rickneuropa

Absolutly, it will be "better". In more than one way. For one, you get six separate channels to recreate all the nuances of the music, you will hear things in the music, you didn't know existed. In 2 channel stereo, your limited on CD's to compact all the sound into two channels, and two speakers, and it's sometimes hard to pick out all the music in the 2 channels. The 6 allows you to hear everything "opened up"and more revealing.
Also, DVD-A discs music is lossless, and can hold so much more information about the music...guitars sound like real guitars, not digital guitars. You hear the echo, the ringing octives, and such that is masked in CD's let alone MP3's. DVD-A's frequency response is well beyond human hearing range, but in that, it brings out more of the "ambiance" of the music.

I have the metallica DVD-A, and it rocks. You won't be dissapointed. I would say, the add on of an aftermarket sub really helps, as DVD-A's really expand the lower end of the music, to atually feel the music.

Dumont

Yes, what Rickneuropa said but I do not believe anyone yet has been able to extract tracks or even copy DVD-A's - What is pretty easy to do is extract 5.1 audi from DVD-V's and make DVD-A's with Audio Solo. If I am wrong some one please point me in the right direction as I would love to make a compilation of tracks from several DVD-A's

Dumont

schrady

Hey all,

I have a bunch of SWEET 5.1 and DTS music. As you know, its hard to find sometimes. I would be willing to let you "borrow" some of mine if you have some cool stuff. I have a bunch of Floyd, eagles, soundtracks etc.....

I have a sharing method setup so PM me if you have something cool.

5.1 and DTS files sound INCREDIBLE in our TL's.

schrady

Has anyone had any luck getting Dual layer dvd's to burn with it? I tried all day yesterday and it would only recognize it as a single layer disc, 4.3 gigs.

I emailed tech support. Lets see what they have to say and how long it takes them to say it.......

Adobeman

I'll be REALLY SURPRISED if thy do not reply to you and try and help you out. They have been very interested in anything I have forwarded to them and replied promptly.

In the mean time can you save to an ISO file and burn with another tool ? Solo will let you save to an ISO that other progs like Nero can burn.

schrady

I'm impressed. I've gotten 3 emails from them. They did have a bug and have released a new version to fix it. Here is a copy of the email they sent me. They definitely get my 35$ bucks

Hi Mike,

We found the problem and are testing the fix. Will
inform you when the update is available for download.

There is no hidden setting or manual selection to
select double layer disc. DVD-Audio Solo detects the
disc type and set max size of data allowed to write to
the DVD disc.

Best regards,

The Solo Team
Cirlinca Inc.
www.cirlinca.com

mblanton66

Well, using the trial versions of DVD Audio Extractor and DVD-Audio Solo, I have 'copied' two six-channel dvd-v discs down to dvd-a that play in my car: Aerosmith and Cher (don't laugh, it's a great dvd). I must say it was quite easy, two steps and taking the defaults, first ripping to multichannel wav files and then putting those on a dvd-a with Solo.

I'm a little underwhelmed with the audio quality, though. It's better than cd in the car but not nearly what my HT can do. I know the L, R, and C channels are correct but not sure about the other three. The LFE seems good on some tracks but not all. I'll explore that some more tonight.
I had mixed results with ripping to multiple mono, as Solo is indeed picky about the naming convention. Also, I'm not sure if the default channel organization that Solo expects is exactly what Extractor outputs.

But I've been waiting on a fairly simple method to do this (I have 30 or so good convert dvd's), and this is definitely the ticket! Thanks to everyone before me who has paved this road for the rest of us.

mamboking

Count me in as another happy user of the above application dynamic duo. I used DVD Audio Extractor and DVD-Audio Solo to create a DVD-A with 2 cool guitar songs from the "Once upon a time in Mexico" DVD-V in no less than a DVD+R format disc (mind you, it is a Verbatim brand).

