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PCM5.1 & lossless audio discussion - split thread from A Knight's Tale review (1 Viewer)

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Thanks Roger for your response !

If I understand the final decision is in the studio"s hands. We hometheater lovers would like our "A" titles be mastered with the hightest quality possible. It just sad that most studios don"t think this way.

I mean with a title like KING KONG I will put :

1) a DTS HD-Master track at 18 mbps on HD DVDS or 24 mbps on BLU-RAY

2) a DOLBY TRUE-HD track AT MAX BITRATE

3) a DD+ track in french, spanish and english at a bit rate of 3 mbps each

I KNOW I KNOW this title is 180 min long so I will put 2 or 3 HD-DVDS to cover all the bitrates. They will not lose money because this title would well TONS of copies. For me you don"t lose money when you put MAX QUALITY on a product that will sell tons tons of copies.
 

DaViD Boulet

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Agreed.

but technically, since lossless is lossless... doens't it not really make sense to talk about "bit rate" with lossless audio?

Rather, the issue to address with lossless packing would be what *resolution* the audio is (ie, 20/48, 24/96 etc.).

As long as the codec is packing that losslessly, it can use whatever bit-rate it's able to acheive.
 

Edwin-S

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What I would like to know is why DD+ through the 5.1 Analog inputs sounds flatter and more lifeless than the regular DD mixes on DVD. In order to get a sense of depth to the soundtrack through the analog inputs the volume has to be cranked up. What would cause that?
 

Roger Dressler

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Well, since the DEHT mix is completely different than the theatrical version, one would hope it sounded different. It's sufficiently different that it cannot be used to determine the effect of dialnorm, I would submit.
 

DaViD Boulet

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Of course.

I don't mean that the DEHT mix sounds different than the 5.1 original mix... naturally it would. I mean tha the DEHT mix sounds different than almost *any* other DD mix in my DVD collection. It sounds more open, more natural, with a better sense of space etc. It sounds more PCM-ish than I'm used to Dolby Digital sounding in general. When I inquired about this seemingly added level of overall fidelity, one of the things tha came up in the conversation with the mixing engineer was that no dialog normalization had been applied. *That's* what I'm talking about.
 

Lew Crippen

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It seems to me that the inclusion of multiple, lossless tracks is not really a value-added feature compared to the space (and cost of multiple coding). And while I recognize that many like dubbing, I'd rather see subtitles in French and Spanish (and other languages) than the inclusion of multiple soundtracks.

FWIW, most English-language DVDs and movies in theaters where I live have Spanish subtitles and are not dubbed in Spanish. Movies that are targeted towards younger audiences typically are dubbed, not subtitled. King Kong (at least in my local theater) was subtitled.

I suspect that the the target audience for either subtitles or dubbing, is pretty used to reading subtitles and would not look at dubbing as a valuable extra.

Then again (assuming French is your first language) you may well have a different, and equally valid view.
 

Scott Simonian

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18 + how much "max bitrate" is for Dolby TrueHD + 9 = holy shit where did the bits for the video go?

I mean...why the hell would you want TWO maxed out lossless tracks sucking up all the bandwidth for a HDDVD? And then an additional DD+ track in English? WTF?

Two or three disc wouldnt fix the fact that there would be no bandwidth for the video.
 

Scott Simonian

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Everyone will prolly disagree with me but...

Say studios would release a separate Dolby and DTS versions of movies again. I loved that. Have a nice red 'DTS' banner on top. Ah, the old laserdisc/first gen. dts dvd days....
 

DaViD Boulet

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Why care about DD or DTS when it's lossless?


Hence why I hope that the BD group can get things working. BD has 1.5 x the bandwidth of HD DVD.
 

Dan Hitchman

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Take a six-channel 24/96 lossless track, it usually pegs at 6-9 Megabits/sec depending on the complexity of the PCM data. These 18 or 24 Megabits/sec specs. for Blu-Ray are at the extreme end of the scale giving wiggle room. I'd expect maybe an 8 channel 24/96 lossless track to be around 12-15 Megabits/sec.

With advanced video codecs and BD50's (hopefully ramping up in a few months) there shouldn't be a reason not to have at least one full resolution lossless track on each and every disc.

Dan
 
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I am with you on this Scott !

If there's not enough space for video put a separate version for a DTS-HD Master version.

For the alternative tracks, I LIKE companies like Warner Bros and Universal who are dubbing tracks in french with great quality. I mean we in QUEBEC wants to listen to our native language with the same quality. I want the same for HD DVDS or BLU-RAY.

But I will tell you than more than 60% of the time I will listen in the original language with the english subtitles. I understand the english language but most people don"t in Quebec. We just want to have the possibilty to listen to it. But it"s another story...

I want the BEST AUDIO QUALITY available first !

It just a shame that video got all the attention and the audio must just take what"s still available.
 

ChristopherDAC

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This isn't DVD, after all, there are provisions being made for high-quality audio, allocating far more bitrate for audio. Now, to me, it makes no sense at all to have a "Dolby TrueHD" lossless track, and a "dts HD MA" lossless track. Lossless is lossless, and two make a redundancy. Better to just use PCM and avoid debates over audio coding formats : a 7 channel 24 bit 96 kHz PCM track requires 16.13 Mbps, and that's about the highest quality level in view here. Since multichannel PCM can go out the analog outputs or HDMI just as easily as these packing formats (it's what in-player decoding produces), there's no practical disadvantage.
 

Scott Simonian

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AGREED! :D

But if the time comes that we have "lossless" tracks coming out regularly, then it should be one or the other.

PCM audio has been the only thing about BluRay that I just love. It REALL IS the holy grail for audio.

But let's just let these guys battle over one compressed "lossless" track over the other.

:D
 

Scott Simonian

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You know...Im a audio guy too. When the HD platforms started rolling out my anticipation was to hear all about the new audio formats. I didnt really care about the video. In reality, the video still stands over the audio in priority simply cause its so noticeable. Pixelation and other artifacts are sooo much more noticeable over a slightly reduced audio datarate.

If I had it my way. There would definitely be a 24/96khz 7.1 PCM track on every movie. Somewhere down the road, maybe...
 

AndreGB

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A six channel 24/96 PCM data has a 13.1 Mbits/s data rate, uncompressed. So any lossless codec will make it lower than that. I think MLP would do much less than 6-9 Mbits/s, even on complex passages. ;)
 

Dan Hitchman

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MLP (the data packer behind TrueHD) was used for DVD-Audio (it did have more channel and resolution limits than it does now due to DVD-Video disc low bitrate caps). Music is complex, and so are sequences of music, big dynamic range spikes, etc. Most action movies or when theres a jumble of different sounds in any movie would have a lot going on. On the bitrate information for those audio music tracks (six channels of 24/96 in particular) they were around 6-9 Megabits/sec.

For HD-DVD and Blu-Ray the lossless audio codecs are allowed to have a variable bitrate, but they can still peak in those ranges. 8 channel would be a bit higher and if some specs. are correct (some state Blu-Ray allows for this) 8 channel, 24/192 would be getting up towards the maximum allowed for lossless audio codecs under the rules.

Dan
 
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Will we ever see titles with 8 channels 24 bits 192khz ? I doubt !

But, trust me KING KONG or Batman with this kind of quality that will be the NIRVANA of movie soundtrack !!!

But I dreaming i know...

SAD !
 

AndreGB

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Dan, all lossless codecs are variable bit rate. Different audio passages have different complexities. Not having it VBR would mean either wasting bits (and space) on some passages or making it not lossless on others.
 

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