SACD versus BLU-RAY for HD audio
default -- Sun, 08/23/2009 - 14:45
I was just curious if one would predict that blu-ray as a hirez audio medium would likely fill the niche that SACD has for many audiophiles. What are the hypothetical and practical limits of BLU-RAY audio quality versus SACD? Will HD downloads eventually replace both?
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I THINK THAT AS LONG AS YOU NEED A VIDEO MONITOR TO NAVIGATE ANY FORMAT HI-REZ OR NOT IT WILL NOT GO OVER WELL WITH MANY TRUE AUDIOPHILES, UNLESS YOUR WATCHING A VIDEO CONCERT IN THE THEATER ROOM. BUT I AND MANY AUDIOPHILES HAVE DEDICATED TWO CHANNEL LISTENING ROOM WHERE WE WANT THE HI-REZ AUDIO LIKE SACD AND OTHERS,I THINK THATS WERE DVD AUDIO FELL, THAT DARN MENU AND MONITOR THING. IF BLU-RAY CAN FIND A WAY TO WORK AROUND THESE SHORT COMINGS,MORE POWER TO THEM.
I have 3 music-only Blu-rays so far. 2 discs on the Surround Records label require no monitor unless you for some reason wanted to listen in a lossy format. Pop the disk in, push start and it plays back in DTS MHD 7.1/96K. 2L Divertimenti requires the monitor to select from the plethora of different hi rez formats. It's sort of a demo album to demonstrate what the different formats can do. I also have tried some opera audio/video Blu-rays, and just pushing play provides the most spectacular hi def, hi rez reproduction the world has ever seen. It is truly awesome. But, you could just listen to the soundtrack in hi rez audio without a monitor for setup.
I think it's not a big deal. There is talk of a manufacturer's Blu-ray 3.0 standard that would include the auto start as an industry standard. There is also talk of Blu-ray in future cars for back seat video and also for music only. If they want to do Blu-ray music, it will be addressed industry-wide, I am sure. But, discks can be authored now to not require the screen for most listeners.
I would think it work if Blu-Ray would autostart. If you have to find a monitor and fumble through the menus most folks would rather pass. And while I enjoy my Hi-rez downloads, I burn them to an auto start dvd-audio disk.
The record companies don't appear to be interested in Blu-ray as a music-only format. The future of high-res is in downloads, in my view.
Blu-ray has a significant practical advantage over SACD in that it is based on linear PCM digital audio (found in virtually all studios) rather than the specialty DSD format.
You can set your PS3 to auto play inserted media.
I am a very happy listener of multi-channel & 2 channel SACD for 10 years and having listened to several Blu-ray music productions (Jeff Beck, Legends of Jazz & an opera sampler) in surround, I would personnaly be happy with all my hi-res on blu-ray. Sure, needing a video display is a nuisance (track changes without a monitor should be doable) but there will certainly be more music available because of the lower cost of producing in blu-ray vs SACD and also the eventual wider availability of blu-ray players. As for the 2 channel Luddites, they're of no concern, the future of music for the rest of us is surround. Bring it on!
I also like surround on Blu-ray when done right. However, the surround mixes are all over the map with respect to what's in the surround channels, and at what level. I just bought Return to Forever's Montreaux concert in Blu-ray with DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack. RTF is amazingly great, and the production values are terrific with one exception; the surround channels are way too loud. I have to turn down the surround channels by a whopping 8dB (from perfect calibration with an SPL meter) to make this disc listenable. Otherwise, it sounds as though each channel has equal volume.
Yes, once again even though you may have a phenomenal format and music to listen to, if the producers/engineers don't get the mix right it's a disappointment.I've found that even a cd can sound wonderful in the hands of a great engineer and when mixed properly. So we'll have the same with blu-ray, some wil get it right, some won't.
I recently purchased the Neil Young Blu-ray set and now I'm a true audiophile snob. I had done away with surround sound for various reasons but mainly because it just didn't add to the musical experience for us. I think Neil Young had it right all along. CD quality isn't quality. MP3 ruined what music was. The 24/192's Neil created sent me back in time when I spun vinyl, only now there's no snap, crackle and pop. What there is is an immersive experience into MUSIC, album covers, photo's lyrics, sheet music and did I mention MUSIC? I no longer feel like I need a cable upgrade on my system. My wife who is not a Neil Young fan - is now..
I had heard that the Beatles albums would be out on Blu Ray in 2010, but recently there is nothing about it on the net. Has anyone heard about this? I know that they will have the new cd re-masters next month.
