[t_hah]

Do you guys know anything about this? If not could they be upgraded to play those disks?

[MindFad]

Paging Eug to the lounge; Eug to the lounge, please.

[Kenneth]

Does this help?

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~you/notes/dvd-audio/

[t_hah]

So it can play them, but not play them as they were meant to be played? Something along those lines?

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by Kenneth:
Does this help?

http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~you/notes/dvd-audio/

The process there simply converts the Dolby Digital track from any DVD to AIFF, leaving the actual DVD-Audio portion of the disc untouched. DVD-Audio is its own format, akin to Super Audio CD, and needs a compatible player to be played. AC3 (a.k.a. Dolby Digital) is what's used on almost every DVD for movie soundtracks. It's not uncompressed. (in fact, it's compressed quite a bit; around 350kbps, if i remember right. many people prefer DTS, which is around 1.5mbps, because of this.)

So, as far as i know, unless you get a 24bit/96kHz sound card (like an Audigy on the PC side, which can play DVD-A) and a program to play them, i think you're out of luck.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by MaxPower2k3:
So, as far as i know, unless you get a 24bit/96kHz sound card (like an Audigy on the PC side, which can play DVD-A) and a program to play them, i think you're out of luck.

http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...on71-main.html

Will this work? 24-bit/192kHz, and it's OS X compatible.

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_u...on71-main.html

Will this work? 24-bit/192kHz, and it's OS X compatible.

actually, i just looked at that, too. It does support 24-bit/96kHz, but it doesn't mention whether or not it'll decode DVD-A. I imagine that, if you had a program that could decode the files, the sound card would play them back. I don't know if such a program exists, though.

[Kenneth]

How about the M-Audio Revolution 7.1 card + VLC Player?

[MaxPower2k3]

If DVD-Audio uses LPCM encoding, then VLC may be able to play it. I don't see any specific mention of DVD-Audio on videolan.org, though.



edit: Another thing I didn't think of: DVD-Audio discs have copy protection. That may make it impossible to get access to and play the files. The program that comes with the Audigy sound cards must get around it somehow, but I don't know how.

[ASIMO]

I am thinking about an Acura TL and hooking it up to my Mac to play DVD-A.

[Scifience]

Originally posted by MaxPower2k3:
edit: Another thing I didn't think of: DVD-Audio discs have copy protection. That may make it impossible to get access to and play the files. The program that comes with the Audigy sound cards must get around it somehow, but I don't know how.

Since when has copy protection ever been an issue? DeCSS, anyone? I've ripped a few DVD-Audio discs with absolutely no problems.

[Randman]

Why is this in the lounge to begin with?

[Scifience]

Originally posted by Randman:
Why is this in the lounge to begin with?

Not sure. It would better fit under software, I think. It is possible that the original poster put it here because he wasn't sure if it was a software, OS, or hardware issue.

[alligator]

I'm getting an Acura TL this week - it's currently being delivered to my dealer. I can't wait to try DVD-Audio, but I'm disappointed my current iTunes collection (and iPod) will have a lower quality than my car could play.

[tooki]

Macs don't come with any DVD-A playback software. There's no way that I'm aware of to play the high-resolution audio.

As MaxPower2k3 said, the website listed above, on converting DVD-A to AIFF, is wrong. It's not converting the DVD-Audio content at all, but rather the fallback Dolby Digital audio content, which is not high-resolution. (Most DVD-A discs also contain a standard-resolution copy of the content on the DVD-Video portion, so that people without DVD-A players can still play it at standard resolution, from lossy compressed files.)

DVD-A discs use a lossless compression scheme, Meridian Lossless Packing ("MLP") for multichannel high-resolution audio, and completely uncompressed PCM for stereo high-resolution audio or standard-resolution surround.

DVD-A content, by the way, is not encrypted using CSS, but with a different copy-protection scheme which is much stronger, and has not yet been broken.

Here's a decent DVD-Audio FAQ.

