botleysmith posted:Only thing those formats do is confuse 99% of listeners.
That's incorrect, over 20% of US households now own a Blu-ray player. What's confusing about inserting a disc and pressing PLAY?
botleysmith posted:So burn a DVD-R... just about every decent player on the market will play .WAV files with no problem, and 45 minutes of lossless audio is hardly going to fill even a single-layer disc on its own. Even if you have kids and a job, that's dead simple to figure out. Certainly more so than hooking up a surround sound system properly.
Really? Plug HDMI from Blu-ray to receiver. Plug LEFT speaker into LEFT, RIGHT into RIGHT, CENTRE into CENTRE, LEFT SURROUND into LEFT SURROUND, RIGHT SURROUND into RIGHT SURROUND, plug in power, press POWER, press "BD", press PLAY. Most HTiB's (cringe) are colour-coded and have proprietary connectors so you don't have to understand banana plugs or crimp your connections.
botleysmith posted:
Your and Sheepdean's own personal iPod hatred aside, that is how a huge number of people listen to music now. I think they sound great
They don't though, regardless of your headphones, it's still lossy, usually devoid of any dynamics worth mentioning, brickwalled and limited up the yazoo and usually 128 Kbps. It's quite easily discernable from CD quality, which is why CD is still the #1 selling format for albums substantially ahead of digital downloads. In 2010 individual track sales of DD's have finally evened off, which is great news, hopefully record companies start to wonder why and figure out the detrimental effect iTunes has had on music.
botleysmith posted:bottom line is that 24-bit audio sounds better than the same thing on a CD, even those CDs that are up-converted and played through the best system around — and that difference is noticeable even on portables.
No chance, 24-bit on a portable doesn't hold a candle to 16-bit on a decent CD player. The problem with CD is that most people aren't playing them on CD players anymore, the DAC's are designed around 24-bit and 48/96/192kHz playback, not 44.1 kHz. On a properly set-up system I would be surprised if 5% of people off the street could tell the difference between a 16/44.1 and 24/96 stereo track. Most people are so used to crappy .mp3 dynamic-free crap these days the don't know what to listen for. I would agree that if you spent a couple hours pointing out the differences and what specifically to listen for (increased presence, more resolved silibance, etc) that the number might grown slightly, but usually it's highly trained ears that will notice the difference. In addition this would only apply if they were mastered the same way, otherwise I'll take a well-mastered 16-bit track over a typical 2010-mastered 24-bit track any day of the week, although usually the high rez stuff (and vinyl) doesn't succumb to the same mastering tools as iTunes and CD releases because they know their target audience.
blaylock posted:At the end of the day, it's up to the artist to insist on delivering that standard of high quality to their fans; no record company will bother with it unless they can make a buck selling some ridiculous format copy-protected up the yin-yang with a sticker on the front proclaiming its own greatness.
Blu-ray doesn't need stickers to proclaim its own greatness, the proof is in the pudding. But you're right, it's up to the artist to release on Blu-ray right now, until the labels realize the potential of the format. Tom Petty's Damn The Torpedoes comes out in 10 days on Blu-ray with 5.1 24/96 PCM goodness, can't wait, hope he continues. Guys like Trent, Neil Young, Tom Petty, they know where it's at. I have no doubt this will not be the last release of PHM and we'll get a deluxe edition within the next couple years.
Neil Young posted:iTunes has turned music into wallpaper.
Amen brothah!