I think multi-channel Blu-Ray does have the potential to replace DVD-A, SACD and CD eventually, however it all depends on what strategy the content-providers undertake to return the music business to profitability. Also, it is hard for me to see a successful business model with no point-of-sale, (ie. downloads), despite the obvious advantages for consumers.
The advantage Blu-Ray has over SACD, DVD-A AND downloads is VIDEO. This adds a tremendous dimension to any musical performance - see "Piano Black" or "Concert for George" if you don't agree. In the long-term, all audio performances must become audio-video performances if they are to wean the "millenials" from their iPods. Audio-only recordings will be exist primarily for portability, (iPods, autos, etc.).
I attended a workshop on multichannel audio at an Audio Engineering Society convention about 12 years ago. The panel was a "who's who" of the world's best rock/pop recording engineers. The moderator, the late John Eargle, asked each engineer to first state what they view as the role of the surround channels and how they approach a multichannel mix. There was absolutely no consensus among the engineers. It appears that this quandary has yet to be resolved, and in the meantime, we're going to get a wide range of experiences from multichannel audio.
I should add that I'm virtually alone on the TAS staff when it comes to enjoying concert performances on video. A third of my DVD collection is music videos.
I was one of the engineers on the above mentioned AES panel discussion. It's not likely one will ever get two engineers to completely agree how ANY program would be recorded, stereo or surround. That's just part of the creative process that is recording engineering/mixing.
Because I much prefer to record all of my sessions in DSD, I don't really see BD as a suitable successor to SACD. I would have to convert the DSD recording sources to PCM to be useful on BD. As far as I'm concerned, that would be a step back in quality from my master sources. I don't want to start another endless no-win DSD vs. PCM debate, but I have good reasons to keep using DSD as a recording master source that have nothing to do with the consumer release medium. For me, the SACD is the perfect home playback source (as reproduced on a good player!) because it represents closest what I recorded in-session.
It's very unfortunate that the Blu-Ray working group could never agree to allow DSD as an included audio program. IMO, that was very short-sighted planning for a format that has so many possibilities.
SACD is also my favored audio format, esp. in multi-channel. But to be able to see a performance recorded in HD and hear it in 24/192 well, I find it even more satisfying than SACD. The slight, to my ear, trade-off in sound quality is worth it to me. But there will always be times when I want to sit back and close the eyes and immerse myself in DSD. After living through the distortion and noise in vinyl and harsh sounding cd's I feel heaven has descended to earth with the creation of music mastered in SACD & Blu-ray. Now it's up to you engineers to make the best of it.
"It's very unfortunate that the Blu-Ray working group could never agree to allow DSD as an included audio program. IMO, that was very short-sighted planning for a format that has so many possibilities."
agreed,
DSD not only offers spectacular sound quality (in both hi-res stereo and hi-res multichannel) but it also can not be copied,
Blu-Ray Audio can easily be ripped to hard drive and shared online (!) plus it decimates the sigma delta stream to multibit (!)
it's very weird they decided to include only PCM format in BD spec, especially in the situation when today DSD 5,6MHz recording technology is already available http://www.saidera.co.jp/Ai_recording.html
" As far as I'm concerned, that would be a step back in quality from my master sources...For me, the SACD is the perfect home playback source (as reproduced on a good player!) because it represents closest what I recorded in-session."
additionally, when it comes to playback side, DSD recordings can be played natively in DSD form, while Blu-Ray players have to convert 24/96 PCM to delta sigma...
BTW- if you aren't familiar with Michel Bishops acknowledgments-
Michael Joseph Bishop, Recording Engineer and Producer. (b. 1951) Recipient of eight Grammy Awards (2008, 2007, 2006, 2004, 2002 and 1997) for Best-Engineered Classical Recording and Best Surround Album. He also received the award for Best Surround Mix – Orchestral, 2004 Surround Music Awards. Recording engineer at Cleveland Recording Company, 1972 – 1977 and at Suma Recording Studio, 1977 – 1988. Recording Engineer at Telarc International Corporation, 1988 – 2009, as Chief Recording Engineer 2004–2009. Co-Founder, engineer and producer at Five/Four Productions, Ltd in 2009, an independent audio production company.
Happy to have your contributions.
For those who want's monitoring the DVD players, i found a Toshiba DVD portable for around $100 with a video in.
