Neil Young Announcement - Blu-Ray is the way

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That was for the Archives set not the Fork In The Road album.[I was talking about the Fork In The Road blu ray]
 
I saw in the latest Rolling Stone that Neil's new album'll be coming out in the blu ray format in the not too very distant future.

I bought the CD/DVD set yesterday. Other than the videos and the concert "Day In The Life" track possibly being HD video and audio, what more could a BR offer? Perhaps 192kz sampling instead of 96khz but how much will this actually translate to better sound quality when it hits your ears. Also, I guess there could be some BDLive data added. I have the same comments with respect to the 3 BR discs in the Archives series that have already been released in CD/DVD versions. I have all 3 of these. Neil is going to have to explain what the BR version of these 3 have to offer before I make my mind up about buying the Archives box.
 
I got my Neil Young Archives "Sampler" Blu-Ray Saturday.

It's stereo only and includes the material from 1965 and before. Demos and tracks recorded with his early friends. There's an early demo of "Sugar Mountain", and you can really hear the "youth" in his voice. A scant few years later his voice will have filled in nicely.

The gist of the setup is basically a filing cabinet that slides open. You use your remote to move a red "round sticker" to the manilla file folder and and hit select. A file card appears displaying the track info. There's a button to press for lyrics which appear full screen in a notebook. The pages are fluid and do not interupt the music.

The sound is 24/192 stereo. This should be the advantage over the DVD and CD. If it's not important to you, then the regular DVD should be fine.

I did not try the BD Live yet.






Check it out:
 

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I got my Neil Young Archives "Sampler" Blu-Ray Saturday.

It's stereo only and includes the material from 1965 and before. Demos and tracks recorded with his early friends. There's an early demo of "Sugar Mountain", and you can really hear the "youth" in his voice. A scant few years later his voice will have filled in nicely.

The gist of the setup is basically a filing cabinet that slides open. You use your remote to move a red "round sticker" to the manilla file folder and and hit select. A file card appears displaying the track info. There's a button to press for lyrics which appear full screen in a notebook. The pages are fluid and do not interupt the music.

The sound is 24/192 stereo. This should be the advantage over the DVD and CD. If it's not important to you, then the regular DVD should be fine.

I did not try the BD Live yet.
Check it out:

I have been waiting to order this to find out whether the BR gets me anything over the regular DVD. Is there anything other than the 192 vs 96 khz sampling that warrants the BR version? Frankly I know I wouldn't be able to tell whether it is 192 or 96 I'm sure.
 
I've already noted elsewhere that the track listing seems not to have the 45 version of "Cinnamon Girl," and "War Song" is listed as mono only. Could these be hidden amongst the bonus tracks that are being mentioned? Regardless, should be a very interesting and essential collection on BluRay. And yes, it will most certainly force me to buy a player!

ED :)
 
DVD - Through a Pioneer 563A and a Panasonic F87 Massey Hall DVD displays 24/96 on my HK amp. I can't get Sugar Mountain to do the same, it will display in 48KHz only...anyone else with this problem?
 
I'm referring to the individual DVD's. Massey Hall 1971 & Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968
Sugar Mountain Live At Canterbury House 1968 - I can't get the DVD players to recognize 24/96 with this disc.
 
Both are DVD-V with linear PCM stereo 24/96 on the back cover.

Massey is fine - confirming to me that there's something wrong with the other DVD.
 
I'm referring to the individual DVD's. Massey Hall 1971 & Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968
Sugar Mountain Live At Canterbury House 1968 - I can't get the DVD players to recognize 24/96 with this disc.
Clear as mud am I - Pioneer DVD player recognizes 24/96 and I assume this is good through the analog outputs. When I switch to digital coax the amp will not recognize 24/96 from Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 (amp displays 48KHz only) as it does with Massey Hall 1971 (amp displays 96KHz), although the Pioneer does display 24/96 with both.
 
