Thanks for your input. Hopefully Remark 2 can be fixed with some sort of software wizardry.

Is there way to decode mlp?

(offtopic: Since i used this forum before to get some info i used for developing my program i feel obliged to atleast mention it here. So im mentioning it now: announcement)

ontopic:
Someone posted the following which might be interesting if you want to correct the channel order:

I'm trying to rip my Nine Inch Nails "With Teeth" DualDisc DVD-A disc. First of all, I didn't realize how much of a PITA this process is. I used DVDARipper to decrypt the files and put them on my hard drive. I then tried to run PPCMRipper, and realized I'd need a decrypted version on a disc for this to work, so I ripped the DVD portion as well, and made an iso using Nero, and then used Daemon Tools to mount the iso as a drive.

Here's where I start to get confused. I was able to get the multichannel wave files, and it says above that the channel alignment is all messed up. I downloaded the trial of Adobe Audition to attempt to figure this out, but am really confused. Could someone give a tutorial of the process to correct the channel alignment of these files using Adobe Audition (either from multichannel wave source files, or from 6 mono wave source files). I saw an option for a multichannel encoder in Audition, but thats as much as I was able to figure out on my own. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

Edit: this would be so much easier if there was just a Winamp (or Foobar, but for some reason I just don't like using that) plugin to play MLP files, but from what I understand MLP is a closed system so it would be impossible. Am I correct in saying this?

It's very very very closed for encoding, I'm not sure on the decoding front.

Solution: Import the MLP files into Discwelder Chrome and burn the tracks to DVD-audio.

Even the Surcode MLP encoder/decoder does not have a straightforward option to decode MLP files to WAV format from a given MLP file. The decoding feature in the program is normally a final validity check which can be automatically started after assembly of the 6 separate mono wav files into the encoded MLP file. The resultant decoded WAV files are written back into three pairs of stereo WAV files. However it is not possible with the software to directly output WAV files from a ready-made MLP stored on the HD. It is possible to play an independently created MLP file over three stereo output devices of the computer soundcard using the Surcode MLP program in high-resolution audio, but that's all.

Perhaps it is good to mention that the Windows drivers of WinDVD still truncates all digital audio to 16 bit and 48 kHz upon playback (at least for non-Audigy soundcards) even when your soundcard hardware is capable of higher sample rates and bit resolutions. Decryption of the DVD-A discs with unrestricted digital output does not change this. This stands in contrast to the full audio quality of the WAVs that come out of PPCMripper with up to 24/192 bit resolution.

Note that on a standard 2.8-3.0 GHz PentiumIV computer the whole MLP procedure may take some total 1 hour per single hour of 24/96 5.1 music for the encoding and check-up decoding together. Actually rather slowly and thus almost in real-time computer terms with the encoding step being the slowest part of the whole process. To be honest the speed of encoding and the compression efficiency are actually rather modest compared to e.g. Monkey Audio and FLAC.

You can guess that I cannot provide the Surcode MLP encoder software to the community. If you consider to buy the program here are the cheapest prices around. In fact, you can buy a lot of DVD-A's for the money given below.

Price of the Surcode MLP encoder: $2120 (with an optional 10% discount).
Price of Discwelder Chrome II: $2540 (with an optional 10% discount).
Bundle ChromeII/Surcode MLP: $4242 (with an optional 10% discount).

See: http://www.digitalproaudio.com/store/xcart...nufacturerid=22

Surely the only purpose of seperating out the channels or using the mlp is if you want to select your tracks, or if you need to use a dvd9 rather than a dvd5 - most dvd-audio seem to fit on a dvd5, and those that are larger can be accomodated if you loose the video_ts directory. It is possible to 'rip' the entire disc and make a clone using dvdaripper - this will of course not work on a standalone player because of the watermarking, but the same will happen if you have extracted the tracks and recompiled it. Is there a trick I'm missing?

It should play in standalone player if i understood correctly.

I don't think so - the software doesn't touch the watermark, so it can't work. What you would need on top is a programme to clean out the watermark. Now if you know of one then you'd be in business.