BTW, I must offer my gratitude to Adobeman for putting together the DVD-A scripts. I have burned like 6 DVD-A discs so far with no coasters on my record.

rickneuropa

mblanton66,
A couple of things to check to make sure your DVD-A sounds the best from your DVD-V sources.
1. Use the DTS tracks if available. They are much better than the Ac3 (DDS) track.
2. Make sure your using the 24 bit, and the 6 channel wave format.
3. I've noticed that the volume is very low on the DVD-V's, so I choose to have it adjust the output to 100%. It take a little longer for DVD-Audio Extractor to do it, but makes a world of difference!!!

Try a disc with these choices, and compare it.

sjshark

What's up everyone....
Ok so I'm trying to rip some dvd-a's and am running into issues. First off, I am using DVD Extractor 3.3.3 and seem to be extracting the files successfully....so I am extracting into wav format (I've tried both single file and multiple channel files). When I try to play the file, my explorer crashes or windows media crashes.. Any idea on that? If I try to burn using DVD Solo, then I get an error message when the files are being analyzed before burn. Any help would be great.

schrady

Sounds like you're muxing the center and surround channels into stereo.

I rip the AC3 (DTS is two channel and doesnt sound as good in our cars) 5.1 file using dvd decrypter.
Then I convert it to 5.1 audio wav with besweet and azid. I make sure the channels stay seperate.
If the voice doesnt come out of the center channel speaker, above your stereo, youre just playing a stereo wav file. Maybe a little cleaner, but not surround or what the stereo is capable of.

rickneuropa

DTS is not two channel, it's a full 5.1, and DVD Audio Extractor works fine with it. DTS uses less compression than AC3, and usually sounds better than AC3. Ive done a to b side by side comparisons of the same DVD-V from DTS and AC3, and there is no comparison, at least on the titles I've chosen. I'm not saying there aren't exceptions out there. There could be some titles that use DTS stereo, but the vast majority, if they have AC3, then the DTS channel (again if it's available on that title) is definitly 5.1.

Adobeman

What media ...+R or -R ? -R is usually best for the TL. Some have made certain brands of +R work but it is far less than -R.
It's not just the burn but the media too. Some media just doesn't work in some players...period.
And no, you do not need to check the copy protection box.


Windows media player will not play 6channel wavs. Extract as 6 channel wav files and load them into Solo and it has a play button you can click to hear them.

Bplayer

I have only used DVD Audio Extractor once on a DVD-V, and the wav files produced cannot be handled by WMP, possibly because the file contains 5.1 streams. I did not have a problem burning these files with DVD Solo.

I have seen other reports that dvd-a's cannot be successfully ripped. Do some searching on this site and you should find it.

schrady

I tried dvd extractor. What I got from my rip was a 2 channel wave. From both the DTS stream and the ac3 stream. Right click on your wav fiole properties and look at summary or load it into an audio program like cubase.

Here is a 5.1 channel wav that will BLOW you away when burned using dvd solo.

ftp://69.181.212.230 Login: temp Pass: temp

It's just one wave from phantom of the opera dvd, but you'll see its a full 5 channels.

It will blow your mind in your acura when burned with dvd solo onto a dvd.

Youre not seeing any difference because dvd extractor (the one I have at least) is combining the channels to 2 for cd playback.

Yes, even if you check the surround option

Try mine and you'll see

rickneuropa

I've come to the conclusion, that we are talking about two different programs, or different versions. What version of DVD Audio Extractor are you using? Mine is 3.3.3, and who is the manufacture? Mine is Computer Application Studio at http://www.castudio.org

When I right click on the wave files I've created that are over 200mg a piece,and go to the summer tab, and advanced, it show the following:

Bit Rate 6912kbps
Audio Sample size 24bit
Channels 6
Audio Sample Rate 48kHz
Audio Format PCM

schrady

Then you are correct. The version I picked up is made by Ace and its called dvd audio extractor.........V 1.226 or so.

Will a 24 bit play in our cars? Mine are 4608 16 6 48 and PCM. The onle sample I posted to my FTP is incredible.

BTW, Cirlanca DID fix the dual layer disc problem.

I just burned a Verbatim DL+R and it played great. Unbelievable amount of music, AND I was able to belnd 6 channel and 2 channel waves into different groups.

