Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
#1
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Legend
Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
Can they both do the same thing or they added Blu-ray Audio too confuse everything?
I was listening to Yes -Fragile (Blu-ray audio) and was wondering why this just couldn't be on Blu-ray.
Maybe it's a price thing. They can charge more for a Blu ray Audio when it just as easily be put out on Blu-ray.
I was listening to Yes -Fragile (Blu-ray audio) and was wondering why this just couldn't be on Blu-ray.
Maybe it's a price thing. They can charge more for a Blu ray Audio when it just as easily be put out on Blu-ray.
#2
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
From a technical standpoint, there is no difference. "Blu-ray Audio" is a marketing term for a music-focused Blu-ray disc that has no video content. It is not a separate application that requires a new player or receiver, etc. It is regular Blu-ray disc, and will play on any Blu-ray player and home theater system.
This is in contrast to DVD-Audio. The reason why DVD-Audio exists as a separate application from DVD-Video is because the DVD-Video spec had no provisions for multi-channel, high-resolution lossless soundtracks.
Blu-ray video (i.e. the BDMV application spec), on the other hand, fully supports multi-channel, high resolution audio (via Dolby TruHD, DTS-HD MA, or even just uncompressed PCM), so there's no need for a separate "Audio" application. So, it's just a regular Blu-ray video disc, just with no video content.
This is in contrast to DVD-Audio. The reason why DVD-Audio exists as a separate application from DVD-Video is because the DVD-Video spec had no provisions for multi-channel, high-resolution lossless soundtracks.
Blu-ray video (i.e. the BDMV application spec), on the other hand, fully supports multi-channel, high resolution audio (via Dolby TruHD, DTS-HD MA, or even just uncompressed PCM), so there's no need for a separate "Audio" application. So, it's just a regular Blu-ray video disc, just with no video content.
#3
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
PCM: 48 kHz or 96 kHz sampling rate, 16 bit or 24 bit Linear PCM, 2 to 6 channels, up to 6,144 kbit/s; N. B. 16-bit 48 kHz 8 channel PCM is allowed by the DVD-Video specification but is not well-supported by authoring applications or players
1) The DVD-Audio spec included support for even higher fidelity audio (2-channel, 192kHz sampling rate for example).
2) DVD-Video's CSS encryption was cracked pretty much right away and they wanted something more secure for dedicated audio discs, so they went with CPPM.
#4
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
The 6.144 Mbps bitrate limit means that from a practical standpoint, DVD-Video doesn't have enough bandwidth to support multi-channel, high resolution audio. 24/48 (the minimum I'd consider high resolution), 5.1-channel LPCM is 6.9 Mbps.
DVD-Audio, besides raising the supported sampling up to 192 KHz, also increased the maximum bitrate to 9.6 Mbps, as well as introducing Meridian Lossless Packing for roughly 2:1 lossless compression (DVD-Video only supports uncompressed LPCM). That means that the DVD-Audio stream can handle effectively 3 times as much audio data as a DVD-Video stream.
DVD-Audio, besides raising the supported sampling up to 192 KHz, also increased the maximum bitrate to 9.6 Mbps, as well as introducing Meridian Lossless Packing for roughly 2:1 lossless compression (DVD-Video only supports uncompressed LPCM). That means that the DVD-Audio stream can handle effectively 3 times as much audio data as a DVD-Video stream.
#5
Thread Starter
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
What's the max DTS albums could they put on a Blu-ray disc because paying a lot just from one album means that this format probably won't last?
DVD Audio hasn't exactly caught the world on fire and I am not sure if they still produce them.
DVD Audio hasn't exactly caught the world on fire and I am not sure if they still produce them.
#6
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
Lossless audio that is capable of reproducing the full range of sound from recordings that have been mastered from better than CD quality music sources.
It's worth noting that the marketing definition linked above was not around when DVD-Audio was created. Suffice it to say, one reason for creating a separate DVD-Audio spec was to go beyond the fidelity limits of the DVD-Video spec, regardless of whether one might call those DVD-Video specs "high resolution-capable" or not.
