Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms, Roxy Music, Prince coming to blu-ray Audio Dolby Atmos. Blu-ray: The New Ultimate Standard for Audiophiles?

[Jean.Francois]

Hello,


More than a year ago, article titled "Blu-ray “pure” audio: a format for the future?" raised the inquiry regarding whether Blu-ray represents the future format for audio..
When is it today?

For a start, announcements of forthcoming releases are on the increase, with flagship albums such as :
Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms
Elton John and Brandi Carlile - Who Believes In Angels
Roxy Music / Avalon
Prince and the Revolution - Purple Rain



In just over a year, more and more albums have been released in Blu-ray format, featuring the Dolby Atmos track in Lossless Dolby Digital TrueHD format.
But also, by offering a stereo track without dynamic compression, as with Tears For Fears' “Songs for a Nervous Planet” or Ultravox's “Lament”, thus proposing an audiophile approach to this medium.
Also worthy of note is the superb Steven Wilson - The overview, a reference in terms of Dolby Atmos mixing.


Often in special, limited editions from SDE, or more and more widely distributed editions (Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stone…).

Just take a look at some of the titles released since June 2023 to see the diversity and the presence of some very well-known singers and bands:

• Pet Shop Boys “Nonetheless”
• With The Pineapple Thief “It Leads To This”, we realized that bluray was the most audiophile medium, offering the best audio quality.
• Pink Floyd “Animals”
• Paul Young “No Parlez”
• Mark Knopfler “One Deep River”
• John Williams "John Williams in Tokyo"
• Alphaville’s “Forever Young”
• David Gilmour “Luck and Strange”
• Steven Wilson “The Harmony Codex”
• Pink Floyd “The Dark Side Of The Moon”
• The Rolling Stones “Hackney Diamonds”
• Peter Gabriel “i/o”
• Mike Oldfield “Tubular Bells”
• Serge Gainsbourg “L’homme à tête de chou”
• The Alan Parsons Project “Pyramid”
• Ultravox “Lament “
• The Cure “Songs of A Lost World”
• Simple Minds “New Gold Dream (81–82–83–84)”
• ...

This is not the case for all albums, but the trend continues.


In parallel, there is also an alternative distribution of the Dolby Atmos track in the Lossless Dolby Digital TrueHD format, with dematerialized music sales sites such as:
https://shop.2l.no, https://immersiveaudioalbum.com, https://www.nativedsd.com
For example
The Tsuyoshi Yamamoto Trio is back with a new album, “A Shade Of Blue”.
Madeleine Peyroux - Let's Walk


The big winner is the Dolby Digital TrueHD Atmos format, and some editions also feature an uncompressed dynamic stereo track, providing the audiophile quality required for stereo and Atmos music reproduction.


We're still a long way from widespread distribution, but we can only hope that the spread of Dolby Atmos in Lossless and stereo without loudness war continues to develop, whether in physical Blu-ray or dematerialized formats.
And who knows, maybe one day a streaming service will be available with the Dolby Atmos TrueHD format. And for stereo with or without loudness war!

Enjoy listening,
Jean-François

 

[bluefuzz]

Hmm. Why?

All these albums (assuming you think they are worth listening to in the first place) sound perfectly fine on Redbook CD or equivalent. Seems to me like yet another pointless cash grab to sell you the music you already own in a new DRM infested format ...

 

[DSJR]

I'm stunned that a; the multitracks were retained for posterity and b; these tapes were in good enough condition (after baking?) to still play!

 

[Jean.Francois]

Hmm. Why?

All these albums (assuming you think they are worth listening to in the first place) sound perfectly fine on Redbook CD or equivalent. Seems to me like yet another pointless cash grab to sell you the music you already own in a new DRM infested format ...

There's a new trend, particularly for reissues, to have a blu-ray edition with little or no impact from loudness war, unlike the CD edition, as with The Pineapple Thief “It Leads To This” for example.