Not exactly. Without cleaning the watermark, it will play if converted to DVD-Video. DVD-V doesn't check for the watermark. The wav files re-authored to DVD-V can be 96KHz or 48Khz stereo lossless PCM or compressed multichannel.

The trouble is the only way to get something approaching the quality for multi-channel would be to encode the wav files as DTS 5.1 96 kHz. Unfortunately only one programme has that ability - DTS Encoder Pro which costs an arm and a leg.

Has anyone figured out how to get rid of the gap between ripped dvd-a tracks? I have a few live discs and that gap is annoying! Even if DVD-A Explorer would let you grap more then one track in a chunk I think it would solve the problem.

Look for DVD-A authoring software that advertises "gapless". DiscWelder does but only for wav files and not individual MLP files. For MLP to be gapless, all songs must be compressed together in one big file.

WTF!?

Well, with that requirement met, even VQF can be gapless!

Talk about well-engineered lossless codec... heh.

I think maybe he means "For MLP to be gapless using DiscWelder, all songs must be compressed together in one big file." I may be wrong though.

Cool well maybe that is my problem then as I am using discwelder... what are my other options and what would you recomend?

Thanks!

two questions about this process:
1) is the order of the seperate mono .wav files created by ppcmripper -s always the same? I read somewhere that different DVD-Audio discs might have different channel order.

I've ripped two discs and the order on both appear to be LF, RF, LS, RS, C, LFE.

2) I've tried to use ppcmripper to rip a 6-channel wav. The resulting wav files only playback in mono, at least according to winamp. If I look at the wav files with audacity (unfortunately, I don't have any other audio tools) it shows distinct LF and RF channels, but the LS, RS, C and LFE channels are all noted as just mono.

Is there something I need to do to get a real 5.1 channel wav with the proper channel separation? I have a couple of DVD-Audio discs and it's always bugged me that I can listen to them when I'm in linux (about 95% of my computing time), so if I can rip them, I'd be extremely happy.

Sorry for the double post.
I haven't found any good free tools to do this, but are there any free tools that will let me take 6 separate files wav filesand create a single multichannel extensible wav file?

Adobe Audition can, you can download a free trial. I don't know what features the trial version restricts, though.

Yes, you are correct.

The problem is reading the disc data and decompressing it in real time in the buffer space available. The codec isn't totally to blame here.

The order of song placement on the disk is important too, that's why the docs for dvda_ripper say to not use Nero or some other non-DVDA-aware tool.

Also, I have heard inexpensive "universal" players that inserted gaps in between songs on all DVDA, even official store-bought titles. It's really annoying to hear a live concert pause for about 200 msec in between songs.

Well the player I have doesn't have the gaps on the original disc but does on the ripped disc which is very frustrating! Is there anyway to use dvda explorer or such a program to grap more then 1 song to 1 mlp file or anyway to make ppcmripper to make one long wav file instead of splitting it at each song?

Also I have been burning the dvd-a decrypted files with nero but don't seem to be having a problem.. I doubt it is causing the minor gaps in between the ripped songs but just in case it is what program should I use to burn the decrypted aob files?

Burning the image with Nero is OK as long as you created the image with discWelder.

I don't know of an inexpensive MLP encoder, so I have been using wav files in discWelder when I need gapless.

If the songs ares from the studio, already have gaps and no watermark, the individual MLP files work great.

No i burn the decrypted aob files with nero, not what discwelder outputs. I just burn that from within discwelder. I have tried using the wav files for gapless but I get a pop inbetween each track when I do it that way.

No one has any suggestions?

Intervideo has released "version 3" of WinDVD 7 Platinum as of the end of July 2005 and disabled all DVD Audio support!! I foolishly installed this, thinking it was a bug-fix revision.

They (as usual) refused to respond to my technical support queries when I enquired as to whether the DVD audio support was removed in view of the breach of the DVDA encryption.

Thankfully the previous version was still available for download (after much searching on the web) - WinDVD.Platinum.7.0.Release.2.Build 27.071

Using a new activation key from the Intervideo website STILL didn't enable DVDA playback on this previous version however.

