Blu-spec CD: Better audio quality, or Japanese snake oil? 

Not sure "BSCD" is the best abbreviation if you're launching a dubious audio format.

I like how you and Techmoan complement each other

This is silly. It's like saying a story improves when printed in a crisper font. Stack these next to your Monster cables.

Dude, you're a hero for inspiring more critical listening/skepticism in the world of audiophilia. Keep it up. I'll keep watching.

before even listening the comparison, I was sure that they would intentionally make the CD2 louder and increase higher frequencies to make an impression of better sound, but they did not. At least they were honest about it.

If there's anything that CD's should be borrowing from Blu-ray, it's the coating on the underside that makes BD actually pretty damn hard to scratch with normal usage. They actually improved the coating with the Ultra HD Blu-rays as well, making it a tiny bit thicker and stronger. Put that shit on a CD and I bet you would win back a few of the people who gave up CDs because they're just way too delicate.

Sighs, stop with the gimmicks, just give us properly mastered cd's.

I thought this would be high-res audio on an actual Blu-ray Disc. BS CD is a perfect name for it!

maybe you would have heard a difference if you used audiophile ethernet cables

Just as long as the discs don't try to install a rootkit to prevent ripping.

But, but... CD audio already has error correction bits that even make most surface scratches irrelevant to accurate decoding of the digital information... this is so much more clearly snake oil than even MQA-CD, which supposedly adds extra bits of data to the disc. Amazing that anyone would fall for this. All they had to do was perform some better mastering on the Blu-spec CD2 disc version and everyone would have thought it was a miraculous improvement. But they're literally bit-for-bit the same! Hilarious!

I like the idea of regular cds with the scratch protection of blurays.

Excellent job! You had me laughing at the end. “There is no difference” digital doesn’t care how sharp your 1 or 0 is, haha. Having owned/worked/maintained a recording studio for decades you struck my audio funny bone.

by the time the digital information is converted to analog, all the digital domain errors are masked by the error correction algorithms. They could have advertised it as lasting longer, or more compatibilite with low power laser players. Oh Sony...

you have to listen BETWEEN the bits!

But Blu-spec CD2 has *better* 1s and 0s, obviously.

Unfortunately, most people equate the underlying technology and formats with higher (or lower) quality. The quality of an audio recording is almost 100% driven by the engineering (mics, acoustics, recording equipment, the human engineer, etc.) in the recording studio and how that master recording is then mixed, mastered, duplicated and distributed. A beautiful master recording can be ruined with crappy duplication regardless of whether the final format is analog or digital. Do the best job from recording through to mixing, mastering and reproduction and an analog record can sound 100x better than a CD or other digital version that was poorly mastered and reproduced, as VWestlife shows. Do a great job on the digital mixing, mastering and duplication and the digital version can sound 100x better. It comes down to the quality of the process, not the underlying analog or digital technologies involved.

Jitter!!!??? Nonsense. This is not an analog or mechanical audio system. It's digital. The bits are the bits and the bits are either validly read off the disc or not. This entire concept is just nonsense.

What I find fascinating is that they decided to include both disc formats for comparison, knowing perfectly well they SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME!! You have to applaud the marketing guts! Or are there really people at Sony that believe it sounds better?

Well.. to be honest, the CD timing doesn't matter for player output unless it's very bad. All data goes into a fifo buffer and is clocked out by a crystal(normally, some may use a atomic clock mod). At best the disc is slightly easier to read (vs works totally fine). There is massive error correction in the CD specs, so if you log the performance parameters there is a chance of detectable differences. (Not audible)

Either way it's still 44.1 khz, 16-bit audio so no real difference. It's all in the subconscious mind where it sounds better. The LP did sound better though, I think it's because unlike the re-mastered track on the CD with the "loudness war" compression and all, the vinyl version wasn't butchered like that.

Of all the ELO songs, they chose Confusion - and then took this very dynamic song and probably brickwalled it. My 80s edition CD of ELO's Discovery is a very quiet album all thanks to that one track, with those bell tinkles in the first and third verse slicing through and giving the entire album its peaks. When are we going to move on from this Loudness Wars nonsense? We have volume knobs here!

