Blu-ray audio-only specs?

[Sebarino]

I've been trying to find for a while if there's a different spec for Blu-rays that are audio only, like the old DVD-Audio discs they sold for barely any time around 2003-2005.

Recently I bought a lot of albums on HD Tracks and similar places, and most of them are Hi-Res audio. Sure, I could burn them as just WAV or FLAC files and all my players will play them, but for that I need to turn on the TV set. And the morons that came up with the HDMI and HDCP formats didn't think it through very well, they probably thought "Everybody's gonna have their receiver and TV set on all the time!! Yeehaa!!", so if you start playing an album from a burned BD-R or a USB stick, and once it starts playing you turn off the TV, moments later your music will go silent for several seconds and then come back. Depending on the player this may happen once or twice, even three times. And I'm absolutely sick of it.

To me it's absolutely outrageous that I'm paying sometimes $30 for an album in HiRes audio that the label is not paying a dime for manufacturing a physical product, including case, disc, disc authoring, disc duplication, insert graphic design, cover and insert printing and assembly of all those things into the final product, and I still have to pay a premium just because I want the best audio quality I can get.

But that's the sad world we live in, where you can't even get a CD sometimes because, for example, the idiots at Hollywood Records decide that Hans Zimmer or Michael Giacchino are not big enough artists to deserve even a plain old CD, so we can't even buy some albums in anything that is not a lossy format.

But I'm an old guy, so I want a physical medium to save my album purchases in, not to mention that hdtracks.com only allows you to download the albums for like two weeks and then you're screwed, something that is really crappy when you pay them a lot of money for their content. And it's not as easy as "if you don't like it, don't buy from them", because most times they're the only choice for a lot of albums if you live in the US. The same crooked music labels that will not even publish a CD for several albums also put geographical restrictions so sometimes you could buy one of those albums in a European reseller, but when you enter your credit card you're denied because you live in the US, and I've been told it's the same deal the other way around many times.

So I need to put my expensive HiRes albums in something that's going to last for a while. And I need to put it in a way that works like the good old CD, just put it in, press play, and it plays. No stupid silence because I turned off the damn TV. Just pure musical enjoyment. But the whole Blu-ray audio format is a mystery. I can't find any info on the spec, or if there's any specific tool to author them, even if it's a damn expensive one that I can't afford. I don't know if it's just a typical Blu-ray that they author with a black video stream, set to autoplay the first track and go from there. Or if there is actually an industry standard for authoring audio-only Blu-rays, like the DVD-Audio was, where you would have an AUDIO_TS folder that would have files if it was that specific format.

So does anyone know if there's a Blu-ray Audio disc format, and what are the specs?

[4kblurayguru]

if there is actually an industry standard for authoring audio-only Blu-rays

dvd logic has software for this

To me it's absolutely outrageous that I'm paying sometimes $30 for an album in HiRes audio that the label is not paying a dime for manufacturing a physical product, including case, disc, disc authoring, disc duplication, insert graphic design, cover and insert printing and assembly of all those things into the final product, and I still have to pay a premium just because I want the best audio quality I can get.

you're paying for their content not the format.

what are the specs?

same audio specs for "regular" bluray.

[Sebarino]

if there is actually an industry standard for authoring audio-only Blu-rays

dvd logic has software for this

Oh, right, I had seen that authoring suite from that company in Ukraine. I bet it's great, but way more than I want to spend on this, which is nothing, because it's bad enough that I had to pay a lot of money for a version that comes in downloadable files and I have to use BD-Rs and time of my life doing what they should've done.

To me it's absolutely outrageous that I'm paying sometimes $30 for an album in HiRes audio that the label is not paying a dime for manufacturing a physical product, including case, disc, disc authoring, disc duplication, insert graphic design, cover and insert printing and assembly of all those things into the final product, and I still have to pay a premium just because I want the best audio quality I can get.

you're paying for their content not the format.

That doesn't make any sense, not just in the music industry, but the movie industry as well. When a new titles comes out, and it's one of the big movies everybody was expecting, if you want to buy the streaming version on iTunes or VUDU, etc, it costs the same as what the 4K Blu-ray will cost. Usually like $30, sometimes $20.

Now tell me how that isn't crooked, when both cost the same, but one of the options was simply encoded and uploaded to Apple's or VUDU's servers and that's it, and the other option had to go through an extensive process that includes all the elements I mentioned above, and the consumer gets a physical format along with the streaming version. How can that cost the same as the streaming version, the one those idiots call "digital" as if the version in the Blu-ray was analog. That's plain crooked.

what are the specs?

same audio specs for "regular" bluray.

