Da har jeg endelig fått ut fingeren og skaffet meg en Blu-ray-spiller! Etter å ha planlagt å kjøpe Panasonic DMP-BD50, for så å bli for sen, og deretter Panasonic DMP-BD55, for igjen å bli for sen endte jeg opp med en Panasonic DMP-BD60. Grunnen til at jeg valget Panasonic var for det første at den har fått glimrende testeresultater og omtaler rundt omkring og for det andre at jeg har Panasonic flatskjerm som den kan kommunisere med over Viera-link. (Det siste er noe oppskrytt). Dessuten var den billig! (1995,- på komplett.no).

Førsteinntrykk 

Spilleren er ganske treg å starte opp, men det kan man akseptere når man tross alt har tenkt å bruke et par timer på å se film en god film. Bildekvaliteten er imidlertid glitrende, selv på min tilårskommende Panasonic 42″ plasma med alt for dårlig oppløsning. Referansefilmen er, foreløpig min eneste Blu-ray-film, Casino Royale. Spilleren leverer som standard 1080p50 ut på HDMI og selv på gamle DVD-er overgår den min gamle, men fem ganger så dyre Marantz (som riktignok kun skalerer opp til 720p50).

Det er imidlertid et par ting jeg savner i forhold til mine tidligere DVD-spillere, og det er meny-knapp (ikke topp-meny) og subtitling-knapp. Begge disse må man inn i en eller annen ‘options’ for å finne. Men nok om det. En annen nedtur er at den nedsampler all 192kHz lyd til 48kHz i PCM stereo. Dette er selfølgelig ikke et problem dersom man har en prosessor med HDMI som støtter all de nye HD-lydformatene, men det har ikke jeg!

BD-Live 

Videre har jeg funnet ut at for at spilleren skal støtte Blu-ray Profile 2.0 aka BD-Live så er det et minimumskrav med 1GB tilgjengelig lagringsminne. Dette har ikke denne spilleren. Det den derimot har er en SD-minneslot som støtter opp til 32GB. Kjipt i førsteomgang, fordi spilleren ikke støtter BD-Live “ut-av-esken” men genialt på den måten at man da kan putte inn så mye minne man vil. Jeg har ingen filmer med BD-Live-innhold så jeg har ikke fått testet ut denne funksjonaliteten, dessuten må spilleren være koblet til nettet.

Men ikke missforstå, jeg har bare hatt den et par dager men er strålende fornøyd, så langt :-)

Neste prosjekt blir å koble den på nett og teste ut BD-Live og YouTube, og å koble til harddisk for å kunne spille av mengder med DivX… men ikke minst, gå bananas på play.com og kjøpe inn en haug med bra filmer.

“New Format Provides Ultimate Audio Quality”.

Thomson og Fraunhofer har introdusert et nytt filformat, mp3HD.

Men hva er egentlig nytt? Nyheten sammenlignet med det tradisjonell MP3-formatet er at mp3HD støtter tapsfri kompresjon. Men det gjør forsåvidt allerede både FLAC, Apple Lossless og diverse andre. Så, ingen nyhet. Formatet støtter ikke en gang samplefrekvenser  over 48 KHz og maks bitdybde er 16 bit per sample. Så det støtter faktisk ikke 96/24 eller høyere, i motsetning til de fleste nye formatene introdusert med bl.a. Blu-ray – er det da HD?!?

Kompresjonsfaktoren er omtrent den samme som for FLAC, 50% +/-, så ingen forbedring her heller.

En annen egenskap ved mp3HD er at det er bakoverkompatibelt med MP3. Det betyr at den faktisk inneholder a tradisjonell MP3-file, slik at en god, gammel MP3-spillerkan spille de nye mp3HD-filene. Da selfølgelig med ”MP3-kvalitet”, ukjent ved hvilken bit-rate. Filene vil uansett bli ganske store, omtrent tre ganger større, sammenlignet med tradisjonell 320 Kbps MP3.

So, what’s the point?!? 

Jeg holder meg fortsatt til FLAC!

All4MP3 Home

The catalog of HDtracks is currently quite limited, but it holds some titles of i.a. Henry Rollins Band, Ray Davis and The Kinks, Norah Jones, The Byrds and some other interesting artists. The price charged for a complete album is $ 11.98 which is quite reasonable.

I’ll test it out as soon as I get home to my Squeezebox. You should test it out too at www.hdtracks.com.

Update:
Unfortunately, I just realised that HDtracks offer their dowload services  to US citizens only :-(

The Slip is available in both MP3 (320 kbps), FLAC and high-resolution WAV (24 bit/96 kHz). Downloading of the largest files are offered as torrents and downloads in just a few minutes. And not only is it free, but they even encourage to distribute it and share it with friends under the Creative Commons licence. The physical CD will not be available before July. It will be interesting to see how much that will sell… But even though NIN offers this download for free I would be happy to pay for such services in the future.

As you may have notices from my previous postings, I have been waiting for someone to do this for a long time. Until now I have been forced to by the CD for then ripping it to achieve this quality. Now I finally get full CD-quality and above without having to go via the physical media. (Unfortunately my Squeezebox only supports 24 bit/48 kHz).