Thanks for contributing, Michael. I can understand why you record in DSD as the master and archival format. It is unfortunate that Sony abandoned DSD in the Blu-ray spec. I believe the reason was political rather than technical.
Hello, Mr. Harley -
"It is unfortunate that Sony abandoned DSD in the Blu-ray spec. I believe the reason was political rather than technical."
Would you please elaborate?
Thanks,
Brian
I just listened to a sampler from the Norweigan label 2L. It's title is "The Nordic Sound." It comes with two discs: one is an SACD/CD hybrid disc that has DSD stereo, DSD 5.1, and CD stereo. The other disc is a Blu-ray disc that offers you three choices: Linear PCM in stereo and in 5.1 surround, and DTS HD Master Audio in 5.1 surround. Both discs sound excellent to me in my surround system. (Frankly, I had a hard time hearing any differences when switching between the Blu-ray in my Samsung 1400 player or my SACD (in surround) through my Marantz DV-7001 Universal player.)
The really interesting thing about this particular Blu-ray disc though, is the fact that you don't have to have a video monitor to access the different types of audio, or to change tracks! In the supplied booklet it say's, "This Pure Audio Blu-ray Disc has been designed to offer two ways of operation, either with or without a TV screen: you can either navigate the on-screen Pop-Up Menu or simply use the dedicated buttons of your remote control. The NUMERIC keys directly access the corresponding track number and the desired audio stream can be selected by the COLOURED keys on your remote. 5.1 DTS HD Master Audio is preselected.
The red "A" key on my remote selects the 5.1 DTS HD MA 24/192khz track, the green "B" key selects the 5.1 LPCM 24/192khz track, and the yellow "C" kaye selects the 2/0 LPCM 24/192khz track. This really works! (At least with my Samsung player.)
Perhaps this could be the answer for Blu-ray music-only discs in the future?
DSD and SACD were a Sony technology from which they wanted a revenue stream in the form of royalties from the other consumer-electronics manufacturers. The CD patents had run out. To give you an idea of the amount of money involved, Sony's CD patents brought the company just over $1 billion in 1999 alone (and the patent lasted 20 years). For this Sony didn't have to manufacture products, do any marketing, repairs, inventory, shipping, or other costs associated with its core business. It simply collects royalties. Philips received a similar amount.
In its battle with Toshiba over the next-generation video carrier (Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD), broad industry support was crucial to emerging victorious in the format war. The rest of the consumer electronics industry wished DSD and SACD would go away. My speculation is that in exchange for making Blu-ray's audio PCM-based only, with no provision for DSD, Sony garnered more manufacturers in the Blu-ray camp. The video aspects of Blu-ray dwarf audio in terms of potential revenue. It was purely a business decision. Moreover, it's unlike Sony to abandon formats; look how tenaciously it hung on to Beta video.
I tried to find Piano Black and Concert for George in Blue Ray format. Don Bingamam, could you enlighten me on this?
HI REZ AUDIO ON A LITTLE SILVER DISC, WE CAN ONLY HOPE.I JUMPED ON THE SACD /DVD-A BANDWGON FULL FORCE WITH MY $3500.00 SONY SCD777ES AND $3000.00 SONY XA9000ES AND MY $2000.00 DENON 5900 UNIVERSAL PLAYER,THANK GOD THESE PLAYERS SOUND GREAT ON RED BOOK CD'S OR I WOULD BE UP THE CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE.ALTHOUGH I DO HVE A NICE SACD COLLECTION AND A FEW DVD-A TITLES I FEEL CHEATED BY SONY AND THE POWERS TO BE ,SO THAT'S WHY I HAVE NOT YET JUMPED ON THE BLU-RAY BANDWAGON AND DON'T REALY HAVE ANY INTEREST IN THE FORMAT ONE WAY OR ANOTHER. I HAVE OVER 2000 RED BOOK CD'S A LITTLE VINYL COLLECTION,AND I AM HAPPY,I'LL WAIT AND SEE WERE BLU-RAY STANDS, SAY FIVE YEARS FROM NOW ,THEN I 'LL DECIDE HOW TO SPEND MY HARD EARNED MONEY
Sarge - It's clear you are against Blu-ray, and you are entitled to be. Music is not one of the reasons to get on the Blu-ray bandwagon at the moment. There are only a handful of releases. But, there are many reasons I have gotten a Blu-ray player. Far superior audio/video over DVD is one - for movies and for operas (or rock concerts if that is your preference). My sound system and audio system are now integrated very nicely and without sonic compromise, though I use the system primarily for music. My player is an Oppo BDP-83, which is very good and not too expensive. Since my music listening is now almost entirely in multichannel, this Universal player can play Blu-rays, DVD's, SACD's, DVD-A's, and CD's. I use it via HDMI into my Mch processor, though I am told the Oppo sounds quite good via its analog outputs. (HDMI sounds best in my system linked with Audyssey EQ, but others may get a different result.) You would have to pay a whole lot more to get a Blu-ray or universal player that has better sound via analog, and via HDMI I doubt there are significant differences to players costing thousands more. So, for me Blu-ray comes as a bonus with the Oppo package that was bought primarily in order to listen to Mch SACD via HDMI.
