LD PCM vs. DVD audio quality comparison (1 Viewer)

[Ed St. Clair]

I was hoping this thread would included LPCM vs. DD (or DTS) on DVD.
Which LPCM is rarely if ever used for feature film soundtracks. LPCM is found on some music video DVD's.

8-Tracks, are dead. Super cassettes are dead. DiscoVision is dead. Digital cassettes are dead. As formats. People may still love them too death (pun intended). Yet such is the fate of a non-production format. Edsel's are still loved dearly, butt if you ask Ford, the Edsel is DEAD!

Can anyone post DVD's with PCM track that 'best' DD (or DTS)?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

My personal feeling is that LPCM ought to be used at least for monaural DVDs... but it isn't, in most cases. The plain fact is that there are many, many LDs out there with PCM audio -- probably 25,000 out of the 40,000+ releases. The number of PCM DVDs is miniscule. Any discussion of PCM movie soundtracks, therefore, is going to focus on LD releases, most of which are easily available to the general public despite being a non-supported format [I can go not a mile from my house and paw through an inventory of 300+ of the things]. I would certainly like to know more about PCM on DVD, but most Home Theatre enthusiasts are actually going to find it easier to get PCM on LaserDisc.
I actually have a LaserDisc with 384 kbps AC-3 2.0 -- Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise reissue boxset. The movie was remixed to 5.1 from plain stereo [not Stereo Surround], so the AC-3 track is hard to compare with the PCM track during the movie, but for some reason the AC-3 encode for the soundtrack album occupying side 6 and half of side 5 was done in plain stereo [rather than the 5.1 mixes they obviously had to create to redo the film]. The two are directly comparable, and on the lush Riuichi Sakamoto soundtrack [including one choral segment] I for one could not distinguish between them.

 

[Kevin M]

I mentioned Pink Floyd's The Wall as having a PCM track that IMO is better than the DD 5.1 track......I just don't have many discs that are not x rated that have PCM tracks to offer a reasonable comparison.


Topic: Apocalypse Now had a thunderous LD-PCM track for it's day, that is one PCM track that bottomed out my sub in a few different scenes.

 

[ElevSkyMovie]

I have a couple of music dvds in my collection that I can think of that have LPCM. "Alison Krauss and Union Station: Live" has DD and DTS 5.1, and LPCM stereo. John Mayer's "Any Given Sunday" has a LPCM track that is 24/48.

 

[AnthonyL]

Any of the older 007 Bond LDs sound better than their dvd counterpart. Even in mono.

 

[Reagan]

Two issues:

a) I was under the impression that most 5.1DD DVD tracks are 448kps. As I recall, even Warner made the move to that a couple of years ago - and they were the last holdout. Maybe I'm wrong.

b) I'm pretty sure that I read on Dolby's site that D-VHS DD tracks can go as high as 576kps.

-Reagan

 

[Shane Martin]

Reagan,
Warner has just recently released a few titles with DD 5.1 at 384. They were/are the last holdout.

 

[Mike Wadkins]

just compare the pcm track on the star wars def. ed. to the dvd it blows it away.

also Armageddon pcm is the best made HT. soundtrack ever made blows my dts full rate dvd out of the water and the air.
The bass response is outstanding on both disks and the high end is smooth and unmuzzled

 

[Hector.B]

are you talking about the Armageddon PCM LASERDISC track?

 

[Jon Smith]

Will HD-DVD / Blu Ray have PCM 5.1 ?

 

[ChristopherDAC]

According to the discussion in the High Definition area, the first Blu-Ray discs will have PCM soundtracks, in 5.1 or 6.1 format.

The HD-DVDs will, it seems, have Dolby Digital Plus, which is basically normal DD at a little higher bitrate, with some new features. One of them will have Dolby Digital HD, or whatever they call it, which is the lossless codec, basically MLP [used on DVD-A] with some new features. Unfortunately, the decoders for that aren't available yet; I understand the HD-DVD players will only have 2-channel output, and there are no recievers which will accept it via HDMI. Of course, the HD-DVD release dates keep being pushed back.