 

[danadam]

But also, by offering a stereo track without dynamic compression, as with Tears For Fears' “Songs for a Nervous Planet” or Ultravox's “Lament”, thus proposing an audiophile approach to this medium.

In other words, artificial scarcity.

 

[voodooless]

All these albums (assuming you think they are worth listening to in the first place) sound perfectly fine on Redbook CD or equivalent

That depends… the dynamic range on the various Redbook versions is all over the place. Best get one of the early versions.

The trick with these Atmos versions is simply that they retain much more of the original dynamic range, simply to prop up the format, pretending it delivers superior quality.

I say, I’ll take it… music back to the dynamic range of before the loudness war started!

 

[Jean.Francois]

In other words, artificial scarcity.

It's just the result of objective measurements comparing different media. It's just an observation.

 

[masterhw]

I know this forum skews stereo, but I feel compelled to share that I’m glad some of the best produced albums of all time are having multichannel/spatial releases. it’s a different experience but, done right, is as good as I’ve ever heard music. i have no doubt if the beatles or pink floyd were releasing music today they would be experimenting with this format heavily - and some of it really is worthwhile.

 

[kyuu]

Definitely a big proponent of getting more of these multichannel, non-compressed albums out there. I'm very interested in the format, but it's difficult to find a lot of content that I'm interested in. Peter Gabriel, The Cure, and maybe the John Williams album (although I'm always a bit skeptical about captures of live performances) are about the only two out of that whole list that I'm interested in.

 

[GD Fan]

Dire Straits & Knopfler always cared about premium sound quality. Most or all of the DS albums were made available on SACD, as well as many of the solo records.

Knopfler's long-time collaborator, documentarian, and brother in arms Guy Fletcher is interested in and involved with an Atmos company, so this isn't surprising. It does make me wonder if British Grove is ground zero for this sort of thing? I'm pretty sure the new Gilmour record referenced above was cut there, and the latest Knopfler album certainly was.

 

[masterhw]

Definitely a big proponent of getting more of these multichannel, non-compressed albums out there. I'm very interested in the format, but it's difficult to find a lot of content that I'm interested in. Peter Gabriel, The Cure, and maybe the John Williams album (although I'm always a bit skeptical about captures of live performances) are about the only two out of that whole list that I'm interested in.

concur availability is a huge pain. some of the beatles releases (Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper) in TrueHD run $100 to get your hands on. ouch. don’t see it catching on if it remains this priced out.
the atmos streaming versions, while obviously lossy, are still quite good and I’m content the 768kbit/s E-AC-3 is challenging to tell from the lossless version. certainly good enough to let you try before buying, so you only pick up the true gems of this format.

 

[EJ3]

The big winner is the Dolby Digital TrueHD Atmos format, and some editions also feature an uncompressed dynamic stereo track, providing the audiophile quality required for stereo and Atmos music reproduction.


We're still a long way from widespread distribution, but we can only hope that the spread of Dolby Atmos in Lossless and stereo without loudness war continues to develop, whether in physical Blu-ray or dematerialized formats.
And who knows, maybe one day a streaming service will be available with the Dolby Atmos TrueHD format. And for stereo with or without loudness war!

Enjoy listening,
Jean-François

Where I live: getting a cell phone signal is serious luck.
So streaming is definitely not a probability (& if it does become a possibility, that means that there are too many people living in the area & it's time to move further into the boondocks).
And, unless I get a massively bigger place, Dolby Atmos is not likely, either.
However, if the stereo mixes are great & unaffected by the loudness wars, I would definitely buy quite a number of these.

 

[DaneelOlivaw]

Dire Straits & Knopfler always cared about premium sound quality. Most or all of the DS albums were made available on SACD, as well as many of the solo records.

Knopfler's long-time collaborator, documentarian, and brother in arms Guy Fletcher is interested in and involved with an Atmos company, so this isn't surprising. It does make me wonder if British Grove is ground zero for this sort of thing? I'm pretty sure the new Gilmour record referenced above was cut there, and the latest Knopfler album certainly was.

