[Eric Taylor]

With the Lite-On DVD recorders (which allow for cd-r), and others, I'm starting
to wonder why the audio specs are so neglected by manufacturers. Is it priorities
? Short cuts ? Space limitations ? Why can't the audio reproduction on DVD
recorders match those on CD recorders ?

I started to get some technical clues here...

http://www.belcantosociety.org/pages/pcm.html


If you have any informed opinions on the matter, please state them.

[Ethan Winer]

Eric,

Space limitations ?

Exactly. Audio for DVD movies is lossy compressed to fit more video. Dan
Lavry is great! However, the rest of that article was substantially full of
crap. For example, this gem:

"converters truncated overtones and added digital artifacts, such as
hardness, glassiness or glare"

Any converter that "truncates overtones" is broken. Likewise, "hardness,
glassiness, or glare" are nonsense terms that explain nothing.

"Another obstacle: The technician who authors a DVD with Dolby Digital must
encode a squashed dynamic range into the program."

This is simply not true.

There is nothing inherently evil about lossy compression. The key is the bit
rate. If it's high enough the audio can sound very good.

--Ethan

[Richard Crowley]

"Eric Taylor" wrote ...
With the Lite-On DVD recorders (which allow for cd-r), and others, I'm
starting
to wonder why the audio specs are so neglected by manufacturers.

Audio is not a priority concern for video products in general.
Even professional video equipment that costs 10s of thousands
of $$$ has very "modest" audio performance. There has been
discussion of poor audio performance in video equipment for
years in the video newsgroups. And to this very day.

Is it priorities?

Mostly.

Short cuts?

They don't spend any extra effort on audio. Video quality is the
primary objective. And even there we see ample evidence that
video quality is throttled in lower-priced equipment to "protect"
their market for the higher-end products.

Space limitations?

PC board space is a premium when designing consumer
equipment. Anything that increases the space used on the
board, or increases the number of discreet components
installed on the board must be multiplied by 100,000 to see
the cost over the production lifespan of the product.

Why can't the audio reproduction on DVD recorders match
those on CD recorders ?

Because the number of us who want that feature are not
enough to be of any financial interest to the manufacturers.

I started to get some technical clues here...

http://www.belcantosociety.org/pages/pcm.html


If you have any informed opinions on the matter, please state them.

Since Lavry is considered to produce very nice converter products,
the nonsense in the cited article must be the result of editing by an
author who doesn't know the subject. The article doesn't seem very
helpful in actually understanding the situation. It appears to contain
a large amount of well-written gibberish.

[Ethan Winer]

Richard,

Since Lavry is considered to produce very nice converter products,
the nonsense in the cited article must be the result of editing by an
author who doesn't know the subject. The article doesn't seem very
helpful in actually understanding the situation. It appears to contain
a large amount of well-written gibberish.

Exactly. Gibberish being the norm these days for most "hi-fi" writers.

BTW, Dan is active over at Gearslutz, and he's been making some great posts
the past few weeks.

--Ethan

[Mr.T]

"Ethan Winer" ethanw at ethanwiner dot com wrote in message
...
"converters truncated overtones and added digital artifacts, such as
hardness, glassiness or glare"

Any converter that "truncates overtones" is broken. Likewise, "hardness,
glassiness, or glare" are nonsense terms that explain nothing.

And the audio rags would go out of business if they stopped using such
nonsense terms.
(That would be a good thing of course)

"Another obstacle: The technician who authors a DVD with Dolby Digital
must
encode a squashed dynamic range into the program."

This is simply not true.

Well something is always sacrificed in ANY perceptual encoding scheme.
There is NO *standard* DVD audio *compression* scheme that is lossless, but
they do exist for other uses.

There is nothing inherently evil about lossy compression. The key is the
bit
rate. If it's high enough the audio can sound very good.


IF it is high enough, then NO lossy encoding need be used in the first
place!!!

DVD's *may* contain uncompressed PCM audio, but DD, AC3 and DTS are all
compressed schemes.

MrT.

[Ethan Winer]

DVD's *may* contain uncompressed PCM audio

Understood, and that's exactly what I use on my own DVDs.