[geeks] DTS or AC3 test video?

[Joshua Boyd]

On Tue, Feb 21, 2006 at 10:18:48PM +0200, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:

> > How about just picking up Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" on SACD?  
> > The beginning of "Time" strikes me as a perfect example of well mixed 5 
> > channel audio.  Actually, that whole album is very good in 5 channel.  I 
> > can't think of any DVD-Audio titles to use off of the top of my head 
> > though.  (SACD requires a DVD player that will play them, i think that 
> > many of them now do, but DVD-Audio plays on almost every DVD player i've 
> > seen.)
> 
> Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look for it, but I doubt that I would have
> any success.
> 
> I don't think it's available here. There isn't much call for SACDs at
> the "all CD's 10 NIS ($2)" stores. :-( Tower records would be the only
> one that would, if anyone.
> 
> I'm reluctant to get it because it would awaken memories of a summer
> afternoon, a blonde, and things that I'd rather let lie dormant almost
> 30 years later, especially since I am married to someone else. :-)

SACDs don't work with digital outputs anyway[0]

Technically, I believe DVD-Audio discs are the same way.  However, if
you have a non-DVD-Audio player, most DVD-Audio disks include a
DVD-Video section that has an AC3 or DTS version of the recording at a
lower fidelity than the DVD-Audio section[1].  The non-DVD-Audio player
is important though.  I have a Toshiba DVD-Audio player in my office,
and when I pop a DVD-Audio disc into it, it won't let me get to the
DVD-Video section.  Using DVD-Video is important here as I need the
digital outputs to feed my AC3 encoder (OK, so there is AC3 already on
the disc, but it works better for me to use the regular PCM and run it
through the AC3 encoder here, since I need to be able to try my software
against many AC3 variations.


[0] This is presumably for SACDs aren't PCM anyway.  They use something
called DSD, which I'll leave looking up as an excersice to any readers
who care.

[1] DVD-Audio is uncompressed 192khz/24bit audio, DVD-Video is
compressed 48khz audio at 16bits.  For piracy reasons, I believe the vast
majority of DVD-Audio players don't allow digital output (It wouldn't
surprise me if some units could be modded though).  Besides, they
would really need 3 digital outputs anyway, and I'm not aware of many
stereos that support that.

-- 
Joshua D. Boyd
jdboyd at jdboyd.net
http://www.jdboyd.net/
http://www.joshuaboyd.org/