Blu Ray will remain prohibitively expensive for ALL releases that are not major studio Hollywood titles.
It is simply too expensive to produce - and if you don;t believe me, go ask anyone who set up to author them.
Most - around 99% - are losing money on a $250,000 investment in software, hardware & annual AACS site licenses/BluRay logo usage fees (yep, this is also a mandatory annual fee)
and the gear is sat there doing nothing because it is too expensive by the time all the mandatory AACS/BD+ and other crap is factored in.

Well this news is right up your alley:

http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=3027

The final AACS license also addresses one of the most frequents complaints small studios and replicators had about Blu-ray: the license fees. As summarized in a note by Sonic Solutions, AACS fees have dropped for all content holders, but the biggest savings are for first-time and low-volume publishers.

These are the fees and how they change:

AACS Content Provider Agreement Fee: this is the fee that a studio or content holder must pay to become an AACS Content Provider. It used to be $3,000 up front. Now it is payable in annual $500 increments, and the Content Provider can terminate its agreement at any time. This one change makes it possible for first-time and low volume content holders to get going with BD with a much lower start-up investment and at affordable per-title costs.

Content Certificate and Order Fulfilment Fee: this fee is for each glass master produced. It has dropped from $1,300 per title to $500 per title.

Media fee: this fee is applied for each disc replicated, and it stays unchanged at $0.04 per disc.

For example, the AACS costs for a first-time Blu-ray Disc publisher (for a run of 2,000 copies) has dropped from $4,380 (3,000 + 1,300 + 0.04 * 2,000) to just $1,080 (500 + 500 + 0.04 * 2,000), that is to say, a saving of over 75%.

For a publisher that has already been publishing on BD and hence has already paid his Content Provider Agreement Fee, the fees to publish a run of 2,000 units have dropped from $1,380 to just $580.

Not sure what makes up the $1/4 million investment you're seeing, would be interested to see a breakdown.
 
Neil hated the first CDs. But he has embraced DVD-A and now Blu-Ray. To me, the reason is simple. The higher the sampling rate and bit rate used for a transfer, the closer one comes to the original wave form, correct? If so, the 24 bit, 192 kHz Blu-Ray discs should sound great, even if only in stereo. I think he just wants his fans to get the best possible recording. I'm all for it.
 
Neil hated the first CDs. But he has embraced DVD-A and now Blu-Ray. To me, the reason is simple. The higher the sampling rate and bit rate used for a transfer, the closer one comes to the original wave form, correct?

Nope. Which is just a reminder the way digital audio works is often counterintuitive.

As per Shannon-Nyquist, higher sampling rate increases bandwidth (the highest frequency captured), not accuracy. Going from 44.1 to 88.2 SR does not increase the accuracy within 20 kHz, it extends the captured range to 44kHz.

In practice, higher sampling rates can have a benefit because 'perfect' Shannon-Nyquist conditions for A/D and D/A -- which require perfect filtering out of all frequencies above 1/2 of the sample rate -- do not apply in the real world. So applying higher SR before filtering prevent 'leakage' of out-of-band frequencies into the desired band ('aliasing' and 'imaging'). This explain the use of 'oversampling' in modern 44.1 digital players. It is not there to increase inherent accuracy per se, but to keep what's there from being degraded by artifacts from imperfectly-fitlered out-of band frequencies.

As for increasing wordlengths (bit depth), its effect is to expand the range of amplitudes that can be captured. For old analog tapes like Neil Young's, 96 dB of range (supplied by Redbook) is certainly sufficient, thsoe tapes are already limited in their range by their inherent tape noise (not to mention whatever noise the bands' amps had, and the old analog recording signal chain). However, as with sample rates, there is a practical consideration for going to more bits. That is when digital processing (such as during mastering, or during playback) will be applied to the 'raw' digital signal. In that case you want more bits available to prevent *new* quantization distortion that can be accrue during such processing, from becoming audible. (It's also useful in recording, when peak level is unknown in advance -- 24 bits gives you more 'headroom' to avoid distortion in case there is a sudden loud spike.)
 
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