LossyWAV found in the wild, On some DVD-A Options

[ktf]

Hi all,

I was busy doing some tests for my upcoming lossless comparison when I stumbled upon some really weird results. It turned out that the FLAC-files I ripped from a DVD-A I was testing had wasted_bits=2 and wasted_bits=4 on some channels. I was kind of surprised, but as according to the Wiki there is some evidence MLP (the compressor used for DVD-A) searches for these wasted bits, it seems logical: the DVD-A now holds 8,0GB (of 8,5GB max) of data, so without this 'lossy' encoding, they would not have been able to cram all this stuff on the DVD-A. (For the same stuff for The Return of the King, which features even more music, they used a double-sided, DL DVD and don't use these 'wasted bits'-approach as there was enough space)

The DVD-A I'm talking about is from the 3-CD + DVD-A set of the The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Complete Recordings) soundtrack, which was released on November 7, 2006, so it precedes the first HA-post on LossyWAV by about 9 months.

I couldn't find any information on these wasted bits actually being used with MLP, but as the sales of the original soundtracks are over millions, the soundtrack I'm talking about must have been sold at least 10.000+ times, so this stuff is actually being used in the 'real world' as well

I hope someone might find this interesting.

This post has been edited by ktf: Jan 1 2013, 17:46