They state, "Universal Music Group has gone back to the original master tapes to deliver fully uncompressed, high-resolution versions of many of your favorite albums on Blu-ray Pure Audio Disc. Mastered at 24bit/96kHz, Blu-ray Pure Audio Discs deliver the sound the artists originally heard in the studio when these classic albums were recorded. These discs provide all the recorded musical information. While convenient due to their small file size, today’s heavily compressed music files do not represent the true fidelity of the original album.

• Recordings are transferred from the original master tapes and delivered in high-resolution 24-bit/96kHz audio

• No compression is utilized"

I got a hold of the Nirvana Nevermind release. It sounds identical to all the recent brickwalled remasters (both cd & 96/24) & has the identical brickwalled "DR7" rating in Foobar.

I'd be really careful with these unless the 5.1 option is all that matters to you.

This Amazon UK link lists just about all of the "Pure Audio" BD releases to date, including a bunch of classical and jazz:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search?searc ... g=imwan-21

The ones for The Rolling Stones' Grrr! and The Who's Tommy have gotten good enough reviews, but those two were released as part of larger rollouts of multiple editions for each title. The rest of the releases Geff is referring to have been one-offs.

I'm passing on them and I can do Blu-ray.

Grrr is also brickwalled. Didn't realize it is part of this series. For some reason pretty much all the recent Stones remasters have been dreadful, which is a shame as the Abcko period SACD's (& the couple Japanese SACD's from a few years back that I've heard) were superb.

I have a SUSPICION (I could be wrong as I've only heard 2 of these!), that they may just be using whatever hi-rez transfer is the most recent, rather than doing special transfers for the series.

Agree that it's marketing and not audiophile recordings.

The Grrr Blu ray[as far as each track is concerned]sounds like they used the SACD masters from what I can tell.

You've got a very differently voiced stereo than I do! HUGE volume difference on mine.

If you want brickwalled try the Phil Collins era Genesis reissues the Grrr Blu ray sounds nowhere near that loud.

IMO, the USA Genesis DVD-A's were awful, but the UK SACD's (Gabriel Era) sound good to me.

"Scam" is a strong word. I think that most letdowns from the major labels have been a result of a lack of care or competence, not a desire to actually rip anybody off on purpose.

More competence than care regarding the loudness wars. It's a definite conscious decision. It just makes no sense to release brickwalled "audiophile" music!

It is a disappointment that we have this great format and they don't put extra care into the mastering. At least with SACD they gave it a good shot and we have some outstanding SACDs and DVDAs.

Steven Wilson's recent album on the Blu-ray format is stellar.

In my experience, all hi res formats have the same mastering inconsistency; I'm just wondering if this entire series is poorly mastered?

Something else I've been running into: APPARENTLY the DTS-HD MA standard allows 16/48 to be called HDMA if it's DTS & 5.1. I.E. more false advertising. Here's an example from the Aersosmith "Rock For The Rising Sun" Blu-ray:

"DTS-HD MA 5.1"

"AUDIO:

Codec Language Bitrate Description

----- -------- ------- -----------

LPCM Audio English 1536 kbps 2.0 / 48 kHz / 1536 kbps / 16-bit

DTS-HD Master Audio English 2918 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 2918 kbps / 16-bit (DTS Core: 5.1 / 48 kHz / 1509 kbps / 16-bit)"

For those who don't know, 16/48 is the old DVD standard, though it was often lossy Dolby. I ASSUME DTSHD-MA is at least lossless. Here your getting at most 5% better than cd sound............. MAYBE......... I.E. if the blu-ray audio is 16/48, unless you want to see the concert, buy the cd. With the amount storage available on br, there is no EXCUSE on any concert blu-ray for one of the audio options to not be lossless 96/24 (unless the master recording is early digital at a lower bite rate. That is not the case here)..

I had an interesting experience tonight. I've got the John Lennon Imagine Blu-ray here. It has 3 audio options, all 2.0 at 96/24: LPCM, DTS HD Master Audio & Dolby HD True Audio. Based on the liner notes, it appears that all 3 masters were done by the same 2 people; in fact it may be 1 master encoded in 3 different ways.

