HiRez Poll Morrison, Van - MOONDANCE [Blu-Ray Audio]

[JonUrban]

Please post your thoughts and comments on the October 2013 release of this classic album, mixed by Elliot Scheiner.

 

[d0zer]

After repeated listening, there's no doubt for me: the blu ray deserves at least 10 points for the music and for the surround mix. The discs with alternative takes and work in progress takes is, to be honest, a bit too much. After the 6th version of one song (even if it's Caravan or Into The Mystic) it gets a bit tiresome. I don't think I'm gonna listen to this too often (apart from the blu ray that is). I'd much preferred a double cd & blu ray version...

 

[inquadwetrust]

Usual box set quibbles aside this is an Elliott Scheiner mix and a ten year old one at that. He was one of the original engineers and the liners notes he's added make mention that he was a little concerned about it being sourced from the original 8-track master. He goes on to say he was very pleased with the final result. He finishes by hoping enough people get to hear it - maybe a reference to it's expensive box set placement rather than a stand alone disc. It's beautiful and long overdue! Fidelity is a slight improvement on the Layla Scheiner mix with the sources similarly showing age but still rich with character and fine detail. Placement is wonderfully discrete, as you'd expect from the man who set the standard for modern surround mixing and mastering. I'm on my third listen in a row (ten years of missed listening to make up for). 10.

What I would like to mention is that the bluray is tiny - under 6GB (good indication of it's original DVDA destination) and it defaults to immediate play as Dolby TruHD 5.1. There is a track list screen but no other menus, pop up or main. I accessed the stereo 24/192 Dolby TruHD via the audio selection on my Oppo BDP-83. There is no PCM or DTS HD Master Audio option, at least for myself and my Oppo. No thoughts to comparison as there are none to be made. Res ipsa loquitor.

 

[oxenholme]

10. Absolutely superb.

 

[elmer]

Stoned me to my soul!

A 10!

 

[alk3997]

I've had the Blu-Ray disc not be able to play on an OPPO BDP-93 and a DENON Blu-Ray player.

Edit: Got it to play on a Sony Blu-Ray disc player. Unfortunately every track except for one had an audio gap in the middle of it. The time of the gap did not correspond to the beginning or end of the track, nor was there a consistent time between the gaps. If I didn't know better I'd say the old DVD-Audio buffer fill problem had made it to Blu-Ray.

BTW, the OPPO reports Unknown Disc and the DENON reports No Disc. Multiple tries on both.

Here's a strange thing - If I leave the disc in the OPPO, sometimes the OPPO continues to show "Loading" and then if you hit "Open", the disc will not be ejected. If you then press the front standby button (on/off button), and the turn the OPPO back on, the disc will then start playing. No silence gaps in the middle of the gaps either. This is really feeling like bad programming but I'll get a replacement from Amazon to be sure.

One interesting thing was that the audio rates on the Sony showed a few peaks above 10 and 11 mbps, which is above the DVD-Audio spec (and I thought above what 5.1-channel 96kHz TrueHD should give).

 

[Cheezmo]

Oppo released a firmware update for the BDP-93 in the last couple of days, make sure you have that. Blu-ray compatibility is alway on the updates list.

I've had the Blu-Ray disc not be able to play on an OPPO BDP-93 and a DENON Blu-Ray player.

Edit: Got it to play on a Sony Blu-Ray disc player. Unfortunately every track except for one had an audio gap in the middle of it. The time of the gap did not correspond to the beginning or end of the track, nor was there a consistent time between the gaps. If I didn't know better I'd say the old DVD-Audio buffer fill problem had made it to Blu-Ray.

BTW, the OPPO reports Unknown Disc and the DENON reports No Disc. Multiple tries on both.

Here's a strange thing - If I leave the disc in the OPPO, sometimes the OPPO continues to show "Loading" and then if you hit "Open", the disc will not be ejected. If you then press the front standby button (on/off button), and the turn the OPPO back on, the disc will then start playing. No silence gaps in the middle of the gaps either. This is really feeling like bad programming but I'll get a replacement from Amazon to be sure.