How does my system sound? To my classical-music-oriented ears, it sounds better than the best and most expensive stereos I have ever heard. That includes many systems costing hundreds of thousands I have auditioned. My standard of comparison is the two dozen or so live concerts I attend each year.
Hi rez Mch sound is the most lifelike reproduction currently available. SACD does a great job. And, the few music Blu-rays and operas I have heard convince me that Blu-ray might even be a bit better. Will there be a growing market for music Blu-ray? Only time will tell.
I WOULD'NT SAY I' M AGAINST BLU-RAY,ITS MORE LIKE I AM VERY BITTER AT THE SONY'S OF THE WORLD ,WHO DANGLE A VERY NICE HI-REZ FORMAT LIKE SACD IN FRONT OF US, AND GET US AUDIOPHILES WATERING AT THE MOUTH, AND THEN PULL THE PLUG BECAUSE THEY DID NOT GET THE NUMBERS THEY WANT.THEN THEY SAY OK, SACD DID NOT WORK(WHEN IT COULD OF) LET'S TRY BLU-RAY AND SEE HOW THIS WORK OUT, AND BELIEVE IT OR NOT IF THEY DON;T GET THE NUMBERS THEY WANT GUESS WHAT.SACD WAS THE BOMB,EVERY AUDIOPHILE DREAM,RATHER TWO OR MULTI-CHANNEL,MY SONY SCD-777ES WAS ONLY 2 CHANNEL SO I BOUGHT THE SONY SCD XA9000ES FOR MULTI-CHANNEL,MAN I WAS IN AUDIO HEAVEN,THEN SONY PULLS THE PLUG WHY? I'LL BY A BLU-RAY PLAYER AND IT WILL BE THE OPPO,BUT NO TIME SOON,LIKE YOU SAID AT THE CURRENT TIME BLU-RAY IS NOT FOR THE MUSIC GUYS OF THE WORLD,I'LL WAIT.
Sarge, you said you were going to wait to get the Oppo since blu-ray is not for the music guys.
I have the Oppo BD player now, and a large collection of music concerts on DVD. They get a lot of rotation. Plus I have a good size collection of SACD and DVD-AUDIO.
I have 2 previous universal dvd players from before the Oppo BD (Denon 1920, Pioneer 563A), and the Oppo has provided me a real upgrade in sound quality on all of these discs over the other players. I was surprised by the level of improvement., but more so on the DVD music discs. The other machines do a very comparable job with SACD and DVD-A, with the Oppo having a slight edge in purity. BTW, I am using the 5.1 analog connections, as I did before. The analog outputs are much better on the Oppo than the other 2 players.
If you watch movies at all, the sound quality on all of the BD movies I have viewed is much better than the best I have heard on DVD. I was pretty surprised by the sound quality of movies on BD. It is so much better than DVD with movies, so the potential is there for music if the music industry decides to get on board. I am not holding my breath.
I have only one BD music disc so far and that is Jeff Beck live at Ronnie Scott's. All of the mixes sound very good, so 2 channel and Dolby 5.1, but the DTS-HD has the edge on this disc. Just more dynamic. The other mixes sound clean but reserved in comparison.
Last point if it helps. The video on standard DVD's is much better from my Oppo than from the DVD players I have.