Also, as a 4th comparison, I had a 96/24 flac rip of the pcm done on unknown software.

Imagine is not the best recorded album, but at least it's a DIRECT comparison. BTW, the liner notes state this is a 2010 REMASTER, & doesn't say ANYTHING about a REMIX.

Full disclosure: my bias is I expected the PCM to kick the others asses.

I was wrong to some degree.

By far the worst of the 3 was the Dolby "HD True Audio". That doesn't surprise me. Other than with cassette tapes, I've always held Dolby in low regard (the system, not the person).

I had a much tougher time deciding between the LPCM (no digital bit compression) & the DTS HDMA (a very simplified explanation is that DTS HDMA is supposed to be DTS's HD equivalent of Flac).

While the PCM had more detail, on my system I ultimately preferred the DTS; it was a bit smoother, had a bit more depth & retained most of the detail. Don't get me wrong, I consider my system entry level high end (though better then 99% of stereos on the planet), & a better system would surely reveal more & possibly other differences.

Unfortunately, I only know of 2 ways to get a system that good (Outside of robbing a bank):
1. Be rich
2. Be like my friend Grazer & find $30k systems at garage sales that need repair; buy them for pennies on the $ & have the skills to repair them. I don't have those skills, or that luck! I also can't convince him to be open to the possibility that high res digital might be as good as vinyl....


Finally a brief comment on the 96/24 Flac rip. I have no idea what program was used to rip it, & that's going to have a huge impact. But it came in #3, just barely ahead of the dolby (even the dolby sounded better than cd, but if this comparison was indicative of the various formats, avoid Dolby like the plague. This was supposedly lossless Dolby done by professionals, so I'm left with the assumption that it's simply not as good sounding as the other 2.

As far as the flac, I have noticed a pretty strong difference with almost all Blu-ray rips that I don't hear with either cd, dvd-a, dvd rips, & straight downloads (designed to be downloads) in any format (I also hear the same difference ripping blu-ray streams to pcm/wav), so at this moment I lean towards believing what I'm hearing here & on a a few other ripped blu's is poorly made converting & demuxing software. Not even having a Blu-ray player in my pc I'm making guesses, I am not an expert here. I have converted Blu-ray streams, but have never done an actual br rip myself.

As far as the Lennon, it sounded better than I expected it to, given this series' track record. It may end up being like most of the high res out there (with Analog Productions SACD's, MFSL SACD's & perhaps Pentatone & Stockfish so far being the only 100% exceptions I know of, & I haven't heard anywhere near their entire catalogs): buyer beware. These high res companies are showing little-no transparency (pun intended) as to their source material, & for what people are paying for this stuff, that's criminal.

See my comments in prior posts above regarding Aerosmith 16/48 "HD" DTS & "HD" Dolby, & the DR7 Nirvana. In another post above, I wrote, "I have a SUSPICION..... that they may just be using whatever hi-rez transfer is the most recent, rather than doing special transfers for the series." I still suspect that's correct.

At any rate, very interesting comparison & the Lennon, while not anywhere near Steven Wilson territory was better sounding than I expected.

I have done DTS vs PCM before on Genesis & Crimson DVD-A's. If I remember right, I had a slight preference for the PCM on the Crimson & thought pretty much everything about the Genesis sucked! I don't think the Crimson's were the same bit rate though; I think some of the PCM segments were 48/24 (I'm to lazy to grab one at the moment & check). I also don't believe the masters (& in some cases the mixes) were identical on either the Crimsons or the USA Genesis dvd-a's (Genesis fans, do yourself a favor & get the UK SACD's. They destroy the USA dvd-a's!)

Hope this was interesting to somebody!

I found it very interesting, Geff. You keep up the writing, I'll keep reading.

Thanks for the review Geff. I just received the Let It Bleed release on Blu-ray from the UK. I'll try it out and see what's happening.

If you can compare it to the USA SACD that would be interesting; the SACD was superb.

Yeah I really liked that one and I'm hoping this will be as creamy sounding.

I have the Nirvana disc and I feel it's the best version out there, especially when cranked. Each to their own.

Rick A.

Sounds like your stereo is voiced very differently then mine! Both of the hi-res Nevermind's are painful to me. My go to is the MFSL CD.