You know what I think happened with this format? Sony bought lots of Blu-ray manufacturing equipment but then Blu-ray format didn't sell as well as they expected so the machines were doing nothing and they asked the marketing department what they should do so they said lets make CD's with the Blu-ray machines and say they are better.

More snake oil. At least this snake oil does not require a megabuck decoder like MQA. Lets go back to the 90;s where things like Sony Super Bit Map recording and HDCD along with careful mastering using minimal compression and a max -1 Db signal.

What you need is a CD demagnitizer.

The vinyl comparison was brilliant! Noticeable audio difference. Goes to show if the master is done right the audio improves. :)

“From classical to Jimi Hendrix” lol YES I agree-he is a category unto himself!

The *only* way I could see this making any difference at all would be to someone whose CD player is very marginal. And if that's the case, they'd be far better served by getting a better CD player. Or a CD player that's in proper working order. Sony's engineers out to know better than this. Time to blame the marketers, perhaps? It's just shameful how excellent recording technology is everywhere, and yet the mastering remains utter garbage.

damn i was hoping it would at least be better mastered, might have bought a couple just for that

The comments on this video are surprisingly rational, clearly not having fallen for ridiculous marketing BS. How refreshing.

That CD player is like those cars with doors that open upwards, except it looks way cooler!

The vinyl rip was very noticeably less boomy much more forgiving and pleasing to the ears. The improved dynamic range instantly gave the music more space. What a shame, how CD's often got butchered like that.

What we need is a cd format that would reverse the compression from the loudness war.

Sounds very similar to the SHM-CD, which is another CD format exclusive to Japan. I like those because my CD Burner seems to have less trouble reading/ripping them, I guess it's because of the different material used

If the CD contains the same master at 16bit 44.1khz as the normal CD, then it's going to sound exactly the same. Anyone who thinks differently hasn't a clue how CDs actually work.

I wonder if they are easier for a laser to read when scratched because the data is "cleaner" or whatever. Not really something you could test though. This seems like a new pressing technology that should have just become the standard with no fanfare, but some exec saw those microscope photos and said "we can sell this as a special thing!"

There was a time when CD players had less than ideal tracking, and no buffering. Improving the "quality" of the bits actually meant something -- the difference between getting the real data and a somewhat-similar error-corrected facsimile. That time was 1985. Even then, I don't think jitter during mastering was an issue. It certainly wouldn't affect jitter during playback, since the player has its own clock for the output to the DACs.

I think this was more to make a higher quality physical media cd version that keeps the sound specs the same.

Hey look at it this way, you got two exactly the same cd's for the price of one. ;)

That CD pack would be great for espousing the benefits up upgrading a CD pressing plant to Bluray.

Keep doing what you’re doing. Really enjoy the style of your videos! 👍

And then you wonder why you see people who are worried about BS like HDDs or digital signal cables causing "jitter issues"...

Awful compression and clipping. Thank you another time for mentioning the Loudness War!

Placebo effect got me. I thought the blu spec CD sounded slightly more spatial. Even though he proved that they are identical.

To my ears that loudness war comparison you provided at the end was one of the best examples I have ever heard. A stark difference between the two examples. Have you or will you do a vid that shows any more such differences?

Bad mastering, aka how to **** up everything at the very last moment... That vinyl recording was like a breath of fresh air after the muddy Blu-spec garbage.

Well I think this format isn't really about the audible difference, but the difference in manufacturing quality of the discs (pits). Just like with gold plated HDMI-Cables it probably will not improve the quality of the content but why not take it if the price is identical. (Given the price is identical) *I don't know if Sony ever stated that it would improve the quality of the read audio, so I don't think it's really a case of snake oil.

the only thing i can see as an improvement is the fact that these discs will probably last longer than traditional pressed cds and better resist disc rot

I call japanese snake oil, Could not tell the difference. The vinyl vs blue spec CD is different, vinyl version is mastered much better than the CD.

Excellent video as always!

i thought that is a snake oil about cd format, but since i played a SHM-CD format to my old Sony xa50es cd player, the differences appeared instantly. It is a very big one and worth any penny (at least in my hifi system).