One interesting thing was that the audio rates on the Sony showed a few peaks above 10 and 11 mbps, which is above the DVD-Audio spec (and I thought above what 5.1-channel 96kHz TrueHD should give).

 

[leevitalone1]

One interesting thing was that the audio rates on the Sony showed a few peaks above 10 and 11 mbps, which is above the DVD-Audio spec (and I thought above what 5.1-channel 96kHz TrueHD should give).

Not to be mean, but how can you compare the two in a sony? They do not do dvd audio.

 

[fredblue]

Not to be mean, but how can you compare the two in a sony? They do not do dvd audio.

its the Moondance Blu-ray alk3997 is talking about, no? (the DVD-A never made it out of the vaults!)

 

[alk3997]

That's correct.

What I wrote was that the Sony (from the BD) is showing an audio bitrate of over 10 mbps at certain peaks including one that hit just above 11 mbps. TrueHD uses the same (or similar) MLP encoding scheme as found on a DVD-Audio disc. However, on a DVD-Audio disc the maximum peak allowed is roughly 9.8 mbps because of the limitations of the DVD disc.

However, on a DVD-Audio disc, 9.8 mbps is sufficient to get a lossless 5.1-channel 96/24 output. So, my curiosity was why would a Blu-Ray disc need a higher bitrate than that? After all, you can't get "better" than lossless given a fixed bitrate and bit-depth.

Also I think someone posted that TrueHD was a sign that Moondance was originally a DVD-Audio disc, perhaps implying that the MLP from the DVD-Audio disc was just transferred. I wanted to point out that the TrueHD bitrates were incompatible with a DVD-Audio disc (assuming the Sony was accurate). So, that was not a good indicator.

My replacement disc is on its way, according to Amazon.

 

[rusinurbe]

Wow first listen today the Blu Ray was worth the price of the set thats for sure This should push into the QQ top 10 for sure for teh mix the extras and packaging a different kettle of fish, I would give that a 2 at best, Bent the cover back to get at the disc and it separated from the inner the glue used is appauling. have not read the booklet yet its just too fraught with danger

 

[Cheezmo]

Flac is a lossless compression scheme and most compressors have settings that allow you trade off compression speed vs. file size. Perhaps TrueHD has something similar and since there was no limitation on Blu-ray, they just left it at a setting that produced a larger file.

 

[atrocity]

Got it to play on a Sony Blu-Ray disc player. Unfortunately every track except for one had an audio gap in the middle of it. The time of the gap did not correspond to the beginning or end of the track, nor was there a consistent time between the gaps. If I didn't know better I'd say the old DVD-Audio buffer fill problem had made it to Blu-Ray.

I haven't tried the Oppo yet, but it played in a much older Panasonic...with a very slight gap/glitch/dropout in one song (I already have forgotten which). I've sucked the bits into the computer and converted to FLAC, hopefully I'll soon have a chance to see how that plays.

 

[0tto]

That's correct.

What I wrote was that the Sony (from the BD) is showing an audio bitrate of over 10 mbps at certain peaks including one that hit just above 11 mbps. TrueHD uses the same (or similar) MLP encoding scheme as found on a DVD-Audio disc. However, on a DVD-Audio disc the maximum peak allowed is roughly 9.8 mbps because of the limitations of the DVD disc.

However, on a DVD-Audio disc, 9.8 mbps is sufficient to get a lossless 5.1-channel 96/24 output. So, my curiosity was why would a Blu-Ray disc need a higher bitrate than that? After all, you can't get "better" than lossless given a fixed bitrate and bit-depth.

not really only DVD-A
9 mbps is a bandwidth of data can be read from DVD disc.
6 channel of PCM @96/24 on average contains 13 mbps data.
that's why was developed PPCM(MLP) compression, which allows to write/read data to/from disc
within DVD specification with following uncompression by the player into full 13mbps stream.
BD as of today has bandwith @ 72 mbps

 

[alk3997]

not really only DVD-A
9 mbps is a bandwidth of data can be read from DVD disc.
6 channel of PCM @96/24 on average contains 13 mbps data.
that's why was developed PPCM(MLP) compression, which allows to write/read data to/from disc
within DVD specification with following uncompression by the player into full 13mbps stream.
BD as of today has bandwith @ 72 mbps

Otto, that was my point. Even though BD has a bigger bandwidth, why is it needed since MLP (and TrueHD uses MLP) produces a lossless 96/24 5.1-channel output at 9.6 mbps? Those extra bits aren't really needed for 96/24 5.1-channel lossless. You can't make it "more lossless" by adding extra bits. - they don't carry any extra information over 9.6 mbps max MLP.

