patton21

Hey guys,

I have a 2006 TL with nav and am new to nice audio systems. I understand that the TL can play DVD-A discs, but that they are not very common. I also know that you can burn your own. I have made a DVD-A from CD audio and it sounds okay.

Playing CD's also sounds ok. What is the best way to really take advantage of what this audio system can do without replacing parts? How do I really take advantage of the 5.1 surround sound that is supposed to be amazing! Thanks a lot.

Verbals

Burning a DVD-A from a CD won't fully utilize the 5.1 because CDs are 2 ch/44.1

LoveMyTL-S

First of all, welcome to AZ A search turned up this thread:

https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-94/improving-your-els-sound-system-542017/

Hope it helps.

patton21

Thank you guys! Also, does the car upmix stereo cd to 5.1 or should I do it on the computer?

DiamondJoeQuimby

iTrader: (2)

It'll do PL2 which is a simulated surround from a 2 channel source...but really doesn't sound good.

For the best, get some DVD-As...not that there are that many around and nothing current really.

For 2 channel, turn off all the processing add sub and center to taste.

To really make it preform, yank it and put something good in.

Steven Bell

iTrader: (2)

Patton, the head unit will do a decent job of separating regular CD's into somewhat of a 5.1 mix. It's not bad-you'll find some DVD Audio discs on Amazon. Also, look through this section of Acurazine for more DVD-A answers as well.


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princelybug

iTrader: (16)

Purchase DVD-A's, even though they're rare. That, and that alone will help you maximize your stock audio system.

Ruby

Its too bad you have to buy DVD-As to get that amazing sound. I wish it sounded like that all the time. I usually listen to my ipod anyway so it wouldn't make a difference I guess.

As long as I kill all of the rattles then I consider it a good sound system! lol

1995hoo

If you want to find commercial DVD-As, look to audiophile distributors rather than mass-market channels. Music Direct and Acoustic Sounds are two good sources (both of them can be found online by eliminating the spaces in their names and adding dot-com to the end).

Another thing I've found that's useful for car stereos in general, not just the TL, is that I boost the treble a bit more than I might at home. It helps avoid the effect of wind noise or road noise or the like (far less noticeable in the TL than in my wife's RSX, but some roads simply have noisy pavement).

Don't know what sort of music you like, but I'd consider the Beatles' Love DVD-A to be an absolute must-buy unless you can't stand the Beatles. The disc comes in a combo pack with a CD, but once you listen to the DVD-A you'll find it hard to play the CD.

In terms of burning your own DVD-As, the real benefit to doing that is not the ability to record multichannel stuff (which may not work so well anyway if you're using a two-channel source that's not a high-rez recording—it's kind of like using Dolby Pro Logic with a VCR to simulate surround-sound when it's not really there). The real benefit of burning your own DVD-A is the ability to fit vast amounts of "Red Book" CD music onto a single disc. Again using the Beatles as an example, if you take the Beatles in Mono boxed set that was released in 2009 and transfer that to DVD-A, you'll be able to fit the first ten albums, which represents 11 CDs due to the White Album being a double-set, with room for maybe one or two more tracks. The only album from that set that won't fit in this arrangement is the Mono Masters double-set (the Past Masters albums with slightly revised running order). You'd have to arrange the albums in groups on the DVD-A because you can only fit 99 tracks in a group, whereas you'd have around 150 tracks with all these albums.

But think about it this way: Carrying a single DVD-A instead of 11 CDs is terrific, and then if you multiply that by the six slots in the TL's changer, you've suddenly got a ton of music in the car without even having to carry extra discs in the glove box or on the shelf under the stereo.

myron

iTrader: (4)

reading about these DVD-A CDs got me thinking that I never heard a DVD-A CD. I think I might buy some and try to burn some music to it. Is it really that much better than the normal CD, or is it not worth the trouble of looking for them? I listen to my ipod mostly so CDs are not that big of a deal for me but I just wanna try it out.

DiamondJoeQuimby

iTrader: (2)

No. By burning to a DVD in DVD-A format you are just gaining quantity. It will be whatever quality the original CD is. To hear any difference you need to get the original 5.1 DVD-A release from the artist.

