Pioneer's TAD shows off a new Blu-ray audio format at CES

Technical Audio Devices (TAD), a subsidiary of Pioneer, has a little something to show audiophiles that may lure them away from their CD transports yet -- a new 2-channel audio format for Blu-ray discs that it unapologetically claims "rivals 2-channel analog sound." We're not sure if that means reel-to-reel or vinyl is in the crosshairs, but the company is putting its apparently-unnamed format up for demo at CES. The demos are being hosted by none other than audiophile classic Sheffield Labs recording engineers Bill Schnee and Doug Sax, who have picked out some choice cuts to be played on pro-level TAD Compact Reference monitors and associated electronics; no word on if whiskey is part of the demo.

[SITEiNK @ Jan 7th 2009 4:33AM]

i am a fan of high-resolution audio, so hopefully this will score where DVD-Audio and SACD failed.





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[Blastar @ Jan 7th 2009 4:57AM]

I think that Bluray Audio Discs are too much.
It would be something like 1GB per track for a 15 Track disc.. ????
Comparing to the CD quality its almost twenty times higher on uncompressed format like PCM.

Imagine what a scratch could do to these tiny (compare to the CD) bits!!!

[B3astofthe3ast @ Jan 7th 2009 5:15AM]

Good thing they aren't easily scratched. At all.

[Pretol @ Jan 7th 2009 6:03AM]

the only place the previous HD audio formats have failed is adoption. And this new format is going to fail just the same. Truth is there are 2 people on the planet that are waiting for this new format. The rest of the people are deaf in one ear, and have a 20hz to 8khz range in the other, and are more than happy listening to 128kb mp3's.

[faustuscm @ Jan 7th 2009 6:37AM]

Pretol: for the record I demand at least 192k MP3s

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Jan 7th 2009 1:52PM]

Listen 192k on a decent set of speakers ($500+ headphones) and you would demand CD quality or better. But your poor little cheap ear buds and ipod dock can resolve sound about as well as a 320 x 480 monitor can display HD video. I recommend you get some decent Paradigm Studio or (better) Signature S8 speakers and some high quality Amplification from Adcom . Until you have better equipment, you really shouldn't dismiss or critique higher resolution audio formats.

[AuDioFreaK39 @ Jan 7th 2009 7:01AM]

I seriously cannot wait for these demonstrations! Seems like I've been waiting for Blu-ray audio for years now..

[iPhoney @ Jan 7th 2009 7:55AM]

the major labels will never go for this, I mean look what happened to DVD audio, as much as I'd love a dedicated channel for each instrument in a classical piece, it just isn't gonna happen, sadly, mpeg 3 is here to stay

[Tarnation @ Jan 7th 2009 8:48AM]

Up until about a year and a half ago I had never heard the term audiophile which by the way sounds way to much like pedophile. Anything phile just can't be good. Back to audiophiles they are ravenous people who can be satisfied by digital audio unless it is uncompressed and each file is in excess of 20MB.

I had to go find a quiet corner and bang my head against the wall after I met an audiophile. Audiophiles are those bad people who buy those really expensive monster cables with the extremely thick rubber sheath and crappy gold plating because they think it makes a difference. I kid, but when did MP3s at 320bit become not good enough for you people I can see 128 and 192 yeah those aren't as good, but come on really.

[Flaystus @ Jan 7th 2009 9:25AM]

No, Audiophiles are the ones that condemn monster cables for their crappiness then try to make their own.

[LostPhil @ Jan 7th 2009 9:55AM]

Actually, mp3 fails at whatever bit rate when trying to encode certain instruments - there's always lost audio data and people who've spent £200 plus (and whatever $'s that's equivalent to) on headphones etc will most probably hear the difference. It'll be the difference between 1080i and 1080p for movie lovers.

Oh and uncompressed and lossless are too different things but I guess you probably know that anyway.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Jan 7th 2009 2:04PM]

More like 480i and 1080p

[fatcabral @ Jan 7th 2009 6:23PM]

come on, admit it. you're really Sarah Palin, right? how come you didn't say audiophiles are terrorists? it's one thing not to care about, or be able to hear a difference. but it's not excusable to insist no one else should care.

what all of us should be pushing for are playback technologies that can be scaled up for mass production to drive costs down. the playback format is at the heart of the issue. the nice thing about PCM is that it is the first and most mature format, with less potential to cause technology dead-ends.

we should not demand compression if it leads to non-universal formats. bandwidth is the need; low cost components and interconnects should be the goal.

