Is DVD Audio dead?

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by ocd1, Nov 2, 2015.

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  1. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    How do you copy DVD/Blu-rays if they are copy protected?
     
  2. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    At best. It's the mastering and the production. That's where it's all at. You might get a one off mastering for one of those formats, but for the most part, DVD-A and SACD are very much niche formats and DVD-A probably less so.
     
    tmtomh likes this.
  3. tmtomh

    tmtomh Forum Resident

    I don't want run afoul of forum rules, but there are software solutions that allow for this. For DVD they are pretty easily available. For Blu-Ray I'm not sure how available they are, but I do know for a fact that folks have ripped encrypted Blu-Ray Audio discs.
     
  4. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    My point is that some folks will want the media, and make it live on. Just because a DVD-A of Chicago II has been ripped to a music server, does not make that DVD-A lack demand in the collector's circles. It does not mean that the disc gets tossed out, or into the bargain bins.

    So once the media transferred, it does not kill off the value or eliminate physical the use. Some dump their discs on the used market right away, but in general that is not the case for the nicer stuff. At least from what I am seeing over the last 10 years. I guess the next 10 could be different, but I doubt it. It's a cult of collectors there for sure.
     
    ElvisCaprice likes this.
  5. Pat the Cat

    Pat the Cat Musical Goldminer

    No, it isn't dead. Dead quiet, maybe. Rock music remixes seem to trickle out in that format rather than SACD. The ability to combine DVD Video sound like Dolby & DTS formats along with true lossless DVD-Audio are an advantage since those with plain ol' DVD players can join the party as well.

    My 2015 DVD audio purchases include Gentle Giant's The Power and the Glory, Emerson, Lake & Palmer's self-titled debut and their Trilogy album, Rick Wakeman's The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Anthony Phillips' The Geese & the Ghost. It's still out there, especially for fans of adventurous '70's rock.
     
    quicksrt likes this.
  6. Dr Jackson

    Dr Jackson Surgeon of Sound

    What irks me is that mobile hifi seems to be suffering at the moment. Sure, you can stream via bluetooth in your car, but plugging an iPhone or iPod into the USB port isn't going to give you hi-res audio. Without FLAC, Ogg, or ALAC support, DVD is the only choice, and it is extremely limited unless you make your own. Forget about really nice formats like FLAC multichannel, I can't think of a single product I can plug into my car to make this happen. It's a shame to have 17 speakers and a dedicated surround processor in your dash and no good way to feed it.

    I don't understand what manufacturers are doing these days. They seem to be toeing some invisible line between digital and physical. Want to make consumers go full digital? Give them more portable options that support common hi-res formats. That includes head units in car stereos, that come with the car.
     
  7. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Until Apple gets onboard with multichannel audio I doubt we're going to see much adoption of downloadable high-res multichannel audio. And their focus at the moment seems to be on streaming audio.

    I also think the labels will be reluctant to make this content available without some kind of DRM. Blu-ray audio, SACD and DVD-A are all fairly difficult to rip compared to CD.
     
  8. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Apple is not the end all be all trend setter anymore. They don't care about high-res, and they ended the iPod which means they are not expecting any more growth in iTunes. And since they are focusing on streaming, they will never get into surround downloads. This leaves the market wide open for HDTracks, or whatever else comes along.

    I think my main point is that I don't see Apple in the future as the king, the boss, or the authority on downloads like you. They don't even like BluRay video.
     
  9. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    DVD-A's biggest hassle for the most part is having to have it hooked up to a monitor. Not every disc is pop in and play and some need a particular selection to be made first. That was a mistake (IMO).
     
  10. Dr Jackson

    Dr Jackson Surgeon of Sound

    Yeah that is a goofy mistake. At the least it would require hardware manufacturers to have a 2 line LCD or some kind of display that allowed choosing scrolling options, like a lot of AV receivers do.
     
    sunspot42 likes this.
  11. Pat the Cat

    Pat the Cat Musical Goldminer

    I agree that all of the discs should just get up & go into 5.1 mode, but I really only have 1 or 2 DVD-As out of about 30 that need the monitor switched on. (It's about the same story with Bluray Audio.) Usually a push or 2 or maybe 3 of the "enter" button will start things rolling in multi-channel.

    I have no idea what the sales numbers are like, but it sure seems like those of us who buy the things are in an exclusive club and the artists who put them together sometimes do cool things just for us. On one of my recent favorites, Gentle Giant's The Power & the Glory, each song is accompanied by its own animation.
     
  12. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    The problem is, none of those vendors are large enough to impose any kind of standard.
     
  13. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    There's the thing, I listen in two channel mode only, so going into 5.1 by default is no good to me!

    I guess I was really thinking of those discs where you have a different set of mixes, much like the King Crimson or ELP discs. I think REM is straight in and go, Talking Heads, I think I need to select. That kind of thing.

