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Playing DVD Audio

Nermal

Nermal

Moderator
Original poster
Staff member
Dec 7, 2002
21,441
5,320
New Zealand
Is there any way to do this? Apple's DVD Player only seems to want to play the video track, same with VLC. Does anyone know how to make it work?

Then, once I've got it playing, the next step is ripping into iTunes ;)
 
You could just play a DVD normally and minimise the window. ;)

To extract the audio, you could use a utility such as DVDxDV, or you could use WireTap to record it as it's playing. Both save as aiff.
 
Sorry, I wasn't very clear in my original question. A DVD Audio disc contains "Advanced Resolution" audio, which is stored in AOB (audio object) files on the disc. There are "legacy" tracks stored in the VOB (video object) files, these have somewhat lesser quality than the AOB files.

The problem is that DVD Player and VLC both want to play the VOB version, not the AOB version. What I'd like to know is how to play the better-sounding AOB tracks.
 
For DVD-A, you will need a DVD-A player with analog audio outs. Currently, the sample rate is not supported by the converters/software in Mac computers. M-Audio analog PCI audio cards might do it, but I think the limitation is in the software. I wouldn't expect to see this in a computer for a while, as most DVD-A stuff is for audiophiles.
 
Goddamn! I guess if the computer can't read DVD-A, then iTunes will not let you rip it to AAC.

Sheeyite. I was actually hoping to buy a Porcupine Tree DVD-A. Well, back to searching for plain ol' CDs then.
 
Nermal said:
I see that the latest version of WinDVD offers 96 kHz/24-bit decoding. What would that be for? Isn't that the same format that DVD-A uses?
Click to expand...

yes
http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9261

Technical details:
Supported input formats:
Wave files 2 channels 44.1kHz 16 bits
Supported output formats:
PCM 48/96 kHz, 16/20/24 bits
MP1 48kHz 320/352/384/416/448 kbps
MP2 48kHz 192/224/256/320/384 kbps


a note though on windvd and powerdvd i think as well. they only support 24-bit decoding will only work with sound cards the support that bit rate. i.e. the sound cards that support it support multiple speakers and spdif outputs. http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/Support.jsp?product=WinDVD&category=Audio_Card
 
Maritan said:
Goddamn! I guess if the computer can't read DVD-A, then iTunes will not let you rip it to AAC.

Sheeyite. I was actually hoping to buy a Porcupine Tree DVD-A. Well, back to searching for plain ol' CDs then.
Click to expand...

Well, you can rip the Dolby Digital tracks, although it's a bit of a mission. But even if you could rip the DVD-A tracks, you'd lose their benefit by taking it down to AAC anyway.

But it's been good to try this stuff out. I got the disc for free so I don't care if I can't get to everything on it :)
 
Nermal said:
OK, it's been 18 months now, is there a DVD-A player available yet? :)
Click to expand...

i don't think there is a software player out that will support it. however, to find the answer i would look to see if any software that supports the m-audio revolution 7.1 or 5.1 actually support DVD+Audio. The same cards can go into a PC and play dvd+a from windvd.
 
Nermal said:
OK, it's been 18 months now, is there a DVD-A player available yet? :)
Click to expand...
I could have sworn I played DVD-A when I set up my PM in iTunes, using digital out. It took some tweaking with the MIDI audio utilities to get working, though.

Let me get home and take a peek. I only own a handful of DVD-A discs, so this hasn't been a big deal. I have no idea how to rip from DVD-A, though.
 
Followup: Pulled one of my DVD-A discs; the only way I can get it to play is through DVD Player. It does work, though, in 5.1.
 
Don M. said:
Followup: Pulled one of my DVD-A discs; the only way I can get it to play is through DVD Player. It does work, though, in 5.1.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure that what's playing is a DVD-Video layer on the disc. That's the only 5.1 your Mac can play, through the Dolby Digital track. There is no provision for DVD-A on Mac as of yet (especially through DVD Player). You can make them with DiscWelder from Minnetonka, but sadly, we cannot play them to their full benefit...

cpjakes
 
thank the record labels et al.

There are a couple of PC-based hardware/software combos out there that will let you run DVD-Audio through a computer, but it's very carefully controlled. they've figured out a way to bypass the copy protection, but it is a pain and it requires you to buy software. The labels were against high-resolution audio from the start...they don't want "those evil pirates" to have access to master-quality versions of their music. As a result, the people most likely to spend lots of money on high-resolution audio have been copy-protected out of interest in the formats. I own probably 10 DVD-Audio discs. Unless they're free, I probably won't own many more. It's not that they don't sound good, because they certainly do. It's because I listen to lossless music through my PC over a dolby digital connection, and I don't like getting up to put in a CD anymore. Sounds lazy, but it's true.

I didn't spend all this money on a media server just to have discs lying around my living room...
 
Following up here, I don't suppose anything's changed with regard to full support for DVD-A recently, have they? WinDVD and PowerDVD on the Windows side both support it directly. I'm surprised DVD Player won't play them or that apps like VLC haven't added support (that I know of).
 
Bump!

Anyone hear more about DVD-audio playing/ripping?

I know downmixing to AAC will deduce the benefits but it should still result in a superior-sounding AAC than ripping from the CD master.

Even making an AAC from the 48000 khz DVD-V VOBs will give a better sound, although not as improved as the 96000, obviously. Same reason as making a rip from a rip gives reduced quality: the source material has more/less info to give the encoder.

Here's an interesting page on the topic:

http://jasonqg.50megs.com/e2edvd/mac.htm

(Specifically, look up "Why is the quality better than the retail CD? It's still just a CD.", subtopic 3.)

By the way, Cinematize makes this process MUCH easier than listed above.
 
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