If youre really not noticing a difference, you should try my way........ Its like night and day for me.

rickneuropa

Not only will our cars play 24 bit, but most DVD-Audio discs are 96Khz sampling rate, and some stereo DVD-A are sampled at 192kHz. DVD-audio is very high definition audio.

I'll have to download the fixed version of DVD-A Solo, so I can burn DL. I am very very happy with the surround mixes I've created, They sound fantastic. I believe it was someone else who wasn't happy. By the way, if you look at the bit rates of your file compared to mine, (4608 vs 6912) you can see the difference between DDS and DTS. The file I took those statistics from was burned from the DTS track. While I'm guessing yours is from AC3 (DDS). So, when it comes right down to it, my track probably does, and should sound better, more detailed than yours. Obviously we are still at the mercy of the original engineers on how good the recording is. The Eagles DTS DVD-V of Hell freezes over, is probably the best concert video I've ever heard! Elliot Scheiner knows how to mix a DVD-V for surround as he does DVD-A's.

mamboking

Windows Media player won't be able to play Multichannel wav files. It crashes. I don't know if there is a plugin available for it or not. Instead use the latest Winamp 5.1 to play them back.

mblanton66

I am indeed using the 24bit settings as well as making sure to select the multichannel tracks. There's nothing that should be combining any channels. My latest try was the Eagles "Hell Freezes Over" (DTS). I'm using DVD Audio Extractor 3.3.3. This one I did into multiple wav files, so I could confirm which tracks were where. Once I did that, I created a batch job to rename them to synch with Solo. I, too, have noticed the lower volumes but haven't used the normalize function yet (thought it might screw up the mix).

It sounds OK. I think this is just revealing the limits of the Bose speakers. And there is much more presence of the "surround" channels so it's like a ton of reverb has been added. I'll try again using the normalizing but I think I'll just need better speakers (ESPECIALLY the center channel) to solve this. I know what these dvd's should sound like, and although the fidelity is good, it's muddier than it should be in my TL. BTW, I usually have the bass down two notches, the sub and center up one notch, ane the treble up two.

Does anyone know of good adapters to make aftermarket 6-1/2 speakers fit the odd size of the Acuras? And since factory is 2 ohm and aftermarket is 4ohm, I'll need to replace everything at once or else mess up the balance, right?

gt1

Schrady, will it be possible for you to make an ISO image for those of us who don't have the Cirlinka software?

Dennis in NH

Hey, I did the same with the Hellfreezes over DTS DVD-V. I just did a few songs and they sound great except for I need to put the volume to 28 or 30.

Can you please post your .bat file so I can use it? I was thinking of writing one myself to change *(ch1).wav to *_FL.wav, etc. but need to read up on the batchfile language. Renaming all those .wav files is a pain.

If you do use the normalize function, do you set it to 100% and not get distortion?
I'm thinking just to rip/burn the whole DVD-V (just the song tracks) for my next DVD-A.

Thanks,

Dennis

Dennis in NH

Hey, I did the same with the Hellfreezes over DTS DVD-V. I just did a few songs and they sound great except for I need to put the volume to 28 or 30.

Can you please post your .bat file so I can use it? I was thinking of writing one myself to change *(ch1).wav to *_FL.wav, etc. but need to read up on the batchfile language. Renaming all those .wav files is a pain.

If you do use the normalize function, do you set it to 100% and not get distortion?
I'm thinking just to rip/burn the whole DVD-V (just the song tracks) for my next DVD-A.

Thanks,

Dennis

rickneuropa

mblanton 66,
I hear you on the speakers, however, they are made by Panasonic. Also, try turning up the center to +6. It's the weakest of the speakers when using a sound meter, that was the setting I had to use to get it to equal the others.

Mblanton66 and Dennis,
Normalization at 100% is definitly worth a try for our use in the TL. It really improved the overall volume by about 5 db's Which makes a big difference. I also was worried about the sound quality, but it did a nice job, and I can turn it up to 39-40 without distortion. Try it, and let me know how you like it. The other alternative is to buy a couple of amps, or a 5 channel amp and speakers and rewire it all.....that can be spendy.

