Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Stereo Blues on Blus....

Is anybody talking about putting multichannel hi-rez audio on Blu-Ray discs down the road?

Although disc prices don't make it terribly attractive at the moment, B-R discs that hold multichannel uncompressed movie soundtracks should do well to hold multichannel music only.

In this current iPod mentality, there are many who wondered if there was a large enough market for SACD and DVD-A to survive. I don't doubt that was an issue, but I also wonder if the death of those formats was also largely due to the expense of the music (compared to Redbook CDs) AND the fact that the discs required special players. With Blu-Ray-Music Discs, people could use the same players and connections so they won't need to buy new equipment. And, theoretically, the audio discs should cost less than a 20-million dollar Hollywood movie put on the same disc.

I think it could work. Unless, of course if DRM issues prevent HDMI connections and they start telling people that they need players and receivers with eight RCA connectors and that they can't play the music discs the second Monday of each month and...and...and....

There are loads of operas available on BD. Some have multi-channel 16bits, but the newer ones tend to be mixed in 24/48 or 24/96. The only inconvenient is that the soundmixing in too central-channel oriented and does not sound as natural as SACD (I do have one recording on both formats).
Funnily, because of tradition and possibly wider market, the BD disks tends to be cheaper than SACDs. BUT, they are rarely coming with booklets, which could explain the price difference.

I'm definitely looking forward to more music being on Blu-ray. Even if they don't go with a music-only specification, I'm excited to see more live music on the format. I'm tempted to pick this one up:

Blu-ray.com - Bach: Brandenburg Concertos 1-6 Blu-ray Review

I'll wait until more classical music comes out and see which ones are considered the ones to get. I think I appreciate classical music more when I actually get to see it being performed, as opposed to just listening to a CD.

I'll probably pick up well-reviewed mixed bag-type Blu-rays, too, like Live From Abbey Road: Best of Season One.

Of course, I'm really looking forward to Blu-ray releases by artists I'm more familiar with, but who knows how long it will be before the technology trickles its way down. A lot of bands still don't have DVD releases.

The CD is already being replaced by downloads, but hopefully live releases on Blu-ray find mainstream success.

I believe I posted on here somewhere that Sony is trying to push the Blu technology into the music realm, what that entails only Sony knows. I would hope a much higher resoltion should be a given but with so much music getting downloaded I fear it is too little too late.

If you're talking about Blu-spec CDs, it seems that it's simply using blue lasers to create normal CDs, with improvements in quality doubtful.

Nope Blu ray Audio DVDs

I must have missed the post. A little more information?

Oh, must be this?:

http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/4209

I think that was it, or at least it was similar. I know I have seen a couple of other articles talking about the idea as well, one even mentioned Sony in talks with the major music labels about BR discs.

Neil Young is putting out his Archives on Blu-Ray. Suprised no talk of it here...

We don't talk about Canadians much.

I just wonder how much the going price will be versus the rather substantial MSRP.

...and you can't play them in certain sucky rooms in New Hampshire ... and ...

What if they could ONLY play them in sucky rooms in New Hampshire?

I see a marketing opportunity!

Hi Mark,

It won't happen as an audio-only format. Given the history of SACD and DVD-Audio (and for all the reasons you cite), issuing audio-only Blu-ray discs would not be profitable.

There is an entire culture that assumes video will accompany multi-channel high-quality audio.

Regards,

Alan