I think that this stuff is aimed to specific Audiophiles. Just like you modify your car with like a k&n air filter. It will give you a very small boost in speed maybe 2-5 hp depending on the type of car. Same with audiophiles. They will spend hundreds if not thousands and buy different stylus, cables, dacs, cd's, blu ray cd and vinyl to tweek their sytem just a little bit. Silver coated wiring vs copper wire can change a difference on how things are heard. Tube amps vs intergrated amps as well. Sometimes I can hear a small difference but nothing major. Only major difference is in the blu ray CD and SACD format. Well worth it! Audiophiles will listen to these examples on a more elaborate system vs this little Emerson clock radio. Just saying. Though I do understand test but when Audiophiles listen to this. They are listening with High quality speakers that separates and balance the high, mid, and the low range , with high quality cables, a high quality DAC, and a high quality cd transport. This is how an Audiophile will listen to this type of CD. It's all about bringing the listener closer to the original recording. Doe's it do this? Just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The way music sounds is in the ears of the listener. Each to their own.

And to make matters worse they include TOTO but not Africa

Even if the pits are crisper due to better substrate and manufacturing this has nothing to do with the digital 1 and 0 as you say. Even if it is read with less physical jitter this has nothing to do with the 1 and 0 and sound since the digital data on the CD is not even the raw 0 and 1 but must be decoded (e.g. error correction) and buffered in RAM in the player.

I think Blu-Spec CDs do seem like they're manufactured a little better and might hold up longer or work in CD players that are picky about what discs they can use. I don't think it actually sounds better, but I think this might be a change they should have quietly slipped into the CD manufacturing process rather than bothering to advertise. You make your CDs a little better by using technology from the Blu-Ray line? Good, just give us better CDs and upgrade all your CD assembly lines to use it. Don't make a fuss like you've done something revolutionary.

I like that cd player...was it expensive? I want to get one, or something similar

I just bought a Blu-Spec CD 2 of Boney M's music from CDJapan, but it's not because I wanted better quality. It's because I found the release of their music on Blu-Spec CD interesting. I have been to Japan three times, and I have never seen ordinary people buy Blu-Spec CDs. $32.78 isn't a bad price in my opinion, as many J-Pop albums like fripSide's infinite synthesis series of albums cost around the same money.

Holy cow that was a huge difference when you compared the BSCD and vinyl Santana - Oye Como Va. That record sounded great!

This is, what many hifi enthusiasts don't (want to) understand: CD's (or digital media) can't sound different as long as there is no damage and the mastering is the same. The reason: Digital media stores data which represents audio or wich decodable into audio, not the audio itself. The CD is just a digital storage. It doesn't matter which device reads which media: Either the stored data is read correctly or not. Reading errors, or more general, damaged digital data lead to serious distortion or prevent the playback at all. One single bad bit is enough to kill all the fun^^.

Maybe they've forgotten how digital formats work

1,575 yen = $10.48 now (Nov. 1, 2023) If the "Blu-spec CD" had HDCD encoding, the disc would have a higher dynamic range when played on compatible players.

When they started spewing the lower jitter on the disk nonsense, I knew where this was going. Jitter can be introduced in the player's D to A process, but that's an issue with the player and nothing to do with the disks.

Hey vwestlife could you do a review on the Emerson CD player you use in this video kind of would like to know more about it

Interesting vid 👍 Regardless of any possible BS. If these improved discs are designed for audiophiles. Shouldn't testing be carried out on a high end system - just to see (hear) any difference?

