Blu ray Audio - aka Pure Audio - anyone tried it ?

TALON1973 · 29 Jan 2015 at 20:26

just wondered if anyone has tried blu ray audio .... also known as Pure Audio ?

Having bought a few 96/24 downloads of hdtracks over the last few years I thought i'd try the disc based versions.

Atm ive got 3

Lionel Richie - can't Slow Down
Elton John - Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Queen - A Night At The Opera

Now ive got the first 2 already digitally , but I wanted to see if the disc versions were any good ....fairly impressed , with the Queen one being slightly weaker than the other 2 . LR is stunning tho.

Anyone else got an opinion on this format , or looking to try it ?

peahead · 29 Jan 2015 at 20:47

Hi

Isn't this just like DVD Audio of the past but on the blu-ray format ?

TALON1973 · 29 Jan 2015 at 21:18

more or less

but in this instance it will work on "most" blu ray players , older models have problems so i've read.

I did the whole dvd-audio / sacd thing myself. But this being on a single format has potential ....if the studios can push new acts onto it.

peahead · 29 Jan 2015 at 21:36

Yeah i did the whole dvd-audio thing too

and we know what happened to that

Audigex · 31 Jan 2015 at 01:57

Most people can't tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and Lossless CD quality tracks - I really can't see any need for better than CD quality for 99.999% of people. Unless you're spending £5k on equipment to play it, and have a perfectly calibrated room to go along with your good ear, I really don't see how there's enough difference to care.

IMO, it's a gimmick to try to create a premium market "above" downloading and/or streaming. Even if you could hear the difference, would it really be enough to care?

Uncle Petey · 31 Jan 2015 at 08:08

While I haven't heard it or looked into it at all, if it's anything like the difference between DTS and DTS HD movie audio on BD, then it should pretty worthwhile.

lucid · 31 Jan 2015 at 14:14

Audigex said:
IMO, it's a gimmick to try to create a premium market "above" downloading and/or streaming. Even if you could hear the difference, would it really be enough to care?

I thought the premium market above downloads already exists? It's called 'CD', isn't it?

lucid · 31 Jan 2015 at 14:32

I've heard it compared to FLAC rips of CDs played back from a Win8 laptop running JRiver and using a TEAC UD-501 DAC direct in to an Onkyo stereo power amp (M-500R) and using a pair of KEF Reference 203/2. The room was about as far as you could get from "perfectly calibrated" as is possible.

A difference.... Yes. The thing I found most apparent was the ability to hear more layers and better separation of instruments. Each was easier to follow. The graininess of CD was gone.

dowie · 31 Jan 2015 at 19:19

lucid said:
I've heard it compared to FLAC rips of CDs played back from a Win8 laptop running JRiver and using a TEAC UD-501 DAC direct in to an Onkyo stereo power amp (M-500R) and using a pair of KEF Reference 203/2. The room was about as far as you could get from "perfectly calibrated" as is possible.

A difference.... Yes. The thing I found most apparent was the ability to hear more layers and better separation of instruments. Each was easier to follow. The graininess of CD was gone.

was this a blind or sighted test - out of interest has anyone actually done a blind test that you know of?

dowie · 31 Jan 2015 at 19:27

found one blind test which suggests that people thinking they can 'hear' differences are just buying into the usual audiophile nonsense:

http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

The test results for the detectability of the 16/44.1 loop on SACD/DVD-A playback were the same as chance: 49.82%. There were 554 trials and 276 correct answers.

Furthermore, none of the more elaborate and expensive
playback systems (for which the subjects were all dedi-
cated amateur audiophiles, active students in a profes-
sional recording program, and/or experienced working
professionals) revealed detectable differences on music,
again at levels as defined previously.

lucid · 31 Jan 2015 at 21:02

dowie said:
was this a blind or sighted test - out of interest has anyone actually done a blind test that you know of?

Blind - no. It was just some fun. Chill out. :rolleyes:

dowie · 31 Jan 2015 at 21:11

lucid said:
Blind - no. It was just some fun. Chill out.

bit touchy.....

just pointing out that there is a lot of BS in the HiFi industry, you thinking you heard a difference doesn't mean there actually was one - a lot of the supposed improvements people claim tend to have no basis in reality when actually investigated/tested properly - of course this isn't something the HiFi industry likes as they make a lot of money by perpetuating audiophile myths

Flibster · 31 Jan 2015 at 21:12

Tried. But it's going to end up like SACD and DVD-Audio. Miniscule market.

lucid · 31 Jan 2015 at 21:51

dowie said:
bit touchy.....

just pointing out that there is a lot of BS in the HiFi industry, you thinking you heard a difference doesn't mean there actually was one - a lot of the supposed improvements people claim tend to have no basis in reality when actually investigated/tested properly - of course this isn't something the HiFi industry likes as they make a lot of money by perpetuating audiophile myths

Not touchy.... just well aware that these sorts of threads have a habit of following the same sort of path. Can a person no longer walk in to a store and have a casual listen to something and then post an opinion? This is a hobby some of us indulge in for fun.

Yes, there's a lot of BS in the industry. But quite frankly I'm also getting just a bit fed up with 'double blind this-that-and-the-other' being shoved down everyone's throat if someone should dare venture a casual opinion. There's a time and a place for these tests, but it isn't at every single time someone happens to hear a new bit of gear. So just chill out and remember that you're not the Hi-Fi police and this isn't 1984.

lucid · 31 Jan 2015 at 21:58

Flibster said:
Tried. But it's going to end up like SACD and DVD-Audio. Miniscule market.