Right, as far as sample rate, bitrate, codec, etc. But if it's ONLY audio, meaning you put the disc in the player and it plays, or at the most you have to press the play button and it plays, is it the same as a typical video Blu-ray but without any video, or does it have like black video all throughout? Most importantly, does it allow searching, just like with any CD? I mean search within each song, not skip tracks.

[usually_quiet]

Now tell me how that isn't crooked, when both cost the same, but one of the options was simply encoded and uploaded to Apple's or VUDU's servers and that's it, and the other option had to go through an extensive process that includes all the elements I mentioned above, and the consumer gets a physical format along with the streaming version. How can that cost the same as the streaming version, the one those idiots call "digital" as if the version in the Blu-ray was analog. That's plain crooked.

I don't know why you think that distribution over the Internet can't cost very much because the product isn't being distributed on physical media. File distribution involves buying or renting storage and servers, paying for the electricity needed to run them, paying the employees needed to look after them, and paying for Internet access and data usage to distribute the files.

what are the specs?

same audio specs for "regular" bluray.

Right, as far as sample rate, bitrate, codec, etc. But if it's ONLY audio, meaning you put the disc in the player and it plays, or at the most you have to press the play button and it plays, is it the same as a typical video Blu-ray but without any video, or does it have like black video all throughout? Most importantly, does it allow searching, just like with any CD? I mean search within each song, not skip tracks.

I have no idea what the exact format used for audio-only Blu-ray discs looks like. I've never seen such a disc. The official Blu-ray specs are difficult to obtain, expensive, and require signing an NDA, according to one member here who has industry contacts that have seen them.

Some Blu-ray players can play ordinary audio files burned as data to optical media. Blu-ray player manuals list the types of audio that are playable. I guess you have already tried extracting the audio from the download, burning it to Blu-ray as data, and it didn't work or at least not well enough to satisfy you?

Even if you can't play the downloads from optical media you could always backup the downloads to BD-R media for safety, in case the file is accidentally deleted, lost, or corrupted.

[Sebarino]

Now tell me how that isn't crooked, when both cost the same, but one of the options was simply encoded and uploaded to Apple's or VUDU's servers and that's it, and the other option had to go through an extensive process that includes all the elements I mentioned above, and the consumer gets a physical format along with the streaming version. How can that cost the same as the streaming version, the one those idiots call "digital" as if the version in the Blu-ray was analog. That's plain crooked.

I don't know why you think that distribution over the Internet can't cost very much because the product isn't being distributed on physical media. File distribution involves buying or renting storage and servers, paying for the electricity needed to run them, paying the employees needed to look after them, and paying for Internet access and data usage to distribute the files.

Yes, which is not done by the Hollywood production companies, they upload the file to Apple's servers, Vudu's servers, etc, and when the titles are either rented or sold, they get a cut from it. The movie industry has to do two things, or close to: 1) encode the file (which might require more than one encoding because of different specs, and the stupid ABR system) and then upload to those servers.

what are the specs?

same audio specs for "regular" bluray.

Right, as far as sample rate, bitrate, codec, etc. But if it's ONLY audio, meaning you put the disc in the player and it plays, or at the most you have to press the play button and it plays, is it the same as a typical video Blu-ray but without any video, or does it have like black video all throughout? Most importantly, does it allow searching, just like with any CD? I mean search within each song, not skip tracks.

I have no idea what the exact format used for audio-only Blu-ray discs looks like. I've never seen such a disc. The official Blu-ray specs are difficult to obtain, expensive, and require signing an NDA, according to one member here who has industry contacts that have seen them.

Some Blu-ray players can play ordinary audio files burned as data to optical media. Blu-ray player manuals list the types of audio that are playable. I guess you have already tried extracting the audio from the download, burning it to Blu-ray as data, and it didn't work or at least not well enough to satisfy you?

Even if you can't play the downloads from optical media you could always backup the downloads to BD-R media for safety, in case the file is accidentally deleted, lost, or corrupted.

I'm guessing you didn't read or understand my post. I don't blame you, I tend to write long posts

But the goal here is not to just burn the audio files to BD-Rs. That would make it necessary to turn on the TV set, browse for the album, or just the first file if I decided to just burn one album per BD-R (not expensive by today's standards, but a bit of a waste, since these albums can get to 5 GB at worst (John Williams' "Empire Strikes Back" at 24 bit 192 Khz for example, on WAV, close to 3 GB on FLAC).

