I've just started to dapple with downloading some dvd-a .iso and it seems for some of the discs they stop playing right after 30 seconds or so of music. The timer will keep moving but the audio ceases. Is this a watermark issue? I'm using poweriso as the burning tool, anyone else running into this or any workarounds?

Also, where are you guys finding the best place for the dvd audio files, they are near impossible to buy these days, price prohibitive nearly...

Thanks!

 

That silence after the 30 second mark is precisely that...a watermark issue. It seems the encryption on DVD-A (a little used format, now) is miles ahead of the encryption on regular DVD video.

 

Anyone figured out a way to put a .iso file onto a dvd and remove the watermark?

 

NO and I have looked and looked, their were some who said they could create copies with DVDfab but that is not accurate or will only work on certain players certainly not ELS. I have seen one (Workingman's Dead) with the watermark removed but no idea of how they did it. It did sound funny in an 04 TL but sounded fine in 12 TL. I did buy a copy on ebay for 45$ and you can find a few other DVD-a on ebay that go between 30-40 if you time it right ( I picked up a copy of Gaucho for 17$ and LA woman for 25$). I saw a Miles Davis Tutu go unbidded the other day and almost bought it just because it was so cheap even though I have one.

You can find many SACD PS3 iso rips and convert them to wav/flac with foobar and then burn to DVD-A with HD audio solo. I think you lose some quality but they still sound better than CD's and they are in surround.

You can also find a few "DTS Surround sound" conversions on bt.etree.org if your into the Grateful Dead.

 

Have you tried creating an image of the original disc then burning that to a new disc?

 

Yes and it does not work on a watermarked DVD. There are some disc that are not watermarked and they play fine from an copied image/iso. Some people have had luck using DVDfab and setting it to clone but that only works in certain DVD-A players.
From what I understand there a 3 kind of players.I have a Yamaha home audio DVD-A player and it ignores watermarks and plays anything. Panasonics homeaudio will check for a certain file and if it is present it will play the disc even if watermarked and these are the ones DVDfab clone copies work on. Finally Denons and the ELS these will check every 30 seconds for the watermark and will go silent if it is detected that you are playing a copied disc.
There are other makers of DVD-A but they will fall into one of these categories.

If you have successfully copied a DVD-A by Warner Music and got it to play in your car I would love to hear how you did it.

 

I will test that out. I am sure I have a Warner Music DVD-A to try it on

 

I've had success with just 1 duplication of a dvda copy of blue man group in a .iso format. Burned it to disc and it plays perfectly. All others have a mute watermark that hits right at the 30 second mark.

What I'm currently going to do (and apparently people have had success with) is to use dvdaexplorer to convert the dvd-a files to .wav, then burn them using wavelab into dvd-a format.

Will update.

 

Looking forward to hearing how that goes!

 

Been there done that and it won't work - still watermarked. I even tried to use dvdextractor to grab the DTS files and they even quit after after 30 Seconds. Best bet is SACD PS3 iso rips with foobar and then burning to dvd-a with hd audio solo. There are several DVD-A that are not watermarked.ie.. John lee hooker folk singer - jeff beck wired - Alan Parsons (several) - most classical disc- some good jazz samplers are out there & the blue man group already metioned but most of the popular ones are watermarked. Most of the popular ones from DVD-A are out there as SACD PS3 ISO's rips.

 

Yeah, I'm beginning to believe you, I don't understand why dvdaexplorer is mentioned as being able to get around the watermark issue but simultaneously doesn't remove it from the multi-channel tracks. Incredibly frustrating to have a functionally dead audio format, that is cost prohibitive, and no real way to get the most out of the dvda feature on the TL... This might be the first time I've run into something where there is no clean solution.

Annoyed this watermark is so robust, kudos to the studios I guess, but honestly, no one wins at this juncture, the format is near dead, there is no real place to buy the discs and, at the end of the day, i can just listen to the usb drive... blah...

Do the SACD iso's you mentioned read as DVD-A on the TL's ELS system?

Thanks for the heads up by the way.

 

Once you use foobar to convert the SACD to .wav files you can burn with Cirlinca HD audio solo and they do show as DVD-A and play in Surround on the ELS. They do not sound quite as good as their DVD-A counterparts but they are in surround and sound better than cd's.


There are different SACD encoding options - I am using multichannel double precision which sets a too high of bit rate for HD audio solo so it downsamples group 2 to 24/44. I set group 2 to elr (ELF and rear surrounds) meaning group 1 is the Center and front speakers are 24/88. I am sure I could be doing it better but instruction are impossible to find. I have tried group 2 as CE (center and enhanced) but it sounded poorer. I would like to figure out how to get the variable bit rates that the original SACD iso plays in foobar instead of the constant 13600 that the ripped files play in.


There is a guy on ebay that I buy DVD-A's from and he includes what he calls a safety copy which is a DTS CD of the DVD-A I buy and it sounds pretty good and is not watermarked. I need to figure out how he is doing that.

 

The following website has lots of SACD to DVD-A materials :

http://sacdlab.cn/

 

I don't mind paying some extra for the real thing. After trying with Cirlinca and even trying to out-smart the watermark on some torrents... I gave up! Nothing comes close to the real thing.

I found some used genuine DVD-A on ebay like Southern Surroundings from Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rumors from Fleetwood Mac. My only complaint is that "Sweet Home Alabama" is not on Lynyrd Skynyrd DVD-A but on a CD that comes with the package. The Rumors DVD-A on the other hand is absolutely perfect, and it brought back memories (name just one person from my generation who in his teens he didn't have a crush on Stevie Nicks!!).