 

[jim.vaccaro]

5.1 PCM...nice. Then again, I think Dolby Prologic II does a really nice job turning a PCM into 5.1.

 

[Hector.B]

Glad this thread is active again...So today I played the PCM track from a few laserdiscs and I wasn't too impressed by them...or was I not playing it correctly? Here's what I did:
I have a Pioneer CLD-D704 output via digital output with a coaxial digital cable. I am running that to my Denon 3801 input. I have the digital input assigned correctly and everything. From the three INPUT selections I have to choose from (Auto, PCM, DTS) I chose PCM and the little PCM indicator lit up and I also had a green LED light that said I had a lock on the digital signal. I listened to the PCM track in both Stereo and Dolby Pro-Logic. So my question is should it be listened to in Stereo or Dolby Pro-Logic? From what I read on the forum it's either or. I listened to the following PCM tracks Back to the Future III (widescreen), Jaws (Signature widescreen box set) and Lion King and wasn't really impressed as a whole. I then listened to the Dolby Digital tracks on the DVD counterparts and was blown away by the sound. Any opinions? Also am I doing something wrong????
Thanks,
Hector

 

[RobertSiegel]

There were 2 releases of JERRY HERMAN'S BROADWAY on dvd (an all-star concert at the Hollywood Bowl). The first release (though neither are available anymore) had a 2.0 dolby surround pcm track only, no dolby digital. The 2nd had a 4.0 and dolby surround track. The dvd PCM track is so much better than the dolby digital one, including the surround OR 4.0), I sold the 2nd version. I am not sure if there were any other discs like that, with only a pcm track on dvd and no dolby, but this one was a stunner! The 2nd dolby version was compressed and lost the great "live" sound the first one had, had much less separation as well.

 

[Jeff Whitford]

Well Jaws was mono BTTF2 had some surround in it as does The Lion King(probably more). If you are trying to compare the two (especially since you said 5.1 on the DVD's) you should have it in ProLogic for the LD's. The LD's are usually much fuller sounding. You can't count discrete effects though just general surround envelopment.

 

[Kevin M]

Remember also that 5.1 tracks have dedicated tracks for all of the separate channels/speakers (depending on the sound engineer) so it has a much wider and natural sounding soundstage than a matrixed (or non-matrixed) 2 channel track*. The benefit IMO comes from SQ, a non compressed track is....well, uncompressed (in as far as PCM is capable of delivering) so you shouldn't hear any of the compression anomalies that plague many of the popular sound compression technologies.

But always keep in mind, crap in, crap out, no matter how uncompressed a soundtrack may be if the source is less than great then nothing will help it from the end users standpoint.


*Although Pro-Logic II does a much better job at offering up a fuller soundstage from a 2 channel track than regular Pro-Logic did.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Kevin,

excellent points. I might add that one of the ironic twists is that *sometimes* a matrxed surround sound *can* sound subjectively better than a discrete mix compression issues completely asside. The reason? Since most matrixed surround decoders pull out the out-of-phase information for the rear-channel, if the discrete 4-channel master (mono surround) had relatively inactive rear effects, you can end up with *more* sound in the rear as a result of the matrixed errors...since the surround decoder will grab every out-of-phase signal.

I think of the infamous "TOP GUN" laserdisc demo. The matrixed surround was absotlutely mind-blowing. It was *the* demo on laser and Hi-Fi-VHS for every surround sound salesman. Then the DVD comes out with discrete 5.1. Guess what...it was totally lame! The audio mixers had used WHIMPY surround effects which left you completely unsatisfied. But the matrix processing of the 2.0 downmix was incredible...because there was a whole lot of out-of-phase information in the L/R mix that gave you a much more enveloping surround-sound experience than audio engineers had actually intended for you to hear.

Was it "accurate"? I guess not. But did it sound *better*? Absolutely!!!

 

[AlexBC]

David, another great example is the Good Morning Vietnam DVD DD 5.1 track verus the LD PCM track. The latter has much more surround information runnig it through DPL or even better DPL2

 

[Hector.B]

Re: Top Gun Laserdisc. Which track is better on laserdisc?
The LD AC-3 track? Or the LD PCM track? Boh of which are on the same laserdisc.

Edit: I just remembered that I have this so I'll try to do a comparison today. But if anyone else has already compared these LD tracks it'd be cool to have opinions.

 

[Hector.B]

I compared the LD PCM track of Top Gun versus the DTS 6.1 Track of the DVD and the DVD is definitely the winner, although the LD PCM track is exceptionally good and doesn't fall far behind. The DTS track just sounded more open and had better bass overall.