Sheffield Labs recording legends Bill Schnee and Doug Sax will be demonstrating 24bit/192KHz audio recorded on Blu-ray discs at CES '09 this week. These recordings are suppose to appeal to audiophiles that want better quality audio than CDs or MP3s (duh!!). I'm not sure what they mean by "giving consumers an unprecedented opportunity to experience digital music that rivals 2-channel analog sound," but I'm guessing they are referring to vinyl and/or reel-to-reel tape, which technically, CD already achieves. Yah, yah, I know vinyl has a better frequency response if you can ignore the noise floor, but you need pretty high end turn tables, cartridges, etc. to achieve this.
I'm not sure if this will be an improvement over DVD-A and SACD, but since those disc formats failed, it's worth trying again. It looks like they will be using a music-only format which utilizes Blu-ray disc technology.
Since I don't have any plans to purchase a Blu-ray player, this doesn't really appeal to me. Personally, I prefer just downloading the high res audio from an online music store and storing them on our media server. All my physical discs are stored away in a closet.
Eventually, I plan to purchase a Blu-ray drive for my HTPC and then I'd like to give these a listen. I'd still want to rip the tracks to the server and use my music library software for playing from my PCs.
For more info, click on this article's title and it will take you to the press release.
BTW, I decided not to go to CES this year. Lots of reasons... the economy, tired of big trade shows, better ways to spend the money, etc., etc.
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