Sony failed to tune the masses into its better-than-Compact-Disc format, Super Audio CD, so it's having another go, this time with technology derived from Blu-ray Disc.Dubbed Blu-spec CD, the system uses a blue laser to write the audio data rather than a red laser. And... er... that's it. The format delivers exactly the same recording capacity as a CD and uses the audio encoding mechanism enshrined in the CD bible, the so-called Red Book.
The upshot: Blu-spec CDs can be played in old-style CD and DVD players, Sony Music Entertainment (SME), the giant's Japanese audio operation, said yesterday.
'nuff said.
'nuff said.
*cough*Blu-Ray!*/cough*
But, yeah, this product will fail. It has no advantage at all over the CD. It's the same everything, just that it uses a blue laser. Whoop-de-frickin'-do.
Proprietary? It specifically states that they will work on older cd and dvd players.
Then what's the point of using it? :|
I don't see the point.
I will create a new CD. It uses the same laser. The same plastic. All the same. But it spin backwards. ??
Since BluRay is denser, about 25x denser, that last 27mins would become 11 1/4hrs of CD Audio, or 3.75hrs of 24bit 96khz audio (which is producer grade). Although to be honest, no consumer would ever be able to hear the difference, the 24bit 96khz standard exists for producers so that when they edit tracks, they can afford to lose a little quality along the journey and when they press the CD it will still sound the same.
This would give a "best of both worlds" as the CD Audio portion would work on every CD player known, and the gap would prevent other players from reading the BluRay part (which would only appear as invalid data anyways). And since BluRay audio is a new/non-existant spec, it would be easy to simply say BluRay audio players simply look for that last bit and read up to a certain point.
PS: I used Wikipedia to get the figure above, they're estimates but mathematically sound as far as I can tell. When it doubt, I rounded down to keep things realistic. Technically BluRay is 28x denser than a 99min CD.
The main advantage of 24bit is the increased dynamic range. Although of little use in commercial music (which barely makes use of the dynamic range available on CDs due to the loudness war) it does offer considerable benefit to classical music. The advantage of 96kHz is to capture the harmonics of notes - although this isn't reproduced by speakers (which typically cutout around 18-20kHz) it prevents artifacts during mixdown, particularly on synths. The biggest advantage to a new spec isn't moving to 24bit/96kHz but being able to take advantage of surround sound.
Basically the increased quality does offer benefits to listeners but it isn't anywhere near as radical as DVD to Blu-ray for instance. Certainly it's not just for producers.
What is needed is an audio disc format based upon Blu-ray. It's needs to be at least 24bit/96kHz and support multimedia features - tracks should contain high-resolution artwork. However, it also needs to let people copy music to their computer without any DRM or restrictions. DVD-A failed because it restricted audio to tightly in order to prevent copying, which was combined with overpriced players and the upshoot of iTMS.
It's shocking that we're still using CDs and quality has actually gone backwards thanks to the iTMS and MP3 downloads.
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