1995hoo

"DVD-A CD" is a misnomer. A DVD-A is not a CD and a CD is not a DVD-A. They use the same size shiny disc but they're otherwise incompatible in terms of the codec they use. You can almost always play a CD on equipment that can play DVD-A, but the opposite is not normally true.

If you have the TL demo disc that came with the car, put that into your stereo and give it a listen. It will underscore the difference between high-rez DVD-A versus "Red Book" CD. (If you use your iPod for .MP3 files rather than a lossless format, then the difference ought to be all the more noticeable for you because you're not normally listening to high-fidelity recordings.)


To underscore the point DiamondJoeQuimby makes, the Beatles in Mono DVD-A I burned sounds the same as the original 11 CDs. It's the same two-channel mix. The Beatles' Love DVD-A sounds far superior to the CD version of the same album because it's a commercial high-rez 5.1-channel mix, as opposed to the conventional stereo 16-bit/44.1-kHz PCM recording on the CD. If you're starting with music on a CD, an LP, a cassette, or the vast majority of downloads, you're never going to be able to approach the high-rez recording because the source material is simply too limited. You know how when you take a low-rez digital photo and blow it up really big it looks like crap because of the digital jagginess that results when there simply isn't enough resolution there? You'd essentially be doing the same thing with the music if you tried to take a PCM recording and burn it in a high-rez format.

Steven Bell

iTrader: (2)

Myron, there is a huge difference in sound from a CD to a DVD Audio disc. Not only is the DVD Audio disc sampled in a higher quality, but you're getting discrete audio and separation of the sound itself. Wait till you hear the difference between a DVD Audio disc and your iPod recordings!

Realize that your MP3 files on your iPod are squished about 7-1/2 times from a regular CD! Now, with DVD Audio discs recorded/sampled in higher quality that a regular CD, it makes a world of difference.



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luiscon14

Have you tried MLP "packaging"?? I don't want to say compression because it is not really compressed, it's the lossless codec for DVD Audio, if the music is pure silence, it will use 0KB of storage, if it's white noise or something, it'll use as much as a wav file of 94khz 24bit.

Another advantage you have with DVD-A is that a Mono song uses half the storage than a stereo song and so on with a 6 channel song. In contrast with CD's where a mono and a stereo song uses the same amount of space because EVERYTHING must be 2ch 44.1khz 16bit.

So, the beatles discography, in mono, in 44.1 khz 16bit Plus MLP encoding, you may be able to fit it one half of a DVD-R disc.

but you still have the limit of 99 tracks per group.

Search for SurCode MLP and give it a try.

Good luck!

myron

iTrader: (4)

But like DiamondJoeQuimby said, I would have to buy a DVD audio disk and couldn't just burn it so I guess I will never hear it haha I usually don't buy CDs and for sure couldn't find a DVD-A of the music I like anyways. Might just get something if I see it just to listen to it so I know the difference.

1995hoo

Try the demo disc that came with your TL if you have it.

myron

iTrader: (4)

got the car used there is no demo

darcar

You can usually get the Beatles-Love CD/DVD-A combo for a reasonable price at Amazon.

I've enjoyed making my own DVD-A disks using Circlinca HD-Audio Solo. They have a free trial that will let you burn up to 5 full DVDs.

Using FLAC files, I use their 5.1 filter and get about 140 minutes of music on a DVD. Without question, a commerically produced DVD-A will sound better, but the software does a good job and you'll get music from the center channel. With a limited amount of DVD-A titles available, it's nice to be able to make your own, plus you can put on the disk whatever you like.

Trunk Monkey

iTrader: (1)

1. Download utorrent
2. Download whatever torrents your little heart desires...in FLAC format
3. open and download them in utorrent
4. Burn the FLAC songs to DVD-A

Can't get any better than that

myron

iTrader: (4)

I like that. Any special burning program I need to use? Cuz this just seems so easy haha

Trunk Monkey

iTrader: (1)

STEVEN BELL- If talking about this isn't ok, let me know and I can take it to PM's.