I was able to fudge this using the original purchase activation key by changing the PC system date to within 10 days of my initial activation key supply which I had stored in an email.

Hey presto - back to WinDVD DVDA support!

Intervideo are being very crafty.... they have updated the WinDVD website to remove all references to DVD Audio support and then were answering my technical support queries as if I wasn't configuring my PC correctly.

Heh, how utterly moronic, begin to be a bit tired of RIAA & Co screwing everybody over to keep som feeble copy-protection-scheme alive.

AtW

Hohoho. Shame on me. Now WinDVD users won't be able to enjoy this awesome new audio distribution format

Shame on RIAA and Intervideo

This is merely a detail, in this thread, but though several different possibilities have been raised (aliasing..) this weirdness hasnt been really settled, has it ?

indeed noise-shaping a 24 bit audio (mastered from tapes one could argue had 24bit equivalent resolution in the first place) seems unprobable.

But then what could cause aliasing in there ?

that spectrum really rose my curiosity.

hmm, as a sidenote:
things get rapidly shared these days, most of the time in a breeze before you can even say 5414795.
but enough of poems for now.

I've just tried to rip a dvd-audio (The dvd-a that was included with the soundcard audigy 2 zs).
Anyway, when trying to rip the songs using WinDVD 6.0 DXVA & PPMCripper, the information-window in WinDVD says the DVD-A stream is 24bit@96kHz, but that the output is 16bit@48kHz!!!
What am I doing wrong?? Is it that I'm using the kx-drivers instead of the creative-drivers?

I want my 96kHz.

did you actually have the correct frequency enabled?
"PPCMRipper <frequency(Hz)> <destination_directory> [-s] [-w]"

Yes, think so. The sampling frequency of the dvd-a is 96kHz, at least that's what windvd claims. But it also claims that my output is only 16bits@48kHz. Is this normal when I have the audigy-card?
There is no *.mkb file on the disc, so I figure I shoulden't have to use DVDAripper to decrypt the disc.
Here is my commanline:
PPCMRipper 96000 H:\temp
WinDVD starts up, and when I'm push the play button it starts ripping.
The output file is a 6channel wav at 24bits@96kHz.
But I don't know if this file is the true 96kHz file on the dvd-a, or just an upsample from 48kHz....
Many of the files show no frequencies above 24kHz when viewed in the frequency spectral display in cool edit. But some files do show something above 24kHz...and it doesn't look like aliasing, cause that would look like a mirror of the lower freqs.

So, eihter the music on the dvd carries music that for the most part comes from sources with Fs=48kHz. (Much use of 96kHz samplin then )
Or my ripping is bad.

What does WinDVD say in the "Output"-field for you guys who have tried ripping, with an audigy-card?

James Guthrie, the sound engineer who worked on several albums from Pink Floyd (including the SACD edition of Dark Side of the Moon), about DVD-Audio:

A reply from Craig Anderson, DVD Development Engineer for WEA Studios:

It's funny he should say that, because the sample from Yes - Fragile that I uploaded and analysed earlier in this thread, clearly shows a brick wall filter around 24kHz. And what name did I find in the credits? Authoring: Craig Anderson and David Dieckmann. And as far as I can tell, that DVD-A was released in 2002 (december 2 according to amazon.co.uk).

Edit: for clarity, in case you haven't read the whole (lengthy) thread, the ripping process is unlikely to be the culprit here, since it doesn't yield the same result with other DVD-Audio discs, ripped on a single setup.

Those quotes come from the article entitled DVD-Audio Meridian Lossless Packing: The Great Filter Debate, published on the 4th of july, 2003. The whole debate was about filtering high frequencies for MLP to compress the audio more efficiently.

If your DVD can be played with MPlayer, then u could use my audio/video transcoding tool - MEnc to do the job. It can simply transcode DVD audio tracks to any audio compression formats on-the-fly.

Can someone help me?

