mondster

If i create an mp3 disc using a dvd-r, will it sound better compared to using a cd-r? Or is it the same quality when playing in it using the ELS?

Cygnus_X1

It should be the exact same quality since it's still an MP3. I bet you could put a lot more MP3's on there though.
One interesting thing I found out is that the ELS will play DTS 5.1 cd's. The only one I have so far is Dark Side of the Moon but it sounds pretty good. Unfortunately the ELS puts a pause between songs even though the software shows zero seconds between tracks.

Stew4HD

OP, as Cygnus said.. the MP3 format will sound the same. You can get a copy of Circlinca DVDA Studio and make your DVD-As that can take WAV, FLAC, WMA or MP3 and create multichannel DVD-A using DVD-R

You should hear Toy Mantinee in DTS! Excellent use of our ELS! I have a bunch of DTS CDs as well DVD-a. I really enjoy them. If you are a fan of the band Porcupine Tree, they released several of their albums on DVD-A.

Grateful Laz

The DVD-A is what sold me on this car that and a place to put the Key FOB (such a simple idea that everyone else overlooked). When I was test driving cars they kept asking me if I had the FOB such an easy thing to misplace and the biggest drawback to a start button.
I have a large DVD-a collection and SACD collection. I am ripping the SACDs with Foobar and the burning them to DVD-a with cirlinca HD audio solo. One of my favorites is Junior Wells come on in this House. SACDs are much easy to find than DVD-A you lose out on some umph but still get the surround experience.

Mr Marco

OP, there is an audio section at the top of the page.

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

Do you have to rip to DVD-A to get them to play in the car, or will the ELS play the SACD for the same experience?

Stew4HD

The ELS does not play SACD, sadly. Only DTS-CD and DVD-A

Oh and it can play copied MP3s in a disc

Mr Marco

Sweating profusely, can't see out of my left eye. Diabeticlese comna?

Edward'TLS

Will our ELS system in the car play home-burned DVD-A (using DVD-R) disc ?

Stew4HD

Yes, I play make and play them a lot

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

What do you use as the source and does it give you the surround experience?

Stew4HD

I use a program called HD-Audio Solo Ultra by Circlinca. It cannot do true divided multichannel but does allow you to adjust the sound field width and/or depth. You can take WAV, FLAC, or MP3 stereo files and create multichannel outputs that you write to a DVD-R.

Grateful Laz

Can you explain because I was thinking that my multichannel sacd rips to dvd-a using HD audio solo are divided multichannel am I missing something. . Is that why my sacd rips do not sound as good as the dvd-a's. I just thought dvd-a was better sounding due to the advance resolution. I do know that if the bit rate is over 9600 it will make you downsample group 2 and give you various options. I usually choose the 24/44 elr option which means the rear surround and subs are reduced 44k sampling rate instead of 96K

One of the benefits of ripping sacd's is that you can make compilations from various artist. You can not do that by ripping dvd-a's because most are watermarked

cyborgcnc

You can use cirlinca to encode regular .mp3 or non SACD music to surround...but you never get something for nothing....if you do not have the original tracks, you can not say place certain instruments on specific speakers etc....HOWEVER, the effects are still quite awesome, and with different plugins, you can further control how you encode to 5.1....Cirlinca has FULL support for .VST plugins, and with one like this from waves:


You can really burn some kick ass surround disks..(Stick to DVD-R, as the DVD+R does not work too well in the system)....

Notice hw you have control of all your speakers, and you also have different presets, like for example concert hall..etc....Really worth the investment, especially since not many are making DVD-A disks anymore.....I have encoded many songs with this method, and the results are awesome!

cyborgcnc

FYI....

....I should also mention that YOU DO NOT need this waves plugin if you purchase Cirlinca....it comes with it's own plugin which is a freely available one....(the downside is that it does not give you all that much control, as the waves one does....you are stuck to using some of the build-in effects, which are not that bad....)

sockpuppet

I don't wish to sound like I'm suggesting cyborgcnc is wrong, and he's certainly provided some info that is new to me, but am only relating my personal experience. I looked at the discs I've been using to cut back-up copies of my DVD-A's, and they are DVD+R DL...seem to work fine.

cyborgcnc

I will have to try some again as well...Last batch I had were RiData DVD+R DL.....the first few songs played fine, but about the middle, I got an error on the radio....Never had a problem with SINGLE layer disks, but re-encoding with Cirlinca, you can only fit about 15 or so songs on them.....when I tried DVD-R DL for Ridata, problem went away......

What year is your car? And if you do not mind me asking, what brand did you use, and what speed did you burn at?

(2012 TL SH-AWD here....)

sockpuppet

Mine's an '09. I'll check on the brand of disc, and speed. Honestly, I think I had speed set to "auto"...I really didn't put much effort into the back-ups. I used DVDFab for the copy process.

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

Do you have specific tips or techniques on how to do it? Would a person who isn't a sound engineer be able to pick it up pretty quickly?

You mention "original tracks". What do you mean by this?

Maybe by these questions your answer will be, don't waste your money, you won't understand. That's totally fine. I don't want to get in over my head, but I do want to exploit the capabilities of the system, if I can.

Stew4HD

I am no sound engineer and I got the program to work. There is good documentation with the program to walk you through the process. Buy plenty of DVD-Rs so you can ruin a few as you learn.

