound as close to the sound of the real thing live in my life. And, no stereo I have ever heard even comes close. No way. This is the greatest sonic breakthrough I have ever heard. It’s a game changer. It’s bigger in my opinion than mono vs. stereo (I go back that far in time) in terms of capturing the realistic sense of live music. It is truly mind boggling that all this was possible from an AVP and player costing under $2K combined!!

Meanwhhile, over a year later, I am still bristling with excitement about hi rez multichannel. SACD, Blu Ray, whatever way, I’ll take it over stereo any day. In spite of very large CD and vinyl collections, I just do not have much time for or interest in stereo anymore for serious music listening. I am closer to the absolute sound of the real thing live than I ever in my wildest dreams thought possible.

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Lear wrote:Good stuff. Thanks.

Any idea when blu-ray 3.0 will be done?

I still think MC audio in the long term depends on more actual music being released. SACD is nice, but I see two problems:

-- the software is mostly classical, and as much as I like classical, man cannot live by classical alone

-- very little new hardware will be released; over time that means that installed base will go down and that can't be good for what little software there is

I think Blu Ray 3.0 will be done well before the middle of next year, but it's a pure guess.

As to repertoire, you might browse www.sa-cd.net ,which has every single SACD title plus some reviews. It's a great resource. Also, check Amazon for DVD-A titles. Except for this, there is no single list for DVD-A as there is for SACD. See if there are not enough titles of interest to at least invest $169 on an Oppo 980, which will play either format and sound damn good via HDMI. It's a really good DVD player, too. As long as your AVP handles HDMI and is Blu Ray ready, you can always add the Blu Ray player later.

For sentimental reasons, I bought the Allman Bros. Eat a Peach album on SACD multichannel. I have the original vinyl. How can I say it, Eat a Peach is truly awesome in SACD Mch. Though recorded in the early 70's, this is a great sounding album and much better than the vinyl original.

Oppo is a great company I have immense respect for. They seem to be committed to including SACD capability for the forseeable future, as has already been announced at CEDIA for their as yet unreleased Blu Ray machine. Sony, which had dropped all SACD players, their own invention, has a new ES level Mch SACD/CD machine with HDMI out. (No video; no DVD-A) There are strong rumors of a new Denon flagship Blu Ray machine, which will include SACD. So, rumors of the death of SACD are greatly exagerated, not that it won't not happen in time, but that may be a long time.

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I set up a new forum in the Media section to capture posts about Blu-ray and other new format music releases:

http://www.avguide.com/forums/media/music-best-recordings-blu-ray-and-ot...

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