Around $50 each... I'll cut back on car washes LOL, because the quality of sound is really worth it.

PS. Wish there was a Tusk DVD-A too. Is there?

 

Thanks Laz, I'll give the SACD and foobar .wav option a shot. Anything I need besides foobar to handle the conversion?

And ed, for this site: http://sacdlab.cn/, do the iso files work on the TL, you just burn the iso image and it's good to go?

 

^^^^^

I just found out this "sacdlab" site a couple days ago. I'm still browsing through it's rather extensive list of titles.

Til now, I'm still trying but so far not having any success in burning my own DVD-A discs using other .ISO images, and get them to play in my 2012 ELS TL.

All I get is the word "unsupported" showing up on my car's audio display.

But other members are having great success in burning their own DVD-A discs, playing them in their ELS TL's.

 

Have people been using this site? Are the iso's just burned to DVD and then supported by the ELS in the 4g TL? Just want to make sure before paying...
Thanks,
RA

 

AS far as sacd lab I am a little weary of giving my CC to russian pirates operating out of china but I would love to get that Herbie Hancock Headhunters iso, it is all but impossible to find in multichannel format. Does SACD lab accept paypal? I would also like to see if their conversions sound better than mine. If anyone grabs that Headhunters I would love to trade. PM me

 

If you have a dvd-a iso try using imgburn to burn it. it should acknowledge that it is a dvd-audio.

If that is still unplayable

You can also use dvd audio explorer to extract mulitichannel wave files from the extracted iso image (extract iso with winrar then browse to the audio_ts file and open any .pp file and select the group that has the multichannel files usually group 1 but you can look at the properties of the file and figure it out check save to wav, merge groups, and ignore stream encryption )

You might want to test it out by playing the file with foobar2000 on your PC. If it plays and you see that it is mutlichannel.

Burn the wav files you saved to a dvd-a disc using cirlinca HD audio solo and/or dvd audio solo - you can do 5 free disc with each as a trial before they make you register / purchase

links
http://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Audio-Explorer
http://www.cirlinca.com/download.htm

dvdaexplorer guide
http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/DVDAGuide

 

The latest version of foobar should have the sacd decoder built in. To check open foobar click on file - preferences - components - and look for the sacd decoder - if the version you have does not have it you can download it here http://sourceforge.net/projects/sacddecoder/files/ then from the components section in foobar click install and browse to the zipped folder you downloaded and click install

 

I ran into my first SACD watermark where it quits playing after 30 seconds. It was on Chicago V Japanese reissue from 2011. I am wondering if they mastered this using the DVD-A and the watermark just traveled through.

I have copied several SACD's which were also released as DVD-A and where as the DVD-A was watermarked the SACD was not. I hope Chicago V is a rarity as this is the first in 15 SACDs that I have ripped with foobar which quits at the 30 second mark.

I have also improved the way my SACD transfers sound by increasing the pcm volume to +3 in foobar preferences - tools - sacd. It creates a greater dynamic range more comparable to the DVD-A

 

I have previously made a backup copy of Queen's Night at the Opera, using DVDFab to clone the original disc. (I'm planning on carrying only copies in car, so that the originals are kept safe from break-ins). That disc worked beautifully...in fact I recently gave it to a guy in a 3G at my son's baseball game (Y'know...I am a nice guy, after all).

Yesterday, I copied the Beatles Love DVD, and it played fine last night. I don't know if the Queen or Beatles discs had a watermark. If they did, cloning the disc seems to eliminate the issue.

On the strength of that, last night I also cloned Gary Numan's Anthology and Moist's Machine Punch Through, as well as a couple of classical discs. Haven't listened to these yet, but will do so and report back. Classical discs often aren't as well protected.

These backups are, in my view, perfectly legal, at least in my jurisdiction. For that matter, I don't consider it to be true piracy to download and burn iso files, as the format is simply not available; only the resale market could really complain.

Nonetheless, I don't wish to invite any trouble into Acurazine, so although I will freely write about my own backups, if anyone wants to know what iso's I've burned which seem to work, I'm happy to list the small handful I have, though I'll ask that it be done through PM.

 

I just got Metallica's black album on DVD-A and sure enough, after 30 seconds, POP goes the weasel!

I will try cloning with DVDFab as you describe, and see if this eliminates the watermarks....sadly, the DVD plays perfect in my computer, as I guess the DVD player in it ignores the watermarks....there is a list of many DVD players that also ignore the watermarks, but I guess the one in my '12 TL is not one of them!....we shall see....

 

You can get this DVD-A directly off of Metallica's website without paying the outrageous mark up fees of the secondary market.

 

Would be nice if "they" could mod the firmware of the Panasonic ELS to bypass watermark detection.

I have been researching for the last couple of days on this same subject and fittingly there is a thread here on AZ. The acceptable solution is indeed multichannel SACD ISOs or the extracted FLAC MCH 5.1 24bit/88.2kHz -> Author DVD-A using your favorite software.

This is what they are doing to the extract to FLAC from the SACD/DSDs

I am not a fan of Saracon but this in theory the same lossless copy of the original source/SACD. From here one can author DVD-As that are not watermarked. I am not a fan of HD-Audio Solo either as the group 2 downsample is no longer a perfect copy of the original source. Best to encode to MLP and go from there.

What I am trying to find is Multichannel SACD ISO -> Multichannel 24/96 FLAC (not 24/88.2 FLAC that are available on torrents) conversion. If anyone has any pointers, please post.

 

dvd is about $18, shipping is about $15. Maybe still the best new deal, but lame.