DVDAudio, Encryption (?) playback and back-up

[SaSi]

I bought my first DVD Audio disk. Tschaikovsky's 1812 ouverture, a Telarc production.

Needless to say, my first urge was to listen to it, and my second one to investigate further ( ).

I've read in posts that DVD audio is protected, that no ripping mechanism exists (yet), etc.

Well, I placed the disk in my DVDRom, started Nero, placed a DVDRW in the Recorder and hit copy. Simple as that. (Note, the disk was a 4.36 single layer flipper).

Half an hour later, I got myself a disk that played fine on my DVDAudio player. I liked it, but is it normal?

And my second question to the forum: Is there any Windows DVD Audio s/w player around?

And my final one: If I want to make a CD copy to play in my car, is there anything that can rip the disk into WAV? I understand I will need to downsample the recording before it works on a CD, but I just want to avoid the realtime recording in analog.

[Cornucopia]

I bought my first DVD Audio disk. Tschaikovsky's 1812 ouverture, a Telarc production.

Needless to say, my first urge was to listen to it, and my second one to investigate further ( ).

I've read in posts that DVD audio is protected, that no ripping mechanism exists (yet), etc.

Well, I placed the disk in my DVDRom, started Nero, placed a DVDRW in the Recorder and hit copy. Simple as that. (Note, the disk was a 4.36 single layer flipper).

Half an hour later, I got myself a disk that played fine on my DVDAudio player. I liked it, but is it normal?

And my second question to the forum: Is there any Windows DVD Audio s/w player around?

And my final one: If I want to make a CD copy to play in my car, is there anything that can rip the disk into WAV? I understand I will need to downsample the recording before it works on a CD, but I just want to avoid the realtime recording in analog.

1. Normal? Well, just like DVD-Video may be encrypted, but doesn't have to be (depends on the owner/producer/studio), so may a DVD-Audio be encrypted --or not. Sounds like you may have been lucky to get an unencrypted disc on your 1st try.

2. No player that I know of, tho' since CreativeLabs has a SB/Audigy2 card that is officially "approved" for THX and DVD-Audio, it's possible that it may come with an app.?!

3. Ah! Here's where the experimentation starts to come in. Well, supposedly, the *.AOB's in the AUDIO_TS folder are muxed MPEG/DVD program streams very similar to the *.VOB's in the VIDEO_TS folder. But not identical. Here's what I'd do (assuming it actually IS unencrypted):

Copy a AOB to the harddrive. Turn off the Read-only flag. Rename to VOB. Try opening up and demuxing in a number of apps, including DVD2AVI, VDub, etc.
If it is LinearPCM, without MLP compression (Meridian Lossless Packing), then you should be able to save as a standard WAVE file. Then you can do all the usual work in a good audio editor (of course, it will have to support higher sample rates and bit depths). If it has MLP, you're screwed and will probably need to resort to the realtime
PLAY-->ANALOG OUT-->DIGITIZE-->RECORD/ENCODE method.

Unless, you would like to create an MLP decoder for all of us!

Scott

[SaSi]

Unless, you would like to create an MLP decoder for all of us!

Scott

I think I'll pass on that 8) Really don't even understand what MLP is, but we all will in a couple of months, I guess...

Thank,s Cornucopia for the advise.

I tried the Analog realtime recording trick.

There is a practical problem with this.

DBD Audio is apparently multichannel, and for some reason my universal player produces audio output only out of the 5.1 jacks. No Stereo downmix output. (Strange, as it does downmix with DVDVideo).

Since audio is really present in all 5 channels, to get the full content requires a dowmix of the individual channels. Left and Right are about 50% of the content. The Central channel has lots of content that sounds faint in L or R and all low frequency appears to be in the LFE channel.
In sort, recording the L and R outputs gives a mockery of the audio.

Which leads to the practical problem: How does one record 6 channels at the same time on a PC? Obviously with a 6 channel input audio card and a suitable s/w. I do have the s/w (CoolEdit) but I realize multiple input audio cards aren't exactly what you find in Computer stores.

Anyone can suggest a good, affordable and widely available such card? Would be grateful. Otherwise, I guess I will try to dig out an old-fashioned DJ Mixer.

Also, has anyone tried to install more than one audio cards on a PC and try to drive each one at the same time to record multiple tracks? Would be an interesting excercice (for next weekend...)

[Cornucopia]

I take it you didn't try the demux way.

Well, there are cards from MOTU, Digidesign, and others that have multiple channels in and out. They used to be through the roof price-wise, but have finally started getting cheaper, or at least coming out with "lighter" versions that are more affordable. Many have 8-in and 8-out (often analog, digital AES/SPDIF and digital ADAT/TOSLINK).

I know that CoolEditPro can work with multiple standard soundcards, don't know about SoundForge (though I would expect it to). I don't see why it wouldn't work. Yes, Windows OS itself is hampered and will only deal with one at a time, but specialized software doesn't have to be.

The other "LOW TECH" way would be to plug LF and RF into the stereo inputs and record, then back up and plug C and LFE into the stereo inputs and record, then back up and plug LB and RB into the stereo inputs and record. Then all you have to do is a simple synch-up job.

Believe me, it can be done but it's not fun. Works great if you have a 2-pop leader (for those non-AV/Film people, that's a "blip" that occurs exactly 2 seconds before the beginning of a program-many times put at the head of a commercial program, occasionally also at the end).

HTH,
Scott