[loosely_coupled @ Jan 7th 2009 8:42PM]

"Audiophile" sounds like "pedophile"? Are you twelve?

Regardless, high-end audio "enthusiasts" certainly don't buy rip-off Monster cables --- you are clearly confusing people who have good equipment and know what the hell they are talking about to mindless, wealthy idiots who have more money than sense.

[LostPhil @ Jan 7th 2009 9:58AM]

(oh and most sensible audiophiles know that Monter cables are overpriced - it's the AV enthusiasts that waste their money on £50+ HDMI cables when even technically it wont even make a difference that you want to watch out for)

[bradwjensen @ Jan 7th 2009 11:12AM]

It would be nice if these Blu-ray Discs could be "Imported" or "Ripped" to the computer as easy as CDs are.

Even better, if the music came on the disc in the FLAC format and Blu-ray Audio players just handled the FLAC files on the disc. :) That way all the songs can already be tagged, be 'lossless' and be copied (rather than ripped) to the computer for enjoying.

[kingu @ Jan 7th 2009 12:54PM]

I couldnt agree more.

[synthetic @ Jan 7th 2009 12:26PM]

Schnee and Sax were at the AES convention in October shopping for someone to produce a new audio format at 192kHz/24-bit PCM, essentially replacing DVD-Audio. They wanted them to be unprotected WAV files on a disc to make the format open. I would rather see a new format for DSD audio, which sounds better than PCM to me. A return to SACD by Sony would be ideal, perhaps the market is more open to it now.

[swamitommi @ Jan 7th 2009 12:54PM]

This sure sounds great to me - anything to get the hi-rez ball rolling again. I've been wondering when we'd see a hi-rez format based on blu-ray - one that might hold up where DVD-A and SACD failed. True that the failure was in adoption, not in the quality of those formats - but maybe another run at this will create enough critical mass that we can get off PCM once and for all. Personally, I'd love to see music lovers be able to leapfrog an investment in vinyl/analog with downloadable hi-rez music. MusicGiants is doing a bit of that. Imagine if we could actually get back to the audio quality of the 70s as a standard - but in a digital, storable, tagable format! I've often wondered if the reason most people don't care about audio quality is simply that they don't know any better - most perhaps haven't heard a good analog system, and had the opportunity to compare it against a good CD system, and then again against compressed audio files. I could be wrong too. It could be that audiophiles simply have better hearing - but I don't think so. I think it's that audiophiles know there's better sound out there and want to hear it. They know and they care. Maybe a majority of people either don't know & don't care or know & don't care. I'll bet there's a huge number of music fans out there that fall in the don't know & do care category though. These are the people (along with bona fide audiophiles) that would really benefit from a new standard audio format that could potentially achieve higher resolution than vinyl (and therefore much higher than CD).

[Javatar @ Jan 7th 2009 2:19PM]

I beg to differ. I am patiently awaiting a format like this that will allow me to not have to collect vinyl any further. Headphone and speaker technology will advance, and even MP3 players down the road will need this kind of resolution.

The lesson the record companies need to take away is this: Get this format out there, price it as close to CD's as possible, and begin withdrawing CD's .. this will give the format the chance it needs to survive. The mistake they made was to have albums available in MP3, vinyl, CD, SACD, and DVD-Audio, all at the same time (e.g. I own Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon and Fleetwood Mac Rumors on all these formats).

[Vitor @ Jan 9th 2009 5:56PM]

I wonder how much mbps it will be. Dolby True HD is about 5mbps...so 2 uncompressed channels would be much more than 5 compressed ones?

[Keith @ Jan 13th 2009 11:09PM]

The thing I couldn't pick up from the story - is this intended to be compatable with existing video Blu-Ray playback equiepment?
Since current Blu-Ray players such as the PS3 can playback audio tracks sampled at 192kHZ 24 bit over HDMI - is there a need for another format? The press releases say they will be using 192kHz/24bit DAC's for the demo - so it does not sound like they are exceeding current technology.

Is this simply a new label to indicate high quality audio from recording to playback using existing Blu-Ray technology? I'm not getting it.

Looking forward to it though. I'd love to see high quality "box sets on a disk" or high quality surround mixes as well.