DTS-HD MA vs. DTS Core for Concerts?

[adzyu100]

I usually use the DTS Core track for movies, but if I'm ripping a concert (specifically Green Day's Bullet in a Bible), would the DTS-HD MA track be more optimal?

[El Heggunte]

IF we were talking about classical music or high-quality rock, then yes, lossless is better, BUT since we're talking about popular sub-music, then HE-AAC v2 should be more than adequate

[Cornucopia]

Yes, it should, but it (the lossless extensions) might not be supported by your ripper/converter/editor/player softs.

When music listening is primary focus, such as in concert & music video, etc. pieces, it makes sense to use the best possible source for the audio.
For BD, this would be (in descending order of quality) along the lines of:
1. LPCM
2. Lossless formats (DTS-HD MA & Dolby TrueHD/MLP)
3. Higher bitrate lossy formats (DTS, DD+)
4. Med. bitrate lossy formats (DD)

Scott

[adzyu100]

Yes, it should, but it (the lossless extensions) might not be supported by your ripper/converter/editor/player softs.

When music listening is primary focus, such as in concert & music video, etc. pieces, it makes sense to use the best possible source for the audio.
For BD, this would be (in descending order of quality) along the lines of:
1. LPCM
2. Lossless formats (DTS-HD MA & Dolby TrueHD/MLP)
3. Higher bitrate lossy formats (DTS, DD+)
4. Med. bitrate lossy formats (DD)

Scott

Wait, so LPCM is the best audio format? I've always considered DTS-HD/Dolby TrueHD as the best because of the extra channels.

[Cornucopia]

Really??!!

Yes, LPCM is the best*. It isn't used as much, because it uses the most bitrate (all other samplerate, bitdepth & channel parameters being equal). The DTS-HD-MA and Dolby TrueHD/MLP streams are COMPRESSED versions of an LPCM source. That should mean they are of equal quality (being lossless), but if, for example, your DTS decoder only accepts the DTS core, you are listening to a lower-quality version (being now lossy).

Scott



*People who revere DSD (sigma-delta) encoding might argue with me on that one, but it isn't pertinent to BD or DVD.

[hello_hello]

In a perfect world you'd probably convert the DTS-HD MA to a lossless format. Especially if you want to edit or cut it up into individual tracks. I generally convert to a 24 bit wave file (LPCM) for editing, then I convert the edited version to 24 bit FLAC (also lossless) to reduce the file size a bit. Plus FLAC files can be tagged in pretty much the same way you can tag MP3's or M4As etc. Mp3Tag will do it (it works with several file types despite it's name).
I keep the FLAC version as the "master" copy and from there it doesn't matter so much. I convert the FLAC file(s) to either MP3 or AAC for portable devices, but if I want to convert to a different format later, it's easy as I've still got the "original" FLAC version.

[johns0]

If the audio is 5.1 dont re-encode it.

[hello_hello]

I always downmix ripped "concert" audio to stereo and save it as a lossless file because I'd mainly be converting it to play with a portable device and the file sizes are much smaller, but I guess it depends how you'll be playing it. Even if I had a 5.1ch sound system, which I don't, I'd probably still downmix to stereo for listening to the audio only, but I guess that's personal preference.