If you're familiar with downloading torrents then it's super simple. Even if you're not, it's still way to easy to get this quality. I use "btjunkie.org", "piratebay", and other torrent sites for my music. If you can't find it on these, type into google like you would on these sites and you should be able to find something. Type what you want and make sure you also type "FLAC" in with it..at the end is fine. Download a healthy, high seeded torrent only. Make sure they are in FLAC format by looking at the tags after the song titles. They will also be around 35-40mb per song!! Download that torrent, and you've got it!! Upload into your favorite media player. If you don't want to listen at home then skip that, just use any burning program that will do DVD-audio. I use a program called "BURN"...but I'm on Mac so I'm not sure what to use on a pc. Shoulnt be hard to search forums and find something highly recommended quickly. It's that easy.

Torrents are amazing for anything! Not only music. I just got Microsoft Office 2011 for mac and Adobe Illustrator CS5

myron

iTrader: (4)

no no I know how to use torrents I was asking was burning the file onto the DVD-A as easy as burning normal CDs or is there some program necessary to burn specifically FLAC format? Cuz I am already finding some stuff that I like in FLAC so I wanna give it a try

ParaSurfer1979

Your car will not do Dolby II like 07-08 TL's will. Dolby II converts stereo tracks to a simulated 5.1 Surround Sound. The 07+ ELS stereos do this very well. This does bring me to ask this. What do the 04-06 TL's play when they play a stereo track? Dolby Pro Logic? I remember my moms 06 center channel speaker played when I played my 2 channel CD's.

1995hoo

Once the file is created, you can use anything to burn it on the disc as long as the software you use finalizes the disc (some people call this "closing" the disc; Windows XP and Vista call it "mastering" the disc). The TL won't play the disc if it isn't finalized.

I just got a new PC that runs Windows 7 and I haven't yet burned a DVD-A on this machine, but on my old PC that ran Vista Home Premium I found that using Windows to burn the disc never worked. Both the TL and my Marantz universal player would reject any DVD-A I burned using Windows' burner. I was never able to determine why, but I found that if I used Roxio (which had been included on the PC) the discs worked fine. Just tell it that you're burning a DATA disc (since that's what you're doing—burning files to a DVD) and that you want to finalize the disc.

Note that you're not burning a FLAC file to the DVD, or at least you shouldn't be. A DVD-A is not like a CD where you can sometimes burn .WAVs or other files and still have it play. There is a specific file format needed. You take the FLACs, .WAVs, whatever else and run them through a DVD-A encoder. It creates an .ISO file. You then burn that .ISO file to the DVD. (Note that at least in Vista when you navigated to the directory containing the file it would not be visible. You had to click on the "View Compatibility Files" button in the toolbar. I don't know if this is still the case in Windows 7.)

Then you use whatever burning software you choose to burn the .ISO file to disc. An .ISO file is, from a computer's standpoint, just a file, albeit a very big one. So the issue is not the software you use to burn; it's the software you use to create that file.

Turn off your screen saver, too, and close your Web browser while burning discs. The idea is to ensure that things that could cause your hard disk to start churning away are not running at the same time as the burning. A DVD-A containing two-channel music at CD resolution can hold a crap-load of stuff and the .ISO file you burn may well be over 4 GB, so it takes a little while to burn!


PS. I've had a problem where sometimes some tracks just will not play properly on the DVD-A. I've most often had the problem with some purchases from the iTunes store that I converted to .WAV for the DVD-A process, but I've also had the process with a few tracks I ripped from CDs to Apple Lossless and then converted via dbpoweramp for the DVD-A process. (Adobeman's software, which I use to create the .ISO file, requires .WAVs.) I keep meaning to try collecting those tracks, burning them to a CD-RW, then re-ripping them directly as .WAVs to see if it solves the problem, but I haven't wanted to take the time to do it yet. Oddly, some of the ripped files work fine sometimes and not fine other times—I burned a mixed DVD-A where one of the songs was the Rolling Stones' "Starfucker" and the sound dropped out completely in the middle of the first verse, but then when I later re-burned that disc with a revised running order "Starfucker" played fine. So who knows what the problem is!

1995hoo

Follow-up: myron, somebody else asked about burning DVD-As in early March and I gave him a fairly detailed response describing how to do it. See the thread linked below. At the time I did not yet have the new PC I mentioned in the post before this one (I picked it up on April 1).

https://acurazine.com/forums/3g-tl-audio-bluetooth-electronics-navigation-94/2005-tl-cannot-play-dvds-easy-way-811160/