Burning a 24 bit stereo audio CD-R for my DVD player.

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Nowadays, every man and his dog sells dvd players that will both read cd-r's and have 24 bit d/a's. It is a relatively straightforward thing to burn a normal *16 bit* 2 channel audio cd so it will play in your dvd player. What I want to know is - what is the file format details so I can burn a *24 bit*, 48 or 96kHz 2 channel cd that will take advantage of that nice 24 bit d/a?

I only(!) want an improved version of the standard 2 channel cd, nothing outrageous. Maybe someone out there has some software that can do it already. Seems to me it is a project just begging to be done. We already have the hardware, just a matter of telling it what to do!
 
Circlotron said:
Nowadays, every man and his dog sells dvd players that will both read cd-r's and have 24 bit d/a's. It is a relatively straightforward thing to burn a normal *16 bit* 2 channel audio cd so it will play in your dvd player. What I want to know is - what is the file format details so I can burn a *24 bit*, 48 or 96kHz 2 channel cd that will take advantage of that nice 24 bit d/a?

What I'm not sure about is how you master LPCM/MLP onto CD media. I mean, sure you *can* get the data on there, but I don't know what the specifcation (eg think Red Book for CDs) is like. One of the software packages that I read about for DVD-A mastering, discWelder, isn't cheap at $3495.

See http://www.discwelder.com/ for more info.
 
Circlotron,

maybe you should tell whether you are asking about the data
format on the DVD or the file format for the source file for the
DVD burning software.

For instance, under Windows I would guess that a DVD burning
software would accept a wave file (.wav) and these have a
very straightforward data format which is flexible in the sense
that the header specifies the number of channels and bits and
the sampling frequency. Wave files could thus be used to store
24-bit data with 48/96kbit sampling frequency.
 
My biggest problem is the unknown e.g. how does exactly does the dvd player recognise whether it has 16 or 24 bit source material? Is it in the header file too? I only want to burn to a standard CD, not to a DVD because I don't have a suitable burner. I wonder what would happen if I simply made a 24 bit 48 kHz wav file and just tried to burn it as a cda file?

The reason I was wanting to know the file format is then I could presumably generate the file on hard disk and then simply copy it in it's unaltered state to the CD-R. Of course I don't actually know whether their *is* a standard for plain 24 bit 2 channel CD disc (not DVD disc). If there is not, then it remains to be seen whether what I want to do can in fact be done. I hope so... :(
 
Circlotron said:

1)
My biggest problem is the unknown e.g. how does exactly does the dvd player recognise whether it has 16 or 24 bit source material? Is it in the header file too? I only want to burn to a standard CD, not to a DVD because I don't have a suitable burner. I wonder what would happen if I simply made a 24 bit 48 kHz wav file and just tried to burn it as a cda file?

2)
The reason I was wanting to know the file format is then I could presumably generate the file on hard disk and then simply copy it in it's unaltered state to the CD-R. Of course I don't actually know whether their *is* a standard for plain 24 bit 2 channel CD disc (not DVD disc). If there is not, then it remains to be seen whether what I want to do can in fact be done. I hope so... :(

1) Wont work, if the software even allows you to go ahead, it will down sample everything back to 16bit/44kHz

2) To my knowledge, there is no such standard. Basicly I dont think you'll get a DVD player to read 24bit audio off a CD. However, it may be worth having a look at the HDCD standard as this allows 20bit audio from a CD
 
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SACD is 24-bit (?). HDCD is 20-bit. Redbook is 16-bit. Not sure if *any* burning software is capable of burning SACD yet, or even if regular CDR/W drives recognise this standard.

The DVD-A standard is multichannel 24-bit. Again, mastering software is expensive/does not come bundled with drive.

You can try burning a 24-bit wave file onto a CD-R and trying to play it (data CD, not audio - audio will resample it down to 16-bit). May work, may not work, but for a few cents what does it matter? I have seen CD-players that can read wave files off a CD-R so long as there were only wave files on the disc (not a single other piece of data) - some portables and minicompos can do this.