And the TL's speakers are all 6.5", so you shouldn't need adapters

Adobeman

Normalizing a live concert or a CD isn't as straight forward as it sounds. If it is a live concert then many programs will normalize each track separately. This gets it all wrong since the levels of each song relative to each other will not be preserved. This is why I use a tool like BeSweet to scan an ac3 file that is the WHOLE concert for it's normalization factor. Then I split the ac3 file with BeSplit and use the same previously found normalization factor for all tracks when converting them to 6channel wav files with BeSweet. It sounds like a lot of work but the results are very evenly normalized tracks. I still have to turn the volume up more than with some CDs but the normalization helps a lot. I'd say I use 20-25 instead of 30-35 now for volume. I bet I could do better but it would involve scanning each CHANNEL for the factor and that is too much work.

But, If you are willing to tolerate some "jump" in any crowd noise as tracks change then just use the 100% setting on your tool. If it is implemented correctly in the software you should be fine with respect to not clipping any source content.

Think of it this way. The ballad after the rockin' song is supposed to be softer. If you normalize each song separately it the ballad will seem too loud in comparison.

I'd think about publishing a guide about how I do it but I get the feeling I might be the only one who cares about it. I tend to sweat details more than I should.

rickneuropa

Adobeman,
The DVD-Audio Extractor really did a nice job with the normalisation. You can tell it's created by some really good programers as I never felt like the crowd was too loud, or I had to adjust the volume when going from a balled to a rocker. But of course, I did a whole DVD-V concert as opposed to each song separately. I am going to use this on all my "quiet" concert DVD-V's. I was impressed by the difference.

Adobeman

So you didn't use the split each chapter into separate file option. This would normalize correctly since it will scan the entire contents rather than each song. If so, what did you use to chop the wav files ? I never checked to see if BeSplit would do wavs.

csmoore

I used DVD-Audio Extractor and then DVD-Audio Solo to write the DVD-A. The only thing I don't like about DVD-Audio extractor is having to do each title separately. The DVD-V Peter Gabriel Play (compilation of many of is video's) is really amazing in the TL with the 5.1 surround. I recommend that as one to convert!

Carl

rickneuropa

Adobeman,

No, I let DVD-Audio Extractor separate each chapter, but I did it all at once. Maybe that's not going to affect the normalization process, but if it normalized each track separately, I don't notice any level changes between each track.

csmoore,
You should be able to let the software separate each chapter automatically. What version of DVDAE are you using? It's just a matter of checking a selection box.

mblanton66

Thought the speakers were Bose. Still see that referenced in places. You know, I haven't bothered to try any of these in my ht system, I guess I could A/B the original dvd-v/dvd-a and compare on a known system. I'll try that this weekend. My ht is nothing fancy, a Yamaha 1105 receiver and full size Boston Acoustics all around. Those speakers will spoil you.

As for the batch file, it was just six rename (ren) commands. I'm at work and don't have access to it or either products help files, but to create it, read the sections in DVD Audio Extractor about what it names the channels, then Solo for what it expects (sonmeone posted it in an earlier reply). For tracks 1-99 the filenames are the exact same size, so use "?" for each character. Example:
ren ?????????ch_01.wav ?????????_FL.wav
ren ?????????ch_02.wav ?????????_FR.wav, etc...

I don't recall if the above mappings are even correct, please check the documentation!
Make sure you use the correct number of ? (or at least enough). Drop the batch file in the directory where all the files are and double-click it. Viola.

Standard 6-1/2 aftermarket speakers will be close, but not "drop in" replacements for the TL, based on other threads in this forum.

schrady

Just a heads up..

Not sure if its verbatim or Dual Layer dvd's in general. They will play in our cars.

It does however act strange after being loaded. On initial startup/load it will play fine.

If you get our of the car and restart it on that same disc, it will freeze the system and then jam the disc changer,

You have to restart the car again, eject it, and start over. Odd problem since it plays great in the first load. It just won't "resume" play once its been started and you shut ioff the car.

I'm thinking of seperating into more groups to see if thats it, but I doubt it. I'm sure it has something to do with the tracking of a DL disc.