I BOUGHT THE OPPO BDP 83 SE BLU-RAY PLAYER, ADDED A 20" MONITOR TO MY 2 CHANNEL REFERANCE SYSTEM AND NEVER LOOKED BACK,I HAD NO IDEA HOW MUCH I WOULD BE ENJOYING WATCHING LIVE CONCERTS ON MY 2 CHANNEL RIG ,RATHER BLU-RAY OR REG-DVD.I NOW OWN ABOUT TEN BLU-RAY CONCERTS, I ENJOY THE DOWN MIX VERSION TO TWO CHANNEL OF TRU-HD AND DTS -HD,PCM I LOVE IT ALL,ALTHOUGH EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE I CAN HEAR THE PLAYER FAN MOTOR RUNNING, I CAN LIVE WITH THAT.I AM NOW MOVING ALL OF MY DVD-A,DVD CONCERTS,DAD,DTS DISC OUT OF MY VIDEO ROOM TO MY AUDIO ROOM AND I AM HAVING A BALL,HEY MAN THIS IS WHATS ITS ALL ABOUT,ENJOYING YOUR INVESTMENT."LONG LIVE AUDIO (AND VIDEO).
Your posts will be MUCH easier to read if you don't use all caps.
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
10-4
I certainly hope Blu Ray or some other hi-rez format is used instead of SACD. SACD is an inferior format, since above 8,000 Hz it gives severely truncated information. The trebles on SACD are just nasty. DVD-A is far superior, but somehow it has never taken off.
Greg
Your hopes will be realized with Hi-res downloads. They've already won the war.
To call SACD an inferior format is correct (in terms of commercial success) as far as consumer products are concerned, but DSD, especially at 5.6 MHZ sampling rate, is an exceptionally good recording and mastering medium. It beats 192 in my own A/B tests.
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
In a 1 bit system like DSD-SACD, a very high sampling rate is required in order to handle music to 20,000 Hz, and to handle steep, high slew rate musical notes such as vocal sibilants and cymbal sounds. The present DSD-SACD sampling rate is only good enough to cover music up to 8000 Hz. This is simply unacceptable as a high fidelity medium. Many listeners react favorably to the sound of DSD-SACD. They are obviously so entranced by the improved musical naturalness below 8000 Hz that they fail to notice the gross distortion above 8000 Hz on certain musical notes. Many years ago Philips was trying to find a way to build really cheap CD players for budget consumer systems. They came up with a really cheap chip set by reducing the bit resolution from 16 bits all the way down to 1 bit, and they called it Bitstream. With such a large reduction in bit resolution, the oversampling should have been increased to 32,000 times, if they wanted to preserve an equitable tradeoff of information content (to preserve basic information content, the sampling rate should be doubled for every bit dropped from resolution). But Philips didn't do this. Instead, they increased the oversampling to only 256 times the nominal 44 kHz .
The difference between DVD-A and Sony-Philips DSD-SACD is huge here in the trebles. DVD-A achieves the best treble reproduction we have ever heard from digital, while DSD-SACD achieves some of the worst, with horrible mangling of some musical sounds above 8000 Hz, thanks to a too-low sampling rate that is 4 times worse than cheap, old fashioned consumer Bitstream CD players.
Incidentally, in music's lower frequencies, from the midranges on down, both systems are excellent, with some subtle sonic pros and cons (DSD sounds a little more relaxed and airy, while DVD-A sounds a little more focussed and coherent). It is the region above 8000 Hz, still a very important part of music, that sets them apart. In this region the sonic difference is simply put: DVD-A is glorious and DSD-SACD is incompetent.
The Sony-Philips DSD-SACD system simply has too low an oversampling rate to handle all the actual sounds that music makes in the trebles. One could even predict that it would crash, on the sharper curves of music's waveform, from the simple fact that its oversampling rate is merely 1/4 of the sampling rate Philips used 10 years ago for their cheapest consumer CD players in their ancient Bitstream system.
Greg
Believe what you will based on your 8K limit, but my ears tell me that DSD wallops PCM at 192 for recording.
Have you tried this?
Just wonderin'...
And who is WE? There's only one of me - that's all I need to hear...
Steven Stone
Contributor to The Absolute Sound, EnjoytheMusic.com, Vintage Guitar Magazine, and other fine publications
I was a very excited & anticipating the first SACD release & one of the first to embrace it. I still buy everything I can on SACD. Un-fortanately SACD's are hard to find! Your local Best Buy, ect. they just do not carry them anymore (not that there ever was a big selection).
The best selection of SACD I found recently was on Amazon.com.
I think Sony just killed themselves & SACD by hording the technology.
As far as blu ray sound formats IMO DTS Master is a much better format than True Dolby D. I find myself looking @ the back of blu ray dvd's before I purchase to see if it's M. DTS or True D.D, if it is a questionable movie purchase & is in DTS Master I more often than not will give it a shot just for the great sound.
Kodg