#7
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
Your definition of "high resolution" is somewhat more strict than the official definition (at least for marketing purposes) . . . Technically, 16-bit, 48kHz meets that definition of high resolution audio
Actually, I just remembered that there's another reason. DVD-Video players of the day only had 2 options for audio output: analog stereo RCA outputs and digital S/PDIF outputs, which can only support 2 channels for uncompressed audio. Even though the DVD-Video spec supported multi-channel lossless audio (to a limited extent), there was no way to output it. It wasn't until players with DVD-Audio capability were released that they added multi-channel analog audio outputs (I supposed they could have added multi-channel outputs to DVD-Video only players, but no one ever did). It wasn't until HDMI came along that there was a multi-channel uncompressed digital output option, and by then, Blu-ray and HD DVD were on the verge of release.
Last edited by TheBang; 01-12-18 at 03:42 AM.
#8
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
Secondly, how much you can fit really depends on the quality the audio is mastered at and how many channels of audio. 24/96 audio will take up twice as much space as 24/48 audio. 6 channels of audio will take up 3 times as much space as stereo audio.
As an example, 6 channels of 24/96 audio encoded with DTS-HD MA would be about 6.9 Mbps. That means you could fit about 8 hours of that audio on a single layer BD, or 16 hours on a dual layer BD.
http://www.quadraphonicquad.com/dvdalist.htm
Discogs shows only 18 DVD-Audio releases cataloged for 2017 releases, and most of those are mislabeled (a misunderstanding of what DVD-Audio is):
https://www.discogs.com/search/?form...2010&year=2017
There are only about 3 or 4 of those that are genuinely DVD-A.
#9
DVD Talk Ultimate Edition
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
(A question for anyone who has a lot of dvd-audio discs).
On such discs, how common was it to have the album content in both the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS directories ?
The one dvd-audio disc I have is Beatles Love. When I first purchased it in a combo pack with the generic audio cd verson, I didn't know what that dvd disc was. So I put it into the dvd player and noticed it played the same songs.
When I looked at that Beatles Love dvd-audio disc more closely on the computer, I noticed there was content in both the VIDEO_TS and the AUDIO_TS directory where the data file sizes were approximately of the same order of magnitude for both directories.
On my dvd player, I couldn't figure out whether it was playing the content from the VIDEO_TS directory or from the AUDIO_TS directory.
On a computer, the content in the VIDEO_TS directory could be copied using a generic dvd ripping program. So I'm guessing it either had no encryption or it was just the weak generic CSS encryption.
On such discs, how common was it to have the album content in both the VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS directories ?
The one dvd-audio disc I have is Beatles Love. When I first purchased it in a combo pack with the generic audio cd verson, I didn't know what that dvd disc was. So I put it into the dvd player and noticed it played the same songs.
When I looked at that Beatles Love dvd-audio disc more closely on the computer, I noticed there was content in both the VIDEO_TS and the AUDIO_TS directory where the data file sizes were approximately of the same order of magnitude for both directories.
On my dvd player, I couldn't figure out whether it was playing the content from the VIDEO_TS directory or from the AUDIO_TS directory.
On a computer, the content in the VIDEO_TS directory could be copied using a generic dvd ripping program. So I'm guessing it either had no encryption or it was just the weak generic CSS encryption.
#10
DVD Talk Hall of Fame
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
Many DVD-Audio discs have a DVD-Video application too, as a fallback for players that don't have DVD-Audio support. Typically, the audio presented in the DVD-Video application would only be in compressed Dolby Digital form. So long as your players supports DVD-Audio, you should be getting the DVD-Audio side.
For encryption, DVD-Video only supports CSS, so yes, any ripping program will work. DVD-Audio is encrypted by a scheme called CPPM. That has also been broken, so as long as you have the right tools, you can rip that also.
For encryption, DVD-Video only supports CSS, so yes, any ripping program will work. DVD-Audio is encrypted by a scheme called CPPM. That has also been broken, so as long as you have the right tools, you can rip that also.
#11
DVD Talk Legend
Re: Blu-ray and Blu-Ray Audio(whats the difference)?
So aren’t here an Un good Bluray audio albums worth looking for?