Like I said above, I want it to work the same way a CD does. Insert it, it starts playing, no need to turn the TV set on. With multiple albums this means that it would be a really long CD, but sometimes be a cool collection, like for example I bought all the John Williams Star Wars eps 4, 5 and 6, plus Force Awakens. So that would make for a pretty nice long disc.

[usually_quiet]

@Sebarino

I did read and understand your post. However, you did write that the suggested pro authoring software is too expensive and the authoring and burning process is overly time consuming.

Audio-only Blu-ray is very niche and I have never personally seen one. I also don't recall seeing that option offered in any consumer authoring software that I have tried. In addition, the list of permitted audio formats for Blu-ray are limited. For example, the Blu-ray spec allows LPCM but FLAC isn't allowed. Data discs are only limited by what the Blu-ray player supports for media files. Hence, I suggested that you consider or re-consider data discs as a more practical solution.

So, as an experiment you could try authoring a menu-less Blu-ray using black Blu-ray compliant video and Blu-ray compliant audio, using tsMuxeR which is free. tsMuxeR outputs Blu-ray files and folders. Leawo Blu-ray player (also free) would allow you to test playback without burning a Blu-ray. Burn to disc with ImgBurn only after playback is successful so you can try the burned Blu-ray in your player.

[Sebarino]

@Sebarino

I did read and understand your post. However, you did write that the suggested pro authoring software is too expensive and the authoring and burning process is overly time consuming.

Audio-only Blu-ray is very niche and I have never personally seen one. I also don't recall seeing that option offered in any consumer authoring software that I have tried. In addition, the list of permitted audio formats for Blu-ray are limited. For example, the Blu-ray spec allows LPCM but FLAC isn't allowed. Data discs are only limited by what the Blu-ray player supports for media files. Hence, I suggested that you consider or re-consider data discs as a more practical solution.

So, as an experiment you could try authoring a menu-less Blu-ray using black Blu-ray compliant video and Blu-ray compliant audio, using tsMuxeR which is free. tsMuxeR outputs Blu-ray files and folders. Leawo Blu-ray player (also free) would allow you to test playback without burning a Blu-ray. Burn to disc with ImgBurn only after playback is successful so you can try the burned Blu-ray in your player.

Again, data BD-Rs is something I use as a last resort, and I have already used it many times, but like I said, the morons that created the HDMI and HDCP specs, one or both, thought that TV sets have to be on all the time, so starting playback on the music files and then turning off the TV causes a silence or two or three, seconds after you turn off the TV set. So like I said, I'm looking for a CD type option, where you insert the disc and it plays. I know how to do this as regular Blu-ray, I've been authoring them since 2008, and still do from time to time.

So yes, I can launch Adobe Encore CS6 in my old PC and author these fairly easy, or use BD REbuilder, TS Muxer and a bunch of other tools. I just wanted to see if there was a Blu-ray audio spec in the same way there was a DVD-Audio spec.

[Cornucopia]

The answer is NO. There are only 3 main Bluray AV logical format specs: the HD standard one, the 3D one, and the 4k UHD one.
A "audio only" disc is almost never really audio only - they use cover art as stills, etc. This goes for dvd-Audio as well as Bluray.
It IS certainly possible to build a disc that is basically menuless, but that would be weird for a multi-title compilation disc like you are suggesting.

Maybe you could try a "mini-BD" aka bd material burned to a dvd (similar to the older mini-dvd, but more compatible on the physical level). Then you won't be "wasting" your disc burns.

I'll avoid my remarks about physical vs virtual media, and about the cleverness or not of Hollywood producers, since it's all been thoroughly discussed before, to no good end.


Scott

[johns0]

Just stick to cds and listen cause there's no way you can play blu-ray audio's the way you want.

[usually_quiet]

@Sebarino Does it really surprise you that there is no such thing as an official spec for creating Blu-ray audio discs? You must be aware that the DVD-Audio format was a failure in the commercial sense and new DVD or Blu-ray players that support it are uncommon today.

At this point, many if not most adults of all ages, would rather not have more "stuff" that takes up space and makes home cleanup and organization more difficult and time-consuming, not to mention the process of moving to a new home. Learn to live with playing files. Surely there is a way to make it easier.