I am not tech guy to get into so much detail on different Audiophile CD formats. Today I received quite a few Japanese SHM-CDs, BSCD2, UHQCDs and Regular Japan mini LP CDs. I want to update the Sony BSCD2 CDs compare to the original CDs sound quality. 1. SADE - Diamond Life BSCD2 Japan Reissue 2013, vs SADE - Diamond Live original USA 1985 The BSCD2 is louder and is so much better sound over the original CD, The Saxophone is so clean. the mids/his are so detail, more separation, and drum beats are deeper, and richer low-end bass. 2. Dave Brubeck - Time Out BSCD2 Japan Reissue 2013, vs Dave Brubeck - Take Five SACD Reissue 1997, the original recording in 1959. Sony BSCD2 2013 CD produce much better than the SACD, more define, smoother, better Soundstage, more headroom, Paul Desmond play the Saxophone so will right in the middle. In case you don't know this CD, As an Audiophile you have to listen the 3rd track "Take Five" , The Dave Brubeck Quartet band is like other Miles Davis and John Coltrane CDs, they recorded on instruments separate mics left or right channel. Dave is playing Piano on the Right, the drums is on the left, BSCD2 reissue is just much better sound to listen to, much more Dynamics on the drum, striking clean beat. My equipment testing on BSCD2, SHM-CDs, UHQCD (This new format does sound the best, much smooth, deeper and rich bass), 1. Sony STR-DA3000ES (before HDMI), 150W x 7, with Bass/Treble Tone Control 2. Sony DVP-NS9100 Flagship DVd/SACD Player 3. Carver CT-27V 5.1 Preamp with Loudness and Tune Control 4. Carver M-4.0t 350W 2-Channel Power Amplifier in 8 ohms. Same as Carver TFM-45 375W 2-Channel Power Amplifier 5. Perreaux Eloquence 250i 250W Integrated Stereo Amplifier (New was about $ 10,000), No Tone Controls 6. Pioneer Elite DV-79AVi Flagship DVD-A/SACD Universal Player (it sounds better than Sony DVP-NS9100 SACD Player) 7. Technics SB-C700 Audiophile 2-Way Bookshelf Speakers 8. Kenwood KL-8080X Vintage 5-Way 5-Drivers, 16" Woofer, 98dBs, 20-22,000kHz, 4-Crossovers. BSCD2 CDs: 1. The Dave Brubeck Quartet - Take Out 2013 (better sound then SACD 1997) 2. SADE - Diamond Life. System test 1: - Sony STR-DA3000ES, Sony DVP-NS9100 or Pioneer Elite DV-79AVi, Technics SB-C700 40Hz with -6dBs, 30Hz with -16dBs, 87dB bookshelf speakers The sound quality still quite good, warm, detail, more toward layback sound, less dynamic Striking Bass. -- Using the Perreaux 250i 250W more power Integrate Amplifier, there is no Tone Controls, Flat response, can't desire to get more bass if you want to. -- If any one have similar setup, they may say the BSCD2 Audio sound does not much improvement over Standard CDs, but not entirely true, still better in detail sound Dynamic soundstage. - Carver CT-27V Preamp, enable the Loudness, max at BASS Control, Carver M-4.0t 350W Power Amp, Technics SB-C700 speakers, ^^^ There is much big improvement in Bass, Deep Mid Bass vibration, more open sound, more soundstage, smooth Saxophone Sound. Still hear warm Audio music detail sound. The Dave Brubeck 3rd track "Take Five" the drums from the left channel is still not give you the striking fast sound, as my Kenwood KL-8080x Loudspeakers. ^^^^ With Kenwood KL-8080X 250W or KL-9090X (better than Pioneer HPM-100, JBL-4312B or Yamaha NS--1000m Studio Monitor Speakers only go down to 40Hz), the 16" Woofer produce excellent Deep Bass, the Carver CT-27V with M-4.0t can produce addition gain that create outstanding deep low-end Bass, striking drum sound on left channel that is so fast, that you will not feel and hear from any above 40Hz

To me, the Blu-spec sounded like it had a bit wider of a sound stage, or maybe like it had a little bit of an echo effect added to it in the background; like a concert hall effect you find in media player programs. It didn't sound better, just different. It was most likely just an illusion, but i'd be interested to see if anyone else hears it as well.

Here's where your testing went wrong ; You did not use a computer made by Apple, with a CD drive made by McIntosh(the Hi-Fi company) for your data comparisons. The listening tests were wrong because you didn't use a Bose CD player system hooked up to Beats by Dre speakers, using Monster cables. Lastly, you did not use a filtered mains power supply with cables made from pure platinum, with solid gold socket contacts. It's all just wrong.

Bear in mind that jitter is only going to be an issue in real-time CD playback. Ripped material is going to circumvent the jitter inherent in CD transports by reading from a hard drive.

I'm not sure if this means anything, but the blu spec versions of CDs tend to rip faster and more accurately on EAC in my experience.

Thank you for your amazing work, this is a great job. Congratulations. :)

Digital is Digital. It is up to the manufacturer of the cd player as to which DAC they use. Lower end players use cheap DAC's which equals crap quality sound. Companies like Yamaha and up use Burr-Brown DAC'S therefore the quality of sounds is better especially if your using high end amps and speakers.

