Blu Spec Recommendations ?

There really shouldn't be any difference between a blu-spec Cd and playing the files off of a hard drive. It is simply a supposedly better plastic for more accurate reading of the bits. Playing from hard drive would do the same thing, perhaps even better.

Now if the mastering is different, that is another story.

 

Wow.

Do you even know what a blue spec CD is? Do you understand the claims regarding the blue laser? Do you understand that blu spec CDs and SHM CDs are not one in the same, that they offer somewhat different technical proposals for improved playback?

Apparently, if the material used to coat CDs were leather, in your world at least, there would be no change in sound?

If you truly don't comprehend how the optical qualities of the material used to coat the data layer of a CD could have an affect on the real time performance of playback, I suggest you educate yourself a bit. Start by doing a search on Google. You are simply waisting people's time here with a poorly worded question such as this.

 

Yes the blue laser supposedly writes more precise pits. Still 99.9999% of standard CDs (if unscratched) are read by CD players without even employing error correction.

So where is the advantage of more precise pits? If ripping a standard CD and a BluSpec CDs gives the same files (Barry D agrees here), how can the precision of the pits make a difference?

And yes, assuming you could write bits on leather which coud then be read properly, a leather CD would be just fine. Perhaps even quite elegant, but obviously not good for music by Morrissey or Paul McCartney!

 

99.9999%??? So you really believe that was the standard established by a technology adopted in 1980 or so? Are you confusing Red Book and Yellow Book?

And you are maintaining that no errors occur during physical production?

There is so much information on this readily available on the web that we are wasting people's time here, including our own. The differences may not necessarily be great, and they may vary from player to player (1985 Pioneer vs. 2010 "memory" player), but in most cases they are not hard to miss either.

 

Kind of Blue, Basement Tapes, Magic Sam(West Side Soul) all sound great, and with KOB, I would find it impossible to distinguish between the SACD and Blu-Spec.

With Lightnin' Hopkin's, " Mojo Hand", this is my first experience, seems to have a little echo on the vocals, and I've heard better Lightnin' from Steve's "Blues Hoot" and "Lightnin' in New York". I admit that those two set the bar really, really high, though.


YMMV

 

Have you ever heard of "AccurateRip"? How come hundreds of different copies of regular CDs when ripped produce exactly the same results?

I am not going to say anything more on this subject; if you believe that stating facts is wasting people's time then keep dreaming about how wonderful your blue laser pits are.

 

Welcome Martin.
Glad to read your observations.

 

THE ESSENTIAL CLASH is available on Blu-Spec CD?

 

Good, start another thread on the topic you choose, this thread was started to ask for Blu-Spec recommendations.

 

Why? Are you really amused?

 

Which goes back to my original point - if you can't play a (non-scratched, decent) normal CD on your CD player without getting ENOUGH ERRORS TO CAUSE AN AUDIBLE DIFFERENCE, then your player really is that bad. The point of digital audio is so it doesn't sound different every time you play a disc... you should be hearing the same thing (minus your brain's skewed perception) each time.

Record the analog output of two discs (one blu-spec, one not) of the SAME, BIT-EXACT mastering and the outputs will be so close the only thing that won't null out is minor line noise that you can't hear anyway. Go on... do it. Or if you want to mail me one of your Blu-Spec discs, I'll make a copy and burn it in an inferior CD-R and do it myself and post the results. I'll pay shipping both ways.

 

You don't seem to understand the facts. This is a question of cd replication, not cd duplication.

 

Do yourself, and us, a favor and at least take a look at the following links before drawing half baked conclusions, or proposing flawed testing procedures. Then, perhaps, we can get back to discussing recommended discs, and maybe you can be encouraged to give a few a try.

http://www.firstimpressionmusic.com/Articles.asp?ID=132

http://www.planetoftunes.com/computer/cd_formats.htm

The only point that you can make is not that there is not a difference, but that it is not audible enough to be heard. We are discussing the physical manufacturing of a physical media, not ripping files on your computer, and how it affects the physical real time replay, not how your files are ripped.

 

gorts, please edit this of extraneous threadcraps so we can have a clean thread of recommended Blu-spec discs for our Forum.

Open another for the foodfights.

 

I received the Rock & Soul Part 1 blu-spec cd - I have given it a couple of spins and it sounds pretty good... you can hear some tape hiss now and again ;-)

I played it after listening to the SHM-SACD of Stevie Wonder's SITKOL and the blu-spec was a wee bit louder.

I haven't compared it to my original or the best of compilation that I have somewhere.

Anyone else have any thoughts???

 

Yes. I have tried. And I also hear this effect; clearer, cleaner sound with "black" background, much like the effect I hear on these SHM-SACDs.
But the effect is only for a short time, if you want it for ever, you must give your polycarbonates CDs a cryogenic treatment.

 

The first link is questionable; the second isn't helpful.

If real-time playback were as vulnerable to pressing exigencies as you suggest--and if those errors actually made the difference in "sound quality" often attributed to them--then listening to a CD would be like listening to a heavily damaged analog tape. Highs would cut in and out; bass would become more or less focused; and so on.

Of course, that doesn't happen. And the reason why it doesn't happen is that errors--which are constantly present in the bitstream--have a threshold under which they are corrected exactly. This is why, for example, the following experiment would work: take a CD, play it real-time through a digital out, record output digitally. Take out the CD, give it a nasty scratch (from center to rim), and do it again. Voila: your files will likely cancel out perfectly, because the radial scratch did not damage enough neighboring content to cause any uncorrectable errors.

(and, err, if it did...well, don't scratch your CDs, m'kay?)

The entire philosophy behind Blu-Spec seems to ignore the reality above...while similarly ignoring that a) a failure to compensate for correctable errors is a fault of an individual player, and b) even assuming that errors exist, they would not affect the sound in the way described: your CD player has no idea whether fewer errors should mean "tighter bass," and it is certainly just as possible that a bitstream plagued with errors would enhance instead of diminish certain phenomena.

I am, of course, not saying that there are no worthy Blu-Spec discs. I'm sure there are...some with lovely packaging, good mastering, and agreeable play-side hues. But their worthiness should not have anything to do with their expense and their material and everything to do with source, presentation, or (as is one's wont) collectability. And stating the above is not at all against the idea of this thread.

 

F-in funny ! With at least as much scientific merit as SHM.

 

All this makes perfect sense and is completely logical. However, people like Barry D. dont get where they are, or gain their deserved reputations by making phantom claims.

 

Yeah,all that and they do sound better than standard CDs...