This is the way to go, Trent!

Download the album at www.nin.com.

OK, I admit it. I am a follower! (That was hard for a guy who claims to be a techno-geek) 

Just recently I bought a pair of Koss PortaPro headphones to replace my crappy earplugs. The PortaPro has been in the market for over 20 years, launched in 1984, and is just as image building as the iPod for portable music, and they are more popular than ever. I must admit that is quite impressive.

The PortaPro sounds great, maybe a little too much BASS, but very open and clear. They are also very comfortable to wear, and they have a open construction, meaning you hear the surroundings good as well (important feature to avoid being hit by a bus or bicycle sneaking up from behind :-). I can now even look street cool and listen to good music at the same time.

Source of music from this brief test was Steely Dan’s Aja, which is a fantastic album, encoded and compressed at 192 kbps WMA and played back from my Sony Walkman. I haven’t tested the PortaPro on my Hi-Fi setup yet, and I very much doubt they will even get close to my AKG K 240 studio monitors, but then again, they weren’t designed for that purpose either.

Please share your experience!

So what did actually happen? One important aspect is of course Sony’s support for Blu-ray as a standard feature in all PlayStation 3 game consoles. But more important is probably the major studios’ support for Blu-ray, also from those initially supporting HD DVD. Without any content HD DVD couldn’t stand any chance.

But despite the victory, Blu-ray is still premature. PlayStation 3 was delayed several times waiting for the Blu-ray technology. And even if there already a significant number of players out there, only a few support the Blu-ray profile 2.0 which is what could be considered the first full specification. Blu-ray profile 1.1 was released only to get reduce the head start of HD DVD, but should probably never been released, because it is only with profile 2.0 you get full interactivity and ethernet return channel functionality. But anyway, the pre-release was very necessary to cope with the competition from HD DVD and it obviously succeeded.

Congratulations Sony!

So I guess I still have to go to my local record store to buy the CD, just to rip it and put it away…

As you may remember from previous postings I have ripped all my music and stored it as audio files on my network storage server. So, you might ask, what are you gonna do with it there? Well, I agree, music is no good on a server if you can’t listen to it. So to listen to it I have bought a network music player called Squeezebox. Squeezebox from Slimdevices (now Logitech) is a Hi-Fi network music player supporting almost all music formats including MP3, WMA, AAC, AIF, WAV and FLAC. It also has a hi-grade Burr-Brown DAC with solid stereo cinch connectors in addition to both electrical and optical S/PDIF output for connection to a even more serious DAC, if you have one. I have connected mine to my Rotel Processor, not because of the audio quality, but because this one supports even more audio formats like HDCD and DTS.

The audio quality of this device is very good! At least in my ears. It is definitely as good as a dedicated CD player in the same price range (299 USD). As a consequence my Pioneer SACD/CD player is no longer in use. At least not for playing ordinary CDs. SACD and DVD Audio however is an other story. But anyway, I’m to lazy to get up from my chair to put on a SACD so I end up listening to the standard CD version through my Squeezebox anyway. That’s how good it sounds. If you want something better, you can either upgrade to Slimdevices Transporter, which is their absolutely high-end alternative, or add a Benchmark DAC 1 to your Hi-Fi system.

To actually be able to play back music from my network storage server i had to install Slimserver on it. Slimserver is free and available from www.slimdevices.com. It is easy to install and it automatically imports all your iTunes libraries. This is if you are running a standard OS such as Microsoft Windows. It’s not quite so easy if you are using something else, such as my Linksys NSLU2. But it is definitely manageable.

The Squeezebox is my absolute best buy of 2007 what so ever! An it still is in 2008!

Links for more information on the Squeezebox:
www.slimdevices.com - Slimdevices homepage
www.stereophile.com - John Atkinson’s review of the Squeezebox, September 2006

Links for more information on the Linksys NSLU2:
www.linksys.com - Linksys homepage
www.nslu2-linux.org - How to install Linux and Slimserver (and lots of other stuff) on your NSLU2

I have now got rid of all my CDs. That means the physical media, not the music on it. All music is carefully ripped and stored as audio files on my network storage server.

To rip my music I use Exact Audio Copy (EAC), a freeware recommended by most enthusiasts because of it’s robustness and accurate ripping. For compression I use the lossless FLAC format which gives me a compression ratio of about 50%. I decided to rip and store in full CD quality (44.1 kHz 16 bit) to make sure this is the last time I do it and don’t have to do it all over again when new codecs appear. By ripping and storing in a lossless format I can at any time compress in MP3 or other lossy formats.

After spending every evening in three months ripping CDs I of course have made a full back-up of everything. All music files are duplicated on two 500 GB Lacie Porsche disks using Microsoft SyncToy to do the actual back-up. SyncToy is a free “toy” from Microsoft, although nothing is free from Microsoft since you need Ms Windows to run it.

Links: EAC, FLAC

See my followup to this article; the paradox