Thinking about it some more, it is possible that the extra bits are used for the DD+ core in TrueHD, which the DVD-A MLP did not have. Maybe some metadata accounts for the rest. There was also some "funky stuff" that MLP did to fit within 9.6 mpbs (looked at the Surcode MLP encoder spec and it says 9.6 mbps max for MLP). Maybe that has been relaxed in the TrueHD implementation of MLP.

It was more of a curiousity question than anything else.

(and wish I could still find a valid Surcode MLP license somewhere - at a discount, of course).

 

[steelydave]

The whole point of MLP is in it's name - Lossless Packing. The audio bitrate of 5.1 channels of uncompressed 96/24 audio is somewhere around 11.5mb/sec. The maximum data transfer rate of DVD is about 9.6mb/sec. What MLP is doing is losslessly compressing the 11.5mb/sec audio stream so that it comes out at less than 9.6mb/sec, just like FLAC does with audio files on your computer, obviously with each using their own proprietary lossless codec. This is the major reason the DVD-A format was even invented, because it's impossible to fit 5.1 96/24 uncompressed audio within the DVD-V spec.

If your amp is telling you that you're getting 11.5mb/sec from an MLP source, it's most likely the 'unpacked' data rate, ie after the MLP has been un-MLP'ed.

 

[LizardKing]

Depending on the player usually I believe the bit rate (displayed) is the video and audio streams combined.. of course the video is more Mb/s on a Blu-ray....

 

[alk3997]

The whole point of MLP is in it's name - Lossless Packing. The audio bitrate of 5.1 channels of uncompressed 96/24 audio is somewhere around 11.5mb/sec. The maximum data transfer rate of DVD is about 9.6mb/sec. What MLP is doing is losslessly compressing the 11.5mb/sec audio stream so that it comes out at less than 9.6mb/sec, just like FLAC does with audio files on your computer, obviously with each using their own proprietary lossless codec. This is the major reason the DVD-A format was even invented, because it's impossible to fit 5.1 96/24 uncompressed audio within the DVD-V spec.

If your amp is telling you that you're getting 11.5mb/sec from an MLP source, it's most likely the 'unpacked' data rate, ie after the MLP has been un-MLP'ed.

No, that's incorrect. Uncompressed 5.1-channel, 96kHz, 24-bits is 13,824,000 bits per second. Never approached that and if it were uncompressed, then the bitrate would be (or should be) a constant number. Only MLP causes the bitrate to vary. So, there is no way that was the cause.

LizardKing, the Sony has separate bitrate monitors. I was seeing a varying number below 2 mbps for the MPEG2 video. I believe the bitrate that I was looking at was labeled "TrueHD" but I'll go back an double-check. Subtract ~2 mbps and the numbers would be about right.

 

[steelydave]

I think we're both saying the same thing actually, aside from you're counting the .1 channel as a full bandwidth channel in your bitrate calculations.

 

[0tto]

perhaps confusion comes from bitrate counting by hardware gear.
seems the player count data on the way from disc to buffer, that's why you have during playback varying amount.
from buffer the data goes to decoder from which you have constant stream as PCM.
DVD-A 5.1 with 48/24 stream not encoded into MLP would show constant amount.
as for precise data in MLP, encoder work in such way, that throw away empty spots of actual signal and that's how
it compresses. as an experiment, you may take for example stream decoded from DSD and make two MLP encoded,
one as is and second, just filter out all this typical for DSD foggy noise in upper end. same stream would have different
size and bandwith bitrate during playback.
i guess we went way off topic.