Blu-Ray Audio?

I was wondering if anyone had heard anything about this as a format? I have talked to some people in the industry that think it will become the next audio format and be able to support bit rates into the 64bit range. I am also wondering if anyone has seen any specification for the sample rate at all, like if it is 64/10MHz or another combination. I question if any people think that this is a positive step or if it will be just like SACD, DVD-A. I know that many people are also considering the possibility of being able to download 24/192 uncompressed audio, but I doubt many people will be able to download such a dense bit rate like 64bit even in the future.

If someone came out with a universal disc player it probably would be, but if it was a Sony player it wouldn't have DVD-A.

Also I have personally listened to DACs that do resampling in the 6.13 MHz range that then converted to 32/192. It is a system called S.T.A.R.S. and was developed by Anagram and is only available in Audio Aero products. Now more companies are using 32 bit DACs and 384kHz sampling rates. I think if a new format came out that could support this resolution it wouldn't take more than a few years for the big DAC Chip companies to start to support it. We are almost there in some ways. I Mean SACD was a 2.3 MHz sampling rate, and that technology is more than 10 years old.

I totally agree, every bit adds 6db of headroom, so even 64 bit would be great and cut down on dynamic compression.

Just another thought, CD is 700MB, most DVD's are 4-8GB, Blu-Ray can get as high as 200GB and it may be possible for it to add even more storage than that. I think with that level of storage 64 bit audio would be possible. So you could have these ridiculous bit rates in multi channel! A 200GB bluray would have 8 layers, so theoretically you could have 25GB per song. almost like an 8 track, but this could achieve playback levels that one could only dream about.

I agree that the loudness war has ruined many CD's, but I also listen to several CD's from audiophile producers and labels, that still can compress in a not so musical way. I also don't like hearing dynamic compression on metal recordings. It does ruin it. Drums have subtlety and complexity via drum head resonance and things like that, and also take up a lot of db of headroom in a mix. Add two guitars and a bass and things get buried pretty quickly, I have noticed that one of my favorite metal recordings was recorded in HDCD and whenever that layer is played it adds a lot of depth, complexity, and dynamics in comparison to the standard layer even on really high end players. For extremely dynamic music extra headroom would certainly help. Also a higher bit depth and sample rate would aleaviate the lack of fluidity that CD has.

Also I think SACD is a good format, but one of the reasons that some people didn't think it sounded better than CD was because many of the players had a filter at about 30kHz to 50kHz, the range of SACD went up to about 100kHz. the reason this filter was invented is because certain amps would oscilate when given that level of bandwidth, so many of the companies producing the players put a filter on the output.

I have heard SACD sound far superlative to CD, one of the most unforgettable demos I have heard of it was at T.H.E. Show this year. Diana Krall is an audiophile staple, it seemed every other room I went to at CES or T.H.E Show were playing her stuff. then I went into one room playing her SACD, it sounded more resolved than all of the CD versions this year to say the least. I could hear every scratch of Diana Krall's durmer's brushes stirring the soup on his snare in dimensional space, it was very vivid. The funny thing is I really don't like her music that much, but this system and recording were so good I couldn't help but be sucked in. That is the power of high rez. That is why the Blu-Ray format is potentially very exciting. It would be nice to have a recording that never has any compression or quantization issues, because after all live music doesn't either.