    It's no biggie but it's maybe one reason why some buyers were put off. And yes, some of those animations can look very good.
     
  14. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    Thank you for your assistance. With your help I was able to see that my copy of Cirlinca DVD Audio Solo was actually providing the results I hoped for.

    For some reason I still have to sort out, my copy of DVD Audio Extractor has been mishandling the Cirlinca results. However with the proper DVD-A plug-in, foobar2000 was able to provide multi-channel FLAC/wave result files that matched my multi-channel input to Cirlinca.
     
  15. darkmass

    darkmass Forum Resident

    Everything I've seen indicates that 96k/24 two-channel LPCM is indeed within DVD-V spec. Finding a clear and authoritative source seems not to be particularly easy, though if this works here is one possibility...you'll have to scroll to the next page after the page the link presents and do a little reading.

    A more well-behaved possibility is here, though you'll have to do a little arithmetic to see that 96k/24 two channel LPCM (96000 x 24 x 2 = 4,608,000) is within the max allowed 10.08 megabits/second that can be split between video and audio. Clearly, video becomes kinda limited if two-channel audio is running at 96k/24--but if audio DVD-Vs are being made video isn't really the point.

    Oh, I have never heard that DADs weren't within the DVD-V spec. Do you have a source? As far as I know, "DAD" was more a marketing term to emphasize that audio was the point of the discs, not video. DAD also serves to distinguish the discs from DVD-A discs.
     
  16. Linger63

    Linger63 Forum Resident

    Location:
    AUSTRALIA

    Hi,

    Dunno if this helps but I have a couple of Queen Greatest Video Hits DVD's that have 5.1 DTS 96/24 audio.
     
  17. jukes

    jukes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Finland
    I'm afraid DVD-Audio is fatally wounded. The production of DVD-Audio titles pretty much collapsed when the encryption of DVD-Audio was cracked.

    SACD sells fairly well because several smaller classical labels release the discs as hybrids. I'd expect the relation being 20:1. Well, perhaps not exactly that big difference. And they wouldn't be doing SACD-hybrids if they weren't selling.

    I've ripped probably every DVD-Audio disk I have. Then again, I have some ten times of SACD titles and haven't ripped any of them. Ripping DVD-Audio is as easy as ripping a cd.
     
  18. Brother_Rael

    Brother_Rael Senior Member

    I understand. I have a good few classical SACDs, some pop/rock too. Maybe twenty or thirty? Nice format, but in terms of output I'd guess there's almost as much coming out on Pure Audio (which seems to be Blu-ray Audio by another name).
     
  19. jukes

    jukes Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern Finland
    Yes, right now that seems to be the winning format. After all, you can put the whole Wagner Ring on one disc...
     
    Brother_Rael likes this.
  20. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    That simply isn't true. It requires the installation of special software and the ability to understand what all the different data streams on the disc represent. I had little trouble figuring it out, but 95% of consumers would be challenged at least if not utterly perplexed.

    Until iTunes supports it out of the box (not gonna happen) it isn't as easy as ripping a CD.
     
  21. Steel Horse

    Steel Horse Forum Resident

    Location:
    Uppsala, SWEDEN
    DVD-A sound spectacular despite being dead..... :D
     
    Norco74, scobb, Linger63 and 4 others like this.
  22. Chooke

    Chooke Forum Resident

    Location:
    Perth, Australia
    They are usually mastered very well. The best version of Alan Parson's I Robot is the the OOP DVD-A, it was a flat transfer of the master tape.
     
    Steel Horse likes this.
  23. quicksrt

    quicksrt Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    And not the Classic DAD? Or did you mean that DAD?
     
  24. Chooke

    Chooke Forum Resident

    Location:
    Perth, Australia
    Yep, my apologies, that's what I meant.
     
  25. Linger63

    Linger63 Forum Resident

    Location:
    AUSTRALIA
    You mean this bad boy.........HDAD


    [​IMG]


    The Classic Hybrid DVD Audio Disc (HDAD) is a two-sided DVD disc with 24/192 PCM data playable on DVD Audio players on one side, and 24/96 PCM data playable on DVD Video players on the other side. The Classic HDAD is a truly universal DVD disc playable on all DVD players. So if you have a DVD video player, you can play the DVD Video side of the HDAD - insert the disc with the Blue center ring facing up and enjoy 24/96 playback resolution. On a DVD Audio player, simply flip the disc over with the Red ring facing up and enjoy 24/192 playback resolution.


    The man behind the recording of Dark Side of the Moon is none other than Alan Parsons. If you want to hear what is his definitive recording and a bit of the Dark Side then this is it. I Robot was produced and engineered by Alan at Abbey Road Studios and is an audiophile’s dream recording. Transferred on an all-tube cutting system from the original 1/4" analog master tapes at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
     
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