I've been trying to find a version of windvd with the dvd audio pack. I've tried two versions of 5 and one of 6. All said they didn't have the dvd audio pack and sent me to the intervideo website. That gets me to windvd7 which doesn't have dvd audio anymore. What do I do to get the dvd audio pack and get it installed with windvd6?

thanks!

Bump.

thanks narc0sys, I saw that. The problem is, I didn't know there was software out that could play dvd-audio and didn't purchase a windvd version that could. Version 7 of Windvd doesn't play it and they will only sell me the new version, so what do I do to get a version with dvd-audio playback?

Just wanted to let everyone know I finally got this working. It works well. I have 2 dvd audio discs and 1 dual-disc. I was very disappointed to learn that my two dvd audio discs did not have a high res stereo track. The "advanced resolution stereo" tracks were 16/48 in the dvd-video side. I tried my dual-disc, the new Wallflowers album. The label says both stereo and surround are 24/48. The label was correct for the surround, but the stereo is 24/96. I was dissappointed that the heavy compressesion on the cd is still present on the 24/96 tracks. While I've heard much worse compression, there are still some tracks that I think are too compressed. I tried grabbing a stereo version of the surround tracks to test. It worked, but I didn't like the way it sounded, seemed there was some weird phasing or something. Oh well, it was fun experiment.

Oops.. Didn't bother checking this thread again after reading the OP~

Fantastic news~!

However I've recently lost interest in the format after discovering that an old CD from a second-hand shop can blow both the remaster and the DVD-A out of the water when played at a realistic volume.

[

IIRC Guthrie implied that ALL DVD-A had to be filtered. But IIRC from that thread, the 24 kHz filtering you saw applied only to the 5.1 mix -- someone else reported that the DVD-A 2.0 mix of Fragile has spectral content up to 96 kHz. False advertising on Rhino's part perhaps, but in any case I doubt anyone is going to hear the loss of content above 24 kHz. (or even 22, for that matter).

Re: Filtering

I recall reading (on this board perhaps) that the MLP encoding guide/manual highly recommends the pre-filtering of supersonic content for increased encoding efficiency.

Seems to me very backwards for a lossless encoder.

SACD involves filtering out supersonic content too. Really, how much supersonic content does anyone *need*?

Anyway,according to Meridian's Bob Stuart ''Meridian does not advocate the use of filtering in routine DVD-Audio production or in playback; rather we encourage producers to avoid errors in source files. We are also not aware of filtering being used as part of the authoring process by any of our customers.'

and on the same page:

"In our MLP training information, we point out as a matter of information that the size of a compressed file can be adjusted by using (gentle) low-pass filtering or selection of a word size to suit the project. This is useful background information to a certain type of producer, who may want to free up space on a disc for other assets or simply understand how the process works."

Read the quote again. He asks, "If there is no high-frequency filtering in DVD-A, then how do you account for numerous titles in the marketplace that have ‘brick-wall’ filters at 20kHz?" (emphasis added). Numerous is hardly ALL.


That was me.


That's another story. The fact is that brickwall filtering HAS obviously been applied on a DVD-A bearing the name of Craig Anderson.


You can check that fact for yourself, directly from the source:


(Emphasis added). I wouldn't say they highly recommend it though.

Granted, but his implication was that the practice is widespread, and Kawakami implied it was *recommended* by Meridian. I think the whole thing's a red herring, since I don't believe it matters whether content above 24 kHz is included in the playback format.



From a listener's perspective I think it's *much* more problematic that considerable dynamic range compression has been applied to that Yes DVD-A. (to the stereo mix at least -- I haven't analyzed the surround mix)

Well, then one of the two improvements of DVD-A is useless then, (higher frequency-range), the other is better S/N (or dynaic range if you will). Which in my humble opinon also is of dubious real percetable value.

AtW

In my opinion they're *both* pointless for delivery formats (though higher sample rates make for possibly easier filtering at the D/A stage). So I don't disagree. DVD-A and SACD *are* more marketing hype than needed 'improvements' on CD, IMO. The practical value of higher sampling/bitrates seem to me to be more on the recording and production side, than the delivery side.