Is there a consensus as to blu ray sound quality?

Markphd - I just expressed doubts about book (Animal Farm) being witten in 1984 since author died in 1950 (book was written in 1945). I might not remember it correctly but Napoleon did not say that - it was written on the barn.

....Kr4

sorry Kal, my fingers got ahead of my brain… and thanks for the input. The singular interest I would have in BR is the audio side of things.

...others

I thought to interject this item or two as I've not seen it addressed.

if the intent here is to acquire better audible performance with formats that aren't the focus of Blue Ray players, eg., CD, SACD, DVD, etc, (given any are multi format players in the first playce) .... I'm wondering if the 'Focus' or prime intent of the player then wouldn’t over shadow any other of its format capacities?

it would seem to follow then that ANY possible gains by way of these secondary formats would then be merely, "oh, by the way..." gains.... IF at all… and dubious at best.

What I'm thinking is regardless the abilities of the wavelength of the laser reading the disc, the span of the conversion chips, damping, etc., if the initial aim is to envelope all the formats then unless the player were a no holds barred, price no object one box solution, some compromises have been surely made with regard to these ancilliary disc attributes.

If indeed greater abilities are inplace do to physical materials being used in the topology, yet aren't taken advantage of and set to task with 'as great a care' as the prime mover (BR) it seems doubtful one should expect much from these arbitrary, oh, by the way, possibilities.

... especially in mass fi and low end price points... $100 - $400.

of course one can try out a few and see if any audible day & night diffs are indeed endemic to BR players spinning 'other than' formats....

I'd not go into such a prospect of obtaining a Blue Ray unit with the hopes of also getting a better SACD, CD or DVD player in the bargain.... and certainly not for two or three hundred dollars.

I’d sure like to. That would be great! I’ll not hold my breath

I’m pretty sure the aim with these players is set to versatility and convenience over performance.

I once saw a post here, a long time back, which said the poster had plugged his CDP into the DVD digital input of his receiver to take advantage of the greater decoding range of the DVD DACs… I thought that was funny. Only if the Red Book signal was being upconverted or upsampled to the 24/96 region, would there be any reason for that move…. Otherwise it’s still like using the CD digital input.

I do hope whomever or those who do delve into this prospect by actually buying or auditioning some BR players with secondary disc playback, come back and let us know what is up with that.

Perhaps a couple of the best sounding albums like "Dark Side Of The Mood" can once again be re-mixed with BD format.

There would be a market for this one and a few others.

Of course, then we all would rant over DACs, amps, speakers, etc.

Still, if the original recording is suppose to be that good, why not?

Why not? Because, aside from realizing the multichannel aspects of these older recordings, we are asymptotically close to hearing all they have and, also, because no new medium will survive without new content.

Kal (bored with most reissues)

I hope so Kal, but the RIAA has been really stupid with their practices of the last decade. I know I would re-buy a lot of albums if they came in an uncompressed Blu-ray format!