I think the only difference is that the blu-spec CD is easier for the CD player to read. That's what the marketing seems to imply anyway. I should hope that once ripped, a CD is a CD is a CD, and that jitter becomes a non-issue when even the cheapest playback hardware has a multi-second sample buffer. I'm not entirely sure what playback hardware exists that cares about this, but obviously there must be some

I have some pre-recorded BluSpec CDs (like Simon and Garfunkel). They sound very good, but it may just be the mastering.

It's crap like this why I don't call myself an audiophile. Every sane person knows it's all to do with the mastering and the source material.

Last time I checked, when it comes to PCM, a 1 is 1 and a 0 is a 0. You can't make binary be more binary.

I love the last segment that featured comparisons to two different versions of "Oye Como Va" by Santana in both Blu Spec CD 2 and the SQ version taken from a demonstration LP, but it still sounds the same in stereo as you can hear in quadraphonic. I have my Sony SQ Decoder SQD-1000 in which decodes 4 channels. Works with SQ quadraphonic albums as well as movies on both DVD and Blu-Ray to hear the difference, and it does feature DTS Audio, Dolby 5.1 Surround, and THX Audio.

I have an Internet radio station. I produce all the music programming in the digital domain. I encounter all kinds of source material. Some of it sounds good, and I can generally tell that it has the potential to sound good just by looking at the waveform in the editor. Some is very heavily clipped, which almost always sounds awful. More often than I would have thought, I have to fix problems like hum, rumble, and occasionally EQ. One big problem I deal with on almost all mono recordings is that they've been improperly mastered to the CD; I have to fix 95% of mono recordings I encounter. One would think that professional recording studios would know by now how to produce good sounding audio, but I am often amazed when I find basic problems which I have to fix.

I have a radiohead one, they are 100 data identical between standard us and jp blu spec.

It's the second coming of "CD Greening". Which is easily the most ridiculous snake oil "solution" to "digital errors" and "jitter" ever devised. Until Blu Spec.

The seek time seemed faster in the Blu-Spec CDs. It might help correct read errors, which can improve performance, even if it's not immediately audible.

That's what I said to a friend. No matter the physical substrata employed to make a CD you just listen to the ones and zeroes from the digital recording. And getting the things worse, we have the loudness war.

That's an awesome clock radio.

While they are identical the difference created by the “i paid more for it so it must be better” falicy maters because art is a subjective experience. Any psychological effect meters too.

In theory, the Blu-spec CD could be a bit more resistant to damage than regular CD. Error correction takes care of minor problems in either format, but if the CD is badly damaged, then perhaps there is a slight difference and the Blu-spec CD can still be listened to when regular CD can't. Perhaps.

Could there be a dedicated drive to show the enhancements of bluspec cd2 that it diminishes when read to a standard cd drive?

Well, it's really easy to see how claims on this format cannot be true: Same media, some storage capacity, but better quality without any compression algorithm... That automatically and mathematically would mean bulkier files, so claims absolutely must be fake.

To be fair, they never claimed that the file on the disc was any different, just that the disc itself was higher quality, so comparing the ripped files in this way is meaningless. Not saying I believe there's an audible difference (I don't), but if there was a microscopic improvement I doubt a clock radio would pick it up.

I have reached an age where my eyes are no longer 4K and my ears are not Hi Fi... I also sing along which I have been told does not help...

For my ears standard CD quality sounds great as is. Its one of the major reasons I dont get audiophiles. They seem to get off on high quality rather than enjoying the music on a cd.

The newest Blu-Spec CD2 release was released late January of this year. Dream Theater's Lost Not Forgotten Archives: The Majesty Demos (1985-1986)

This is a great comparison, but I feel like maybe to be 100% sure you could've ripped the CDs through CDDA and then compared those rips with a checksum, since that rips raw data without converting it afterwards into WAV files, which could lose their bit depth or be downsampled. Realistically none of these differences would be noticeable unless you had a trained ear and thousands of dollars in audio equipment still, and I would only choose it if it's either the only option on CD, or if it's around the same price as the regular.