It'd make more sense to do as I did, and buy the cheapest DVD-Audio/SACD player on the market: the Pioneer DV-578A. It's $130 from Crutchfield and most retailers that carry it.

tooki

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by tooki:
It'd make more sense to do as I did, and buy the cheapest DVD-Audio/SACD player on the market: the Pioneer DV-578A. It's $130 from Crutchfield and most retailers that carry it.

have one downstairs. great little player


Dark Side of the Moon SACD sounds spectacular

[olePigeon]

Hey! I found this: http://www.discwelder.com/

DVD-A authoring and playback. They even have demos on their website for you to try out.

Let me know if it works. It's only $99.

Edit: Speaking of which, couldn't this help with your Honda dilemma? You could re-encode some of your favorite songs to DVD-A for your car.

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
Hey! I found this: http://www.discwelder.com/

DVD-A authoring and playback. They even have demos on their website for you to try out.

Let me know if it works. It's only $99.

Edit: Speaking of which, couldn't this help with your Honda dilemma? You could re-encode some of your favorite songs to DVD-A for your car.

Windows only. And there'd be no point in re-encoding songs to DVD-A unless they were already DVD-A/SACD/some other advanced format (and then what's the point, anyway?).


edit: nevermind, there is a Mac version. second point still stands, however.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by MaxPower2k3:
...there'd be no point in re-encoding songs to DVD-A unless they were already DVD-A/SACD/some other advanced format (and then what's the point, anyway?).

I thought it was nifty to take a stereo track and then redistribute it to all 5, 6, or 7 channels. Sounds cool since the music now surrounds you instead of just in front of you.

[MaxPower2k3]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I thought it was nifty to take a stereo track and then redistribute it to all 5, 6, or 7 channels. Sounds cool since the music now surrounds you instead of just in front of you.

I don't know about my Mac, because i don't have surround sound hooked up to it, but my PC does that, and most cars play stereo music out of all speakers, too. If you're playing it on a real stereo through a receiver, turn on Pro Logic. it's not how it's "meant to be heard," though, depending on how much of an audiophile you are. My guess is that, in a car, you wouldn't notice much difference between a DVD-A playing the same thing from every channel and letting the car stereo do the same thing.

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by MaxPower2k3:
I don't know about my Mac, because i don't have surround sound hooked up to it, but my PC does that, and most cars play stereo music out of all speakers, too. If you're playing it on a real stereo through a receiver, turn on Pro Logic. it's not how it's "meant to be heard," though, depending on how much of an audiophile you are. My guess is that, in a car, you wouldn't notice much difference between a DVD-A playing the same thing from every channel and letting the car stereo do the same thing.

My ProLogic only uses the Center plus Left & Right, it doesn't use the rear speakers. Could just be my particular brand of Amp, though. (Kenwood)

[tooki]

Originally posted by olePigeon:
I thought it was nifty to take a stereo track and then redistribute it to all 5, 6, or 7 channels. Sounds cool since the music now surrounds you instead of just in front of you.

Pretty much every home theater receiver has a multichannel stereo mode that does just that, on the fly. (For example, my Denon receiver has a "5ch/7ch Stereo" button right on the front of the unit.)

Of course, car audio systems have always done that; few car stereos have ever had just two speakers. Most nowadays have 4 or 6 speakers, and they do just the same thing.

So there's really no need to re-master stereo into multichannel manually. It's only worthwhile if you are doing a true multichannel remix, which you can't do unless you own the studio masters, which is pretty bloody unlikely unless it's your own indie band.

tooki

[olePigeon]

Originally posted by tooki:
Of course, car audio systems have always done that; few car stereos have ever had just two speakers. Most nowadays have 4 or 6 speakers, and they do just the same thing.

The mono speakers in my '84 Toyota pickup are the sh*t.

[tooki]

Touché. Does it have one of those kickin' new terrestrial AM radio receivers, too? :-P

tooki