Anyone else had success/failure?

I'm also going to try a new media this weekend.

Toronto-TL

I've been using Memorex DL disks with perfect success each time. No problems when stopping or startinf the car.

csmoore

DVD-AE 3.3.3 It does separate the chapters with the checkbox, but on the Peter Gabriel DVD-V, it has each song in a "title" with 2 chapters in the title, and each song or "title" has separate page in the program, so you can't select say for example the surround sound mix for each song and just let it run through all of them. You have to do each one at a time.

Carl

schrady

Ok,

Due to a huge demand and tons of requests, I would like to share a little. A couple of things:
A. I am not an engineer, so if you cannot make this work, sorry.
B. These files are DTS, meaning you can only play them in your Acura TL, not a regular cd player or pc (will sound like white noise)
C. These are on loan only to demonstrate the power of our stereo's. Please upload them back when you are done.
D. I won't take requests. Enjoy the sample of some music I have made, but if they dont fit your taste in music, once again, sorry. This is a broad array of music to demonstrate the capabilities of our systems.

Download the files and burn them like any other audio cd (I use nero) on any blank cdr. No special software needed.
Then load the cd in your Acura. The display will say DTS cd and the sound will be incredible.
Enjoy it

ftp://69.181.212.230 Login: dts Password: music

If its busy and connection gets refused, then the slots are full. You'll have to wait.

If you hammer the FTP, your IP will get banned automatically, so dont try more than 3 times per 1/2 hour

Hope you enjoy.

amarpawar

Dude is your site down or have you stopped it? I have been trying several times since yesterday and it ain't happening.

schrady

The site is not active right now.

Over the past 5 days I've served up over 20GIGS of dts music for our acura pals. Now I need that system for a few DL DVDA multichannel burns and cant have the HD spinning at 1mb.

I may put it back online tonight.

How are the DTS files? Im also have about 100 multichannel wave files that need to be burned to dvda using dvd solo from cirlinca. Is that of interest to anyone?

schrady

Ya, I ended up using it until later last night and didnt put it up. Sometimes dvda burning can be finicky and I didnt want to create a coaster, especially with Dual layer discs being so expensive.

I will put it up tonight though, aorund 6pm pst for a few days.

I have 5 slots open. that gives each person about 20kbs up speed since my upstream is 1mb.

I may try and put a timer on each account too so I dont have 5 people on for 12 hours.

Try again tonight.

I may server up the multichannel waves as well.

They have to beburned with DVD Solo or Nero with a multichannel wave plugin

ezrapon

question for the egg heads.... is there a way to rip 5.1 SACD cd's to DVD-A. I have an extensive collection, I'd been happier with the SACD option in the TL as there seems to be a better selection. Dark Side of the Moon would be killer in the TL.

Adobeman

Your killing me....geek perhaps but not egghead.

I've been thinking that the ability to do SACD-->DVD-A is going to be very important for us going forward. Basically since the ability to create DVD-A disks for the TL has become so simple, being able to convert any multichannel source to DVD-A would be good "insurance" that you will be able to bring the stuff into the car without resorting to other hookups. I'm not saying DVD-A commercial releases are dead but they seem to be "gasping". So far I have not seen anything promising. Many folks talk of doing things like using studio quality digital multitrack recorders to record the 6 analog outputs off of an SACD player. Once you do that you can pretty much do anything else with the tracks. Obviously this is beyond a consumer's means. It also isn't a digital copy but that's probably not really that concerning if you actually had access to all that gear.

I search for this same answer pretty regularly and nothing seems to be breaking on it. I plan to keep looking.

Reading material
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...howtopic=37514
http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/82030
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/archi...p/t-73451.html

bigman606

Ok, not sure I'm getting this with DVD-Audio Extractor - but am I suppose to let it create a single WAV file for each chapter? I tried letting it create separate channels for each WAV file and DVD-Audio Solo created a bad disc - I had 6 wav files separate for each channel, but when I tried playing the disk it only played a single channel (i.e., first 6 tracks of the DVD where just portions of song 1. I could definitely use some help here gang. Thanks.