I had no idea that this was a type of CD. Most likely because it’s from japan

I purchased the Blu Spec CD of Mariah Carey's "Emotions" and "Musicbox" and they sound so much better than what was originally pressed in the U.S. I played both on my Bose CD system at the same volume and the Blu Specs were no doubt louder. I don't think they were remastered but the volume is definately turned up so it doesn't sound as low as what we got here in the States in the early 90s. But I do think it's just the music label's ploy to get folks to repurchase CD titles we already own by giving the product a fancy name and being too lazy to give us discs that have been truly remastered.

Hey. It’s Blue-Ray for CDs

I have exactly *one* Blue-Spec CD in my collection... and it's a loudness war era remaster that's audibly worse than a rip from an original '80s CD issue I dug up online and applied deemphasis to manually. **FAIL** (It's Anri's _COOOL._ Well, at least the reissue includes a fairly nice bonus track.) Incidentally, Japan may be the country with the hottest modern-day mastering levels worldwide.

@14:50 Obviously, you're right... YT's audio compression sucks for comparison tests, anyway. And if you _were to record_ the vinyl recording (back) to a CD, then, yes, that CD would have the same audio signature to it as the original vinyl recording. The point most people try to make when saying vinyl sounds better than (most) CDs, though, is that which you made at 13:07 ~ 14:10. Due to the ridiculous phenomenon known as the _loudness wars,_ which have effectively not ended to this day, everything was focussed at loudness. LPs simply _couldn't_ be mastered too loud because that would cause playback issues for most consumers. But even some (modern) LPs suffer from having been mastered as loudly as possible, where a maximum amount of DRC would have been applied to the source before the record was being pressed. CDs have a much higher technical limit when it comes to how loud everything can sound. Even with _no DRC applied,_ the CD could sound much louder, just by "normalising" the audio to the 0dB limit. The average peak for a vinyl record sits at -6 to -3dB For most record companies, though, that was not enough, which is why when the CD came around, they went even further in trying to increase their loudness and started applying DRC to most everything they put out. You can even hear this effect on records that were released _after_ the CD (as a medium) came to market. Take a pop album from the late 80s or early 90s that _explicitly states it was released on both formats,_ and then make a comparison of the _waveform_ in any DAW. You will then see that even the vinyl record's audio has received _some_ amount of DRC, albeit much more moderately than that of the CD's audio. The atrocities get even worse when you look at _remastered releases_ (CDs) with recordings from the 60s or 70s, and compare them to their original counterparts on tape, or to vinyl recordings released at the time. You will immediately notice that the original (and/or time-appropriate) recordings will have received _no_ compression (other than the RIAA curve having been applied to the vinyl recording), whereas the so-called "remastered recording" on CD will have had the life compressed out of it (quite literally, as a matter of fact). What's more, in an "effort to reduce the anomalies found when recording the song", they will have removed not just the clicks and pops, or background tape hiss that may have been present in the source, but they will most of the time also have removed "ambient background noises", such as, for example, a breathing noise from a singer, or even (n the case of classical recordings) a page in the score being turned. This is what audio purists will refer to as the audio sounding "too clean". You quite rightly state that you cannot really _hear_ the intended difference on RU-vid, or at least not to the full extent. And you were also quite right to say that the CD _could_ sound the same as the recording you made, if you were to put it on a CD. The main point here, though, is that because of the recording process being used, and the loudness wars, most CDs, in reality, sounded much worse than their (time-appropriate) (vinyl) counterparts. Oh yeah... And as a PS: where I wrote CD, this also applies to most (compressed) digital recordings, such as those found on iTunes/Apple Music or Spotify. This is why, when digital is concerned, I would much rather have a _lossless_ recording over a compressed one. But then, if the source used for creating said recording was "bad" in the first place, there is no real benefit in going the lossless route...

The BLU Team's preferred way to listen to music RED Team has Super Audio CD (SACD)

have you ran the same tests for different examples between 2 different editions of the same album? just to see how differences should show in your tests

Audiophiles be like: Yeah those disc may contain exactly the same content, bit perfect copy, but I CAN HEAR a difference on my setup with my ears...

It seems there are a lot of audiophiles in Japan. Can't think of any other reason for releasing another physical audio format only in a specific country.