I remember my first CD "Brothers in arms" was always a good benchmark.
Nowerdays on my modern DAC other songs perform better.
2022 there was a remastered album: "Money For Nothing" also with the song "Brotheres in arms".
Maybe its only my perception - but it sounds for me as if the magic is back.
It sounds for me as I remember playing the old track on my Philips (with tda1541). I can imagine, that they mastered it the old days for the sounding of the 1541 and this is the reason why some songs perform better on it.
With modern DAC they had no longer to do it or placed harmonics to simulate...
The remastered version sounds also a bit louder in some passages - maybe some kind of compression.

 

[levimax]

I just looked at the linked article for DSOTM. To me it looks like the original 1984 CD is what you want. Same EQ as the original vinyl, good dynamics, no vinyl artifacts. All the other versions have been messed with, the compression is not bad on any version but the EQ, in some cases up to 10 dB's, changes things audibly and clearly is not what was originally released. I guess if you have to sell the same thing over and over you need to make it sound different, but different is not necessarily better and it certainly is not the original sound.

 

[ClearHearing]

Is there a reason to buy these Blu-Rays over streaming the Dolby Atmos mixes on Apple Music or some other streaming service?

 

[kyuu]

All the other versions have been messed with, the compression is not bad on any version but the EQ, in some cases up to 10 dB's, changes things audibly and clearly is not what was originally released. I guess if you have to sell the same thing over and over you need to make it sound different, but different is not necessarily better and it certainly is not the original sound.

Different is not always worse, and the original is not always the best version. The reviewer on the website, at least, thinks the multichannel versions are the best versions of the album.

 

[masterhw]

I just looked at the linked article for DSOTM. To me it looks like the original 1984 CD is what you want. Same EQ as the original vinyl, good dynamics, no vinyl artifacts. All the other versions have been messed with, the compression is not bad on any version but the EQ, in some cases up to 10 dB's, changes things audibly and clearly is not what was originally released. I guess if you have to sell the same thing over and over you need to make it sound different, but different is not necessarily better and it certainly is not the original sound.

from the same link the author strongly recommends listening in multichannel and notes that the recent BluRay version has the closest EQ to the original.

injecting some opinion, I find it awfully close minded to suggest the oldest form of a thing is the most pure, from which any deviation is necessarily undesirable. if talented and well resourced mix engineers are given the opportunity to recreate a mix using modern approaches, and the original artists not only have sponsored this effort but given their blessing to the end result, why should we not consider it a legitimate candidate. in this case, everyone who has heard these bluray versions gushes over them.

 

[kyuu]

Is there a reason to buy these Blu-Rays over streaming the Dolby Atmos mixes on Apple Music or some other streaming service?

Yeah. One, you own it. Two, there are limited hardware choices to actually get multichannel music out of streaming services. I can't get Atmos content from Tidal despite subscribing to it, for example, without purchasing new equipment that otherwise duplicates functionality I already have. On the other hand, I already own a blu-ray player.

 

[masterhw]

Yeah. One, you own it. Two, there are limited hardware choices to actually get multichannel music out of streaming services. I can't get Atmos content from Tidal despite subscribing to it, for example, without purchasing new equipment that otherwise duplicates functionality I already have. On the other hand, I already own a blu-ray player.

good points, plus the technical improvement of lossless compression. If you truly love an album and want it forever, or use it for reference tracking, it is worthwhile to have it in the highest fidelity offered. out of both convenience and cost I would not bother with all but the top couple % of my library in this format.

 

[jcarys]

Is it the new standard in terms of audio presentation in the home? I would say absolutely yes. In terms of commercial appeal it is unfortunately a tiny niche of the (niche) physical market.

BTW, I think the Kraftwerk Autobahn surround mixes are both the most fun and the most revealing I've heard this year. I assume they started from the digital re-recordings they did years ago. There are tons of things in these mixes that I've never heard before. In a very good way.