CD audio vs. Blu-Ray audio

actfray

New Member
I own a pair of Pioneer Andrew Jones FS-52 speakers. When I play Blu-Rays on my Samsung player, the audio is fantastic - rich, full, and very clear. I recently saw the movie "Baby Driver", and the music on the soundtrack sounded tremendous. My receiver is a Yamaha V-502.

I also have an old Sony CD player CDP-491. It still works well, however, the sound I get from my CD's isn't nearly as rich as my Blu-Rays. They all sound somewhat mid-rangey and dull. I've played them on the Blu-Ray player and I get the same results.

I know that CD's are generally inferior to the sound quality of Blu-Rays, but is there any way to improve the sound of my CD's? I don't want to spend a fortune on a new CD player and be disappointed with the results.

Thank you!

Craig
 

The CD is capable of better playback than most people realize. Historically ... it's always been that way w/ formats.
Technology (playback audio quality) just keeps getting better over time. Briefly covered in the first minutes of the YouTube video above.
The cost of a player like the one noted in the video is more than your average Joe will ever want to spend.

IMHO & experience ... change your equipment and you can change your results & impressions. What does it cost?

That number is different for everybody. One low cost option is to take a coaxial or optical
out (your CD player/if so equiped) to a modern DAC ... like the Schiit Modi 2 Uber or Modi 2 Uber Multi Bit.
 
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Welcome to AudioKarma!

When you played your CDs on your bluray player, you said you got the same results- the CDs still sounded a bit dull by comparision? It is likely just the CDs you are using.

Modern soundtracks are getting better and better- why not buy the soundtrack for Baby Driver on CD and compare that with the bluray?

A good CD and a good BluRay should be sonically indistinguishable on good gear unless the engineers have messed with the sound to make the BluRay sound 'better'. Your vintage Sony CDP-491 is a good machine and will give an excellent account of itself in a fair comparison.
 
The soundtrack on that blu-ray is EQed in a certain way and you seem to like it. Probably coded in DTS, too. You are not comparing the blu-ray to CD, you are comparing a soundtrack that is mastered in a certain sound curve (specific to home theater) to the music on a CD that is mastered in a different, more honest I'd say, way.
 
Welcome to AudioKarma!

When you played your CDs on your bluray player, you said you got the same results- the CDs still sounded a bit dull by comparision? It is likely just the CDs you are using.

Modern soundtracks are getting better and better- why not buy the soundtrack for Baby Driver on CD and compare that with the bluray?

A good CD and a good BluRay should be sonically indistinguishable on good gear unless the engineers have messed with the sound to make the BluRay sound 'better'. Your vintage Sony CDP-491 is a good machine and will give an excellent account of itself in a fair comparison.
Why should it be indistinguishable? Bear with my ignorance, I don't mean to pester you. When bluray was announced, suggestions were that CD would probably be available in the new format with the promise of drastically increased resolution due to the inherent superiority of a blue laser. It never materialized but my question is, is there not more information/resolution enbedded in bluray or has the recording process not taken advantage of the technology? If not, what's the point?
 
BluRay is storing video and audio, with a 25GB capacity, around 42 times the capacity of a CD.

The audio on a typical BluRay will be multi channel Dolby Digital (lossy) or DTS (lossy) with the possibility of a LPCM track of up to 24/192 (not sure if you'd get that alongside a DTS track though). The optional audio formats may exist alongside one of the mandatory ones.

Not sure about Baby Driver, but I'd be surprised if there was a 2ch LPCM track of 24/192 on it- it may be a 16/48/96 so it may be much the same as a CD at 16/44.
 
IMHO ... digital playback technology continues to move forward ... BUT ... the general public is not going to be convinced to re-buy their record collection again
... like in the early days of Redbook CD.
 
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It's hard to make blanket statements about formats. A full-res recording on CD could sound better than a compressed recording on Blu-Ray. It depends on a lot of factors. If something sounds especially good on Blu-Ray, it could be because the engineers spent extra effort on mastering the recording that wasn't spent on the CD release.
 
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Are there bluray recordings that devote the entire resolution capability to audio taken from original analog master recordings?
 
Are there bluray recordings that devote the entire resolution capability to audio taken from original analog master recordings?

There are plenty music records on BD. Many are done in 24/192/5.1 format with lossless encoding. One of pioneers of BD audio was 2L label. Get any of their BDs and listen.
 
I'm going to say it's different mastering. Most CDs are mastered poorly thanks to loudness wars, resulting in compressed dynamic range. Movie soundtracks on the other hand are usually very well mastered with full dynamic range.
 
So - to do a true comparison, we need to know what CDs you are talking about. I have CDs from the early days of CDs that were (pretty much) just dumped from the master tapes to CD with no special mastering or anything. (Some older Stevie Nicks recordings come to mind). I have more recent remastered CDs where the old master tapes were transferred with better equalization and transferred to CD in an improved fashion that are miles and miles beyond the early generation compact discs.
I also have DVD-Audio discs that are pretty impressive, and bluray PureAudio discs (of Quadrophenia and Beck's Sea Changes, for instance) that are spectacular.

In short - it really depends on what CDs you are talking about, what generation recording - all of that stuff.
Just talking about "CDs" doesn't provide enough information.

Oh - Quadrophenia is way over priced now, but you can still get YES - Relayer in the Bluray PureAudio format for a reasonable fee - (remastered by Steve Wilson, who has done a BUNCH of the better remasterings lately!)

https://smile.amazon.com/Relayer-YES/dp/B00NAYYSS8/


I own a pair of Pioneer Andrew Jones FS-52 speakers. When I play Blu-Rays on my Samsung player, the audio is fantastic - rich, full, and very clear. I recently saw the movie "Baby Driver", and the music on the soundtrack sounded tremendous. My receiver is a Yamaha V-502.

I also have an old Sony CD player CDP-491. It still works well, however, the sound I get from my CD's isn't nearly as rich as my Blu-Rays. They all sound somewhat mid-rangey and dull. I've played them on the Blu-Ray player and I get the same results.

I know that CD's are generally inferior to the sound quality of Blu-Rays, but is there any way to improve the sound of my CD's? I don't want to spend a fortune on a new CD player and be disappointed with the results.

Thank you!

Craig
 
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But if you listen to the first few minutes of the PS Audio video, he is saying that the information has always been on the CD just as it was on the LP and the only difference is the playback equipment. I think I counted 100 instances of the word "timing" lol. They say that just like turntable tech took until 2008 to finally reach a level where it can extract all the information on vinyl, so has CD playback tech finally after 35 (is my math correct? 1982) years reached a point where CDs can sound as good as High Res audio.
 
But if you listen to the first few minutes of the PS Audio video, he is saying that the information has always been on the CD just as it was on the LP and the only difference is the playback equipment. I think I counted 100 instances of the word "timing" lol. They say that just like turntable tech took until 2008 to finally reach a level where it can extract all the information on vinyl, so has CD playback tech finally after 35 (is my math correct? 1982) years reached a point where CDs can sound as good as High Res audio.
My understanding is that vinyl has 3 times the information that Redbook CD has and that bluray brings it up to par. So without the incidental deficits of vinyl playback to compromise resolution, there is no comparison between Redbook CD and Bluray, potentially. Is it that Bluray's potential is just not being taken advantage of?
 
Yea I know this thread is 6 years , oh well.

I have had largely the same experience. Bluray sound absolutely blows away any CD or Wave file I have ever heard. I have never heard a service such as Tidal or any DSD so I cant comment there.


(I got a pair of FS-52 speakers that I use in my small sound system. Wonderful speakers)
 
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