DVD Audio

**Clive** · 03 August 2002, 12:55 Saturday

Hi Greg, DVD-audio does set a wider and more defined sound stage when listening to multi-channel CDs and especially DVD concerts etc. The difference you'll notice is the positioning of musicians and vocalists. You'll feel like you're sitting right on or in front of the stage.
For you to enjoy the full spectrum, your reciever or pre-amp must have multi-channel inputs.

The one problem that a good number of us face with this format is the lack of Bass Management. There is a number of guys here who are more informed about this subject and will jump in here to help out. However, your unit may or may not be able to do proper bass management if not, there are a few units out there that will do the trick. Outlaw ICBM is one of the more popular units used for this purpose http://www.outlawauio.com

Now I don't know whether or not you have good access to multi-channel CDs, you may notice that the production for CDs with this format is slow. Mind you, today there is a vast number of discs on the market for a person just starting. A wide range of artists from Classical to hip hop are recording and producing Multi-channel discs.

You have the technology go ahead and use it you will be amazed at the difference it makes.

CLIVE

HEY!! Why buy movie tickets when you can own a Theater?

**JonMarsh** · 03 August 2002, 13:09 Saturday

DVD Audio is such a mixed bag- you never know what to expect or what you're going to get on a disk. A lot of them are multi-channel 48 kHz. Some are multi-channel 96 kHz. VERY FEW are 192 kHz, and for space reasons, it either has to be a short program, or only a stereo mix.

I have a Jonatha Brooke DVD, which is a "flipper"; it's DVD-V on one side, with a 5.1 mix, and a two channel 24/192 mix on the DVD-A side.

While you can use your receiver's DAC's as a decoder for DVD-V, you can't for DVD-A. Only DD will be output on the SPDIF connector; that's a compressed format, unlike MLP (Meridian Lossless Processing) which is used to reduce the disk space requirements for DVD-A, without actually compressing or reducing the signal information. All DVD-A disks include a DD mix, so if you playback with SPDIF enabled, that's what you'll get. It's not a high res format compared with CD; au contraire...

For DVD-A, you need either a full 5.1 analog input, or at least a stereo bypass, as DVD-A players can do a down mix of surround recordings to two channel- but it's an arbitrary down mix, you don't have any control over parameters. One thing I like about Multi-channel SACD is that they actually put a multi-channel and two channel mix on the disks. If your player is two channel, like my SCD777ES, it only plays back the two channel mix. If you have a multi-channel player, you have a choice. Many multi-channel players combine the DACs in parallel for two channel playback, slightly lowering the noise and distortion, so depending on your setup, that may be the way to go.

Hope I haven't muddied the waters any further....

BTW, I've found very few 192 KHz DVD-A disks, so if you want to try a copy of the Jonatha Brooke album, it may be hard to find in stores, but you can order it from her web site like I did. You can see clips of some of the DVD video, and there are audio samples (all low res of course!). Her albums have been mastered at Stirling studios, even for her independent label, so the quality is fairly high as pop goes- not quite the Jennifer Warnes best (like "The Hunter), but certainly well above average).

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http://www.jonathabrooke.com/core.html

Best regards,

Jon

Earth First!
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We'll screw up the other planets later....

DVD Audio

DVD Audio

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