Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008 - Page 10

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

DTS-MA is lossless - I assume you meant PCM?

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

No I think he means that he would like the original sound mix in lossless also. The DTS-MA is a new mix based on the original sound elements found in Germany.

Doug

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

No, Disney's audio tracks in that era tended to be bandwidth limited with rolled off highs and no real deep bass. That was true for the few Disney Mag releases as well.

Listen to many of the live action Disney DVD releases for examples.

Vern

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

Thanks for your responses!

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

Vern,

your comments reveal a common misconception about the benefits of losslessly audio: namely that it only benefits material that's well recorded or high-fidelity to begin with.

That's not the case. The sonic compromises of lossy compression aren't restricted bandwidth or rolled off frequency response; they are the omission of audible sounds based on generalized models of human perception and masking. In other words, any recording will sound worse when it's lossy compressed, regardless of how good-or-bad one may think it sounds to start with.

Most kids growing up these days on a steady diet of MP3 won't understand this, but even old mono, hiss-ridden recordings like optical soundtracks and 1950s mag film tracks sound better in lossless than they do when lossy compressed. My laserdisc of A Christmas Story and It's a Wonderful Live sound noticably better than the "lifeless" audio on the DVD and Blu-ray Disc (in the case of a Christmas Story... Wonderful life not on blu just yet).

It's one of the reasons why those who enjoyed the PCM on laserdisc with old and vintage films were so excited about blu-ray... the compromise with lossy Dolby on DVD was excruciating. In fact, Once or twice I synced up my laserdisc player to the DVD of a few catalog classics like that to hear the PCM audio while watching the DVD video. And it made a difference! Sony has a few 1950's sci-fi BDs with both lossless TrueHD and lossy and you can flip between them. My ears had no difficulty hearing the more open, airy sound of the lossless encoding, even given the limits of these dated recordings.

The 4.0 soundtack of sleeping beauty, even with it's inherent limits, would sound better in 24-bit PCM than it does in lossy-compressed Dolby. That's true with almost every recording ever made.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

So, it would have sounded better in the theatre in 1959 than it does on Blu?

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

SLEEPING BEAUTY did have 70mm screenings - but the negative is 35mm, albeit running sideways through the camera. Look at the frame examples on the RAH article.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

That all depends on the audio system of the particular theater.

The point is that the 4.0 soundtrack PCM master at the studio sounds better than the 640 kbps Dolby Digital version of that 4.0 soundtrack on this Blu-ray Disc. A lossless version would have sounded just as good.

That's true for any and every soundtrack.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

Sorry, David, but I think you have been drinking the lossless cool aid

When you have limited bandwidth and relatively high distortion, all the lossless will do is to preserve the original limited bandwidth and distortion.

Believe me, the original SB sound track was no great shakes and wasn't that pleasant to listen to, even in 6 track mag. None of the Disney tracks of that era were. Remember also that we are not talking PCM here, but rather magnetic sound which was purposely bandwidth limited for the printmaster.

The remastered track is far superior in all respects to the original 6 track mix.

Obviously this discussion could easily take on the aspects of $5000.00 speaker cables so I am going to leave it at this point.....

Vern

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

So adding another layer of degredation by lossy phsyco-acoustic compression doesn't matter? Not to my ears given the many laserdisc titles I've enjoyed of vintage films that clearly sound better than their DVD counterparts despite the audio's inherent flaws. Make an MP3 of a bad sounding recording and it gets even worse.


When I said "PCM" I'm talking about the PCM master at the studio that's been derived from that mag track... the PCM master that was then further compressed to Dolby Digital. After digital transfer and restoration, both the new 7.1 mix and the orignal 4.0 mix were mastered to a final PCM file. That file is represented bit-for-bit on the blu-ray for the 7.1 mix via DTS-HD MA. But the 4.0 PCM file is not, and instead is put through an additional, though minimal, stage of degredation from lossy Dolby Digital compression.


Vern, you're totally missing my point. I never said that the remastered track wasn't better sounding... read my review at dvdfile if you want to see just how much better I think it sounds.

My point is that the PCM master of the 4.0 soundtrack sounds better than the dolby-digital version of that same signal.

That has nothing to do with whether or not the newly mastered soundtrack sounds better than the 4.0 mix.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

David's point here is simple and quite logical:

"Garbage in" to a lossless format will sound better than the same "garbage in" to a lossy format.

All things being equal at the source...it will always be better to save the source in the highest resolution feasible. Further deterioration (by way of compression, etc.) will only make things worse.

I think lossless tracks on 1.0 mono tracks also make all the sense in the world.

The whole point of BD technology is to take advantage of the space on the discs to improve the audio and video presentation. If studios aren't going to do it, they are short-changing the entire raison d'etre of HD technology.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

David's argument makes sense to me. Of course a lossless track from a source with limited frequency and high distortion will not sound as good as a lossless track from a source without those problems. But it will sound better than a lossy track from a source with limited frequency and high distortion.

Re: Sleeping Beauty BD - 2008

I am not disputing that lossless doesn't sound better than lossy. Only that the source doesn't justify it in this case. Believe me, you wouldn't be impressed with the lossless version in this particular case.

Also note that lossy comes in many forms with bitrate choices ranging from 64Kb to 640Kb. The resulting audio quality can vary significantly depending on the bitrate and the bandwidth of the source.

A track with limited bandwidth will require far less info be discarded in the compression process and will suffer far less degradation.

Comparing LD PCM with DVD DD generally means that you are comparing the PCM track with DD encoded at the lowest possible bitrate.

Much as we all want lossless in one form or another for every audio track on every BD, the realities of space require that compromises be made.

IMHO, in this case, this is a valid compromise, taking into account the realities of BD media and authoring.

Vern