Slashdot Mirror
Sony Blu-spec CD Format Detailed, Hits Stores
CNETNate writes "More details about Sony's new Blu-spec CD format — standard CDs authored using Blu-ray's blue diode technology — are beginning to emerge, with commercial releases beginning to hit Amazon. Blu-spec CDs are compatible with existing CD players but have been mastered with higher levels of accuracy by using the same technology used to author Blu-ray discs, with the intention of eliminating reading errors that occur as a result of being authored with traditional red laser technology. Sony has also launched an official (Japanese) site for Blu-spec CDs."
This reminds me of the gold plated cables "to ensure the digital signal has the highest fidelity".
This looks like snake oil marketed to the "I'm a pretend audiophile who loves buying more expensive things with questionable benefits" crowd.
It's been a long time.
Just wondering if anyone knows?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
h the intention of eliminating reading errors that occur as a result of being authored with traditional red laser technology.
I thought commercial CDs were pressed, not burnt.
If you RTFA, you'll notice the bottom half of it is titled:
Why this is all marketing nonsense
Funny how the summary left out that part.
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Nope, it's just a better made CD. Regular CDs aren't exactly problematic though, so it'll probably be one of those things where it gets used on expensive music collections to make people think they're buying premium stuff.
I read the internet for the articles.
I would have been more impressed if they'd somehow managed to keep it compatible while 'hiding' a second layer such that while you'd get the traditional old two channel audio with a traditional player, a blue laser player would be able to access the second layer, enabling high fidelity, high bitrate 6 or even 8 channel sound.
As is, it sounds like they're eliminating 'errors' by doing the equivalent of printing old 200 dpi images with a modern 1200 dpi printer. Sure, it's a bit cleaner, but there's no additional information.
I don't read AC A human right
I much prefer my half speed master cd's.
(its easy, really. burn at 24x or even 8x 'for great justice').
sheesh.....
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I think the more important thing that every is missing here is that Steve Guttenberg seems to have found employment again!
This guy's the limit!
my bits will be much higher fidelity than other peoples! my zeros will be round and full and my ones will be straight and clean!
This program was made possible by a grant from the Ultra-Humanite, and viewers like you.
Of course, most drives manufactured these days are designed to handle the oddities of CD-Rs ...
Oddly enough, I found that my old CD-Rs (from 2001) can't be read on a modern tri-format DVD writer, but can be read accurately on a Sony-branded CDROM drive. I've verified it by copying out a 300MB ZIP file and testing it.
Of course, I found I can read my old pressed CDROMs (from 1993).
Anyway, to keep on topic ... link to Blue-spec CD. Oh my goodness, the article's changing right before my very eyes (21:12, 26 February 2009)!
So, since a CD is digital, with error correction codes, the ONLY thing this solves is that it might make it easier for a cheap, portable CD player to read the disk. When you rip that CD to a lossless audio file, current technology will do that just fine.
Uh...hello? What exactly is the point, then? Last I heard, portable CD players have been made completely and utterly obsolete due to the advent of portable MP3 players, which are now cheaper, smaller, and can hold a whole CD binder worth of music in a device smaller than a cellphone.
The only problem I've ever had with audible "errors" on CD are when the publishers have introduced them as part of some sort of brain dead DRM attempt!
Stick a better anti-scratch coating on the data side of CDs
(and DVDs), and they'll be much better than just cutting the pits and lands more accurately.
There's no difference between the audio CD and the one with data.
Yes there is. At some conceptual point in the Compact Disc system, Compact Disc Digital Audio can be thought of as having 44100 stereo samples per second, each 4 bytes long, for 176,400 bytes per second. Once this becomes momentarily unreadable, CD-DA players have to use signal-processing methods to hide the dropouts. Compact Disc Read Only Memory, on the other hand, has 75 blocks of 2,048 bytes per second, and some of the missing 22,800 bytes are filled with an extra block of error correction codes. The drive starts to use this extra ECC once parts of the lower layer become uncorrectable, making a CD-ROM disc remain perfectly readable longer than a CD-DA disc.
(CIRC and subcodes are beyond the scope of the point I'm making here.)
Instead of that bullcr**, they could just stop reducing the dynamic range of our music and give us back the sound our CDs were supposed to produce...
See : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
I want DVD-Audio standard in all contemporary "CD players" hitting the markets, but this isn't happening. It should have been happening years ago. MP3-containing CDs happened, but DVD-audio never caught on... would have been out of bounds for MP3 to encode anyway (5 channels), and we'd all be using Ogg Vorbis.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
This pointless technology serves no more audio-fidelity improving purpose than the hundreds of ridiculous inert gimmicks gullible "audiophiles" have been buying for years, such as Stop Light Pen or the fabulous $485 wooden knob. Disappointing to see cash-hemorrhaging Sony in desperation stoop to the level of these other scamsters.
SACD and DVD-audio both offer actual audio fidelity improvement, but were always commercial non-starters given the expensive and mostly obscure hardware needed for playback. Imagine if the DVD consortium back in the day had included the DVD-audio specification in the basic DVD player profile so that all the millions of DVD players out there today could play them. We would have had ubiquitous high-quality audio playback hardware today, and a greater market would have accordingly existed for high quality disc-based audio formats. It might have kept the recording industry scam going for longer.
This technology works by increasing the resolution of the bits coded onto the CD, so that the zeros are rounder, and the ones have the little tip at the top, and a flat line along the bottom.
But seriously... How about we improve CDs by setting a standard that eliminates harsh audio compression, and sets limits on the audio leveling..?
Of course blue lasers are better to author CD's. Want proof of the superiority of blue?
GI Joe v. Cobra: Good guys have blue lasers
Jedi v. Sith: Good guys have blue light sabers and blue lasers, the bad guys have red
Smurfs v. Gargmel: Good guys are blue, bad guy has a reddish cat.
I rest my case.
new format found:
http://media.philly.com/images/condom.jpg