"fathom" wrote in message


After reading this article at the Stereophile site:

http://www.stereophile.com/news/031504pcaudio/


It's complete and total bullocks.


I tried making one of these discs. The demo version is
limited to 4 tracks per "album", 2 albums per disc, and the
program's interface is a clunky web page. But hey, it's free.

Upsampling, yawn. How high do I need to upsample?

24/96? Been there done that!

24/192? Been there done that.


I took some high-quality 16/44.1 WAV files (from Patricia
Barber's "Cafe Blue" CD), selected the 24/96 upsample option,
and burned the resulting VIDEO_TS folder to a blank DVD-R.

Seems like a lot work. I say cut to the chase - upsample 16/44 to 24/192 and
play straight out the DAC into a high quality speaker and speakers.

Better yet, why not just make life recording 24/192 and play it back later
on? Or better yet, just listen to live music?

Note: I think it would be trivial to edit the .IFO file
in the VIDEO_TS directory and include more tracks and/or
albums, getting around the demo limit. Haven't tried it,
though.]

I popped the disc into my HT system's DVD player and it
played! Not only played, but sounded excellent..until about
10 seconds in I heard a very light "tic". The small tic was
present throughout the disc, otherwise spoiling what sounded
like a detectable improvement over the already excellent sound
of the tracks.

No such problems with my approach.

The tic may be due to the way the software formatted the video
portion. There are 3 choices and they say you may have to try
them all to find the best setting.

Or, you've some data overrun problems.

Anyway, this is an exciting technology, if only for the
archival and playlist possibilities. This format can store 2
hours of 24/96 stereo audio, and up to 45 hours of stereo
audio using compression. The coolest thing is it'll play on
any standard DVD player. This means it takes advantage of the
DVD player's digital connection, allowing the processor or
receiver to handle the signal in the digital domain. Take
*that*, SACD and DVD-A!

This seems like the old 24/96 PCM format that plays on my Pioneer DVD-525.

Just thinking out loud here, but with 4+ GB of space on a DVD,
you could store about 8 hours of CD audio on 1 disc, probably
15 hours with lossless compression. Anything more would
require lossy compression. You could also fit 2-6 hours of
upsampled audio on 1 disc.

Since upsamping is patent snake oil, you just leave the CD the way it was.

I could also see being possible to add video content, too - at
least still frame, enabling you to have lyrics, libretto, or
images displayed while the music plays.

I'll probably mess around with the demo some more (they
recommend using rewritable DVDs to experiment, but I have
only DVD-Rs at the moment).

Has anyone else tried the demo software?

Seems like old news, and old snake oil at that.