HD-Audio Solo Ultra has a free trial. Link here

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

I pulled down the trial an will give it a shot in the morning. Thanks.

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

Is this just trial and error, or is there some direction on the best settings to use for desired effects?

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

Do you have any idea where to get the VST V1 plug in that is the right version and how to install it?

I would also like information on the application you mention above (waves?). Thanks.

Cygnus_X1

Are you saying that DVD+R DL discs will work in the ELS system? I've been wondering that since I downloaded some DVD-A ISO's and they're over 7gigs, which means they'd only fit on dual layer discs.
I figured I'd check here before I start experimenting and ruining discs.

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

I had downloaded the wrong software. Needed to download the HD version. I'm all set and burned my first disk. Very nice results.

The Cirlinca software suggests DVD-R...not sure what the car will read.

The below information came from the Cirlinca site:

General information on DVD-Audio capable car systems

- Use preferably DVD-R/-RW discs, these types seem to be more compatible with car systems
- Most systems are not able to display the pictures of a DVD-Audio disc
- To change group on DVD-Audio disc in Acura's DVD-Audio player:
Hold down the SCAN and RPT buttons for a couple seconds. It has to be the silver buttons under the cassette, not the touch screen buttons on the navi. It will beep and the words 'Group 2' will appear in the display momentarily (main display for non-navi users, upper dash board display above the vents for navi users where the temperature is shown). It will only show that group number for a moment, then unfortunately you have no way of knowing what group you are on until you change groups again.
- There are several forums dedicated to cars where you can find information on car systems and referrals on DVD-Audio Solo : acurazine, , lexusforum, clublexus
- Links of interest on DVD-Audio car systems : dvdaudioincar, pe.cars

Grateful Laz

I have burned several dvd+R DL disc most work but some will stop playing or misfire as they progress into the last tracks

Grateful Laz

For anyone ripping from SACD iso's with foobar what settings are you using? Specifically Multistage (fixed point) / Multistage (floating point)/Multistage (double precision) or Direct (Floating point, 30kHz LF.

When I play from the ISO the bit rate is variable but after I rip the new files they play at a constant 13K bit rate which causes HD audio solo to downsample group two which is the rear surround and LFE.

I believe my sacd rips could sound better but I am unsure of the settings. I have tried different ones but all seem to do the same thing. Any suggestions?

Cygnus_X1

I guess I need to go out and buy some dual layer discs then and start testing them in my TL.
I'm downloading DVD-A albums and some of them are around 7-8 gigs (The Doors - L.A. Woman for example).
Thanks for the info.

Grateful Laz

Just a heads up
It is watermarked so it will not play in your car from a burned disc.

Stew4HD

I would think you could do an iso image and burn that image to a new disc

Cygnus_X1

Yeah, I was just reading about that in the other thread. I never knew about watermarks so I'm thankful for your posts.

To be honest I have sufficient funds so I've purchased quite a few DVD-A's but the out of print one's are hard to come by and I hate playing the EBAY game.

I imagine I'm going to waste quite a few DVD's learning all this stuff.

Edward'TLS

What brand of DVD-R are you using ?

I have used Verbatim and Fiji DVD-R to burnt DVD-A discs, but the car is unable to read the discs.

Stew4HD

I use Memorex DVD+R with no problems in my car or my OPPO BD players

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

I'm using Memorex DVD-R in mine and have had no problems so far.

I am having a bit of a problem getting the settings right. I'm using V.1 - Custom 1 as my setting in HD Audio Solo Ultra and am having mixed results. Seems some songs have really high highs and others have too much base. Also, the volume is incredibly high. Some discs I can't take the system over 16 out of 40 on the volume control without it being overly loud.

Stew4HD

Have you tried different plug-ins? There are a few vst's available.

Hogan9166

iTrader: (1)

I'm using the plug in that comes standard. I hadn't upsampled anything until this morning. I'll see what results I get from that b

cyborgcnc

The default plugin that comes with Cirlinca is a freely available one, hence that is why they include it, as they do not need to pay for it. it does give you "some control" of your mix, with decent results:



Unless you have a 5.1 surround setup on your computer, you will really not be able to hear the differences when you make changes....which basically leaves you to getting a pack of DVD-R and burning a few disks, going back to the car, playing them, see how they sound, and then go back and make the changes until you are happy with the results.

Not the easiest process in the world, but the DVD-R's are cheap enough, especially when you buy say a 100 pack....in addition, you can control the encoding rates of the front and the rear channels, and for saving space (to fit more songs on a disk) you can encode the rear at say 16bit, and the front at something higher....the Cirlinca manual does a very good job at explaining this....

As I said before, for more control, you will need to go get a much better 5.1 plugin, like the one from waves I posted before...

If you wanted to take this to the "extreme" you will need to move to a virtual studio package (like Steinberg cubase, cakewalk Sonar etc) that will give you even more control over all this stuff, but at a much higher learning curve...

I have found the Cirlinca software to be excellent for this however, and I exclusively use it for creating DVD-A disks...

Stew4HD

It took a few out-takes but I created what I find to be a great version of Pink Floyd's Animals album in DVD-A format.

There are some websites out there that you can download DVD-A files. I haven't much luck with them but have had some luck with the DTS multichannel files.

Edward'TLS

I'll go and buy some Memorex discs, and hopefully my car can read them afterwards.