read DVD-audio/SACD on the computer (1 Viewer)

[Ray M Y]

Does anybody know if they're planning to make DVD-audio and/or SACD disks playable on the computer? I have surround speakers and a good sound card already, but I don't have a separate DVD player for home theater. Would it be a waste to get DVD-audio disks then?

Ray

 

[Kevin P]

DVD-Audio discs generally include a Dolby Digital or DTS track that will play in non-DVD-Audio players or computers. So while you won't get the highest resolution possible on DVD-A you can still listen to them on your PC.

It's unlikely that PCs will ever be able to read SACD. It's a completely different format.

KJP

 

[Brian Ruth]

Quoth the Kevin:


Isn't it on a DVD though?

 

[Michael Harris]

No. SACD and audio DVDs are two different formats and incompatible. The only thing they have in common is their size and can play multi-channel. As far as I know, Pioneer makes the only player that plays all formats and its part of their "Elite" line and quite expensive.

 

[Merconium]

I would think that because the PC can do so many things it is a very likely candidate to be able to read SACD or DVD-A. The reality is that there is no way people are going to produce drives that can rip those formats to Kazaa, et al.

 

[John_Lee]

Seems to me, if it's digital, it can be incorporated into the P.C. Whether the rights holders will allow it is another matter.

 

[Brian Ruth]

I think that SACD is INDEED recorded on DVD media. I think its a logical extension that you'd be able to play it on PC. My guess is it will start to be incorporated as a feature on the VAIOs within a year.

 

[Wayne Bundrick]

From the DVD FAQ:

(1.12)
DVD audio is copyright protected by an embedded signaling or digital watermark feature. This uses signal processing technology to apply a digital signature and optional encryption keys to the audio in the form of supposedly inaudible noise so that new equipment will recognize copied audio and refuse to play it. Proposals from Aris, Blue Spike, Cognicity, IBM, and Solana were evaluated by major music companies in conjunction with the 4C Entity, comprising IBM, Intel, Matsushita, and Toshiba. Aris and Solana merged to form a new company called Verance, whose Galaxy technology was chosen for DVD-Audio in August 1999. (In November 1999, Verance watermarking was also selected for SDMI.) Verance and 4C claimed that tests on the Verance watermarking method showed it was inaudible, but golden-eared listeners in later tests were able to detect the watermarking noise.

Sony and Philips have developed a competing Super Audio CD format that uses DVD discs. (See 3.6.1 for details.) Sony released version 0.9 of the SACD spec in April 1998, the final version appeared in April (?) 1999. SACD technology is available to existing Sony/Philips CD licensees at no additional cost. Most initial SACD releases have been mixed in stereo, not multichannel. SACD was originally supposed to provide "legacy" discs with two layers, one that plays in existing CD players, plus a high-density layer for DVD-Audio players, but technical difficulties kept dual-format discs from being produced until the end of 2000, and only then in small quantities. Pioneer, which released the first DVD-Audio players in Japan at the end of 1999, included SACD support in their DVD-Audio players. If other manufacturers follow suit, the entire SACD vs. DVD-Audio standards debate could be moot, since DVD-Audio players would play both types of discs.

(3.6.1)
Sony and Philips are promoting SACD, a competing DVD-based format using Direct Stream Digital (DSD) encoding with sampling rates of up to 100 kHz. DSD is based on the pulse-density modulation (PDM) technique that uses single bits to represent the incremental rise or fall of the audio waveform. This supposedly improves quality by removing the brick wall filters required for PCM encoding. It also makes downsampling more accurate and efficient. DSD provides frequency response from DC to over 100 kHz with a dynamic range of over 120 dB. DSD includes a lossless encoding technique that produces approximately 2:1 data reduction by predicting each sample and then run-length encoding the error signal. Maximum data rate is 2.8 Mbps.

SACD includes a physical watermarking feature. Pit signal processing (PSP) modulates the width of pits on the disc to store a digital watermark (data is stored in the pit length). The optical pickup must contain additional circuitry to read the PSP watermark, which is then compared to information on the disc to make sure it's legitimate. Because of the requirement for new watermarking circuitry, SACD discs are not playable in existing DVD-ROM drives.

 

[Martin Fontaine]

The reality is that there is no way people are going to produce drives that can rip those formats to Kazaa, et al.

Encoding DVD-A or SACD to low-bitrate MP3 would defeat the purpose of hi-def formats, no nothing to fear I guess...

One thing I'd like to do, is take the stereo track of a DVD-A, downsample it to 44/16 encode to MP3 to integrate to my playlist, for albums that I don't own on CD but would buy the DVD-A only (Bjork's Vaspertine, KD Lang's Invincible Summer) For now, ripping the AC3 track, downmixing it to 2.0 and re-encoding it to MP3 is the only way.

Or maybe download the whole album off a file sharing network, if I bought the DVD-A, there's no guilt.