Yup.

The idea of reaching a wider market because of the penetration of BD players is okay. But most of those players are in consoles and all-in-one systems where the audio gear would struggle to resolve the differences between low bit rate MP3 and CD.

The SACD market is established as a niche for classical recordings. The players already output in analogue stereo. Adding a BD player and then having to deal with HDMI conversion to analogue for compatibility with a Hi-Fi system is a non-starter. Similarly, buying a high-end Oppo or Arcam at £600-£1000 just to get something marginally better than SACD doesn't seem like a winning formula to me.

dowie · 31 Jan 2015 at 22:10

lucid said:
Yes, there's a lot of BS in the industry. But quite frankly I'm also getting just a bit fed up with 'double blind this-that-and-the-other' being shoved down everyone's throat if someone should dare venture a casual opinion. There's a time and a place for these tests, but it isn't at every single time someone happens to hear a new bit of gear. So just chill out and remember that you're not the Hi-Fi police and this isn't 1984.

when people make dubious claims it is quite a reasonable to consider whether there is actually any basis for their claims - in reality there probably isn't and audible difference, but if you have convinced yourself in your head that there is then that's cool, you're free to hold that belief, it is just worth pointing out - since this a thread on the subject - that there likely isn't actually a difference

TALON1973 · 1 Feb 2015 at 18:51

You can definitely hear the different layers of music and better music separation . I brought my friend over the other night to let him listen and he's a music buff , although he hasn't had any good gear in years. Even he was doing "omg" and smiling away listening the tracks he never realised could sound so good.

Its a crying shame so many people have no clue how much rubbish we are getting

Flibster · 1 Feb 2015 at 23:42

lucid said:
Yup.

The idea of reaching a wider market because of the penetration of BD players is okay. But most of those players are in consoles and all-in-one systems where the audio gear would struggle to resolve the differences between low bit rate MP3 and CD.

The SACD market is established as a niche for classical recordings. The players already output in analogue stereo. Adding a BD player and then having to deal with HDMI conversion to analogue for compatibility with a Hi-Fi system is a non-starter. Similarly, buying a high-end Oppo or Arcam at £600-£1000 just to get something marginally better than SACD doesn't seem like a winning formula to me.

It's not going to be a cheap process to change across. Especially if like many people, you want a single device to play all your existing discs.

For me, the biggest advantage of BD over SACD or DVD-A is the fact that you can have the concert footage as well as lossless 5.1 audio too.

My bluray player will play SACD's as well as home burnt SACD-R on DVD's, but I'm tempted to try making a couple of AVCHD discs with multichannel PCM audio and plain black video from my DVD-A's as I've got nothing that plays them anymore.

lucid · 2 Feb 2015 at 01:26

Flibster said:
It's not going to be a cheap process to change across. Especially if like many people, you want a single device to play all your existing discs.

For me, the biggest advantage of BD over SACD or DVD-A is the fact that you can have the concert footage as well as lossless 5.1 audio too.

My bluray player will play SACD's as well as home burnt SACD-R on DVD's, but I'm tempted to try making a couple of AVCHD discs with multichannel PCM audio and plain black video from my DVD-A's as I've got nothing that plays them anymore.

The way I'm approaching this is from the perspective of a purist Hi-Fi system. That means there's maybe a DAC involved, but nothing to do with audio out via HDMI and then decoding that in an AV amp or AV pre-amp. That dog just won't hunt with any serious Hi-Fi enthusiast. So that means buying a Blu-ray player with analogue audio outs. That leads us to the next problem then.

The future success of Blu-ray Audio is based on the idea that there's a lot of Blu-ray player in circulation.

I wouldn't disagree with the above. There's a fair number of homes with a BD drive in a games console or PC, or as part of a home-cinema-in-a-box system, or in a standalone BD player. The problem for the format as I see it is that very few of those players are hooked up to- or part of systems that would make the quality difference easy to hear. We know that enough people comment that they hear no difference between DVD and Blu-ray. That's arguably a bigger quality jump than CD to BD Audio. So while the format may be technically better, anyone buying a few discs might well struggle to hear what the fuss is about. Straight away then, the biggest chunk of the potential market haven't much hope of getting any benefit from the new format.

dowie · 2 Feb 2015 at 02:01

TALON1973 said:
You can definitely hear the different layers of music and better music separation . I brought my friend over the other night to let him listen and he's a music buff , although he hasn't had any good gear in years. Even he was doing "omg" and smiling away listening the tracks he never realised could sound so good.

Its a crying shame so many people have no clue how much rubbish we are getting

If that is the case then it begs the question why can't it be demonstrated in a controlled double blind test?*

I wouldn't be surprised if just telling people they're listening to a superior format will result in lots of people claiming or even believing that what they just listened to was better. There might also be differences in how a particular track has been mastered - some people prefer vinyl over CD's not because CDs aren't capable of storing music adequately but because vinyl is often mastered differently. Main point is that someone coming over and deciding that something is really good after being told that it is some new special format doesn't really tell you much in itself.

*yes something that seems to wind up some audiophiles as it tends to dispel a lot of myths