You may get lucky. Keep us posted anyway...
 
There is no standard AFAIK for MLP material on CD. MLP and 24-bit audio are only defined as standards in the DVD specs. The basic reason is bandwidth limitation. Full-blown 24-bit PCM or even MLP is high bitrate stuff, which well exceeds the specified max bit rate for CD media. It's doubtful that the player can read back data beyond about 2X speed. Beyond that, all consumer DVD loaders first check the physical medium, to see if it's CD or DVD. If it's CD, they switch on the CD laser and change into a CD read mode. The decoder also usually knows that it's looking at a CD, so only standard CDDA and CD-ROM formats are typically supported.

SACD is indeed based upon the DVD physical standard, which is why most DVD loaders are actually capable of reading the SACD physical layer, although they may not be able to play them back. For some discs, the SACD layer goes right on over a standard CD layer, which can be played by non-SACD players. Interestingly, SACD extends the DVD specification to include an additional signal modulation not present on normal DVD material. What they do is modulate the <i>width</i> of the pits so that the raw RF/EFM+ signal coming out of the analogue read-channel processor contains some information which must be specially decoded by some proprietary SACD hardware. This extra data rides on top of the DVD-like data, and is used to decrypt it and eventually spit out the 1-bit audio data for playback. The process of recording an SACD is therefore somewhat more involved than plain old DVD recording. More to the point, it is proprietary, so I rather doubt you'll see any SACD burners appear on the market. There is a lot about the SACD spec which isn't public, and I'm sure Sony will do their best to keep it that way!
 
Oh yeah, I just remembered... I think it is possible to put 24/96 or 24/48 material which has been DTS encoded (compressed) onto a CD and play that back on a standalone DVD player equipped with DTS capability. This is what you get when you buy a DTS-Audio disc in the store. They come in DVD-Audio style jewel cases, and generally only play in DVD players, so there's some subtle trickery going on there, trying to mimic the real high-resolution DVD-Audio formats. Anyway, I believe the data is actually contained in a CD format, and so is probably 'burnable'. Of course, it's no substitute for real MLP...
 
sangram said:
You can try burning a 24-bit wave file onto a CD-R and trying to play it (data CD, not audio - audio will resample it down to 16-bit). I have seen CD-players that can read wave files off a CD-R..
You may get lucky. Keep us posted anyway...
Yeah, I'll give that a try. Ordinary cd audio files are interleaved for the sake of error correction, so whether a wave file as a data file would be interleaved as well, or whether a single scratch would make a click noise...? I just wanna make my 24 bit D/A work. :bawling:

I was thinking too, what might be interesting is to get a 16 bit audio track and use some software to realign the data points using a line of best fit for the last X data points, sort of like what a graphing program does, and then writing these points to 24 bit resolution rather than the previous 16 bit pigeon-holing. Might make it sound better.
 
Circlotron said:
My biggest problem is the unknown
-------------------------------------------

This is indeed the problem with spending money on computer audio. You can burn wave files but you can't play back on home equipment. Player software and hardware developers are plain irresponsible by making claims that are just not true.

I have been trying to get 24/96 out of Power DVD 4 which claims to support 24/96 LCPM (Chesky and Claasics DADs). The latest patch (23/1) clearly states this and yet downsamples to X(?)/48. In response to my request for support, they state that Power DVD does not support DVDA; yet it happily plays my DVDA discs. I can'y play CD on my DVD software which speeds up the play back speed; yet the Cyberlink guys claims he didn't understand my question. No wonder perople distrust Corporations and Global Trading without responsibility.
 
hifiZen said:
Oh yeah, I just remembered... I think it is possible to put 24/96 or 24/48 material which has been DTS encoded (compressed) onto a CD and play that back on a standalone DVD player equipped with DTS capability.

This works; I've done it. I'm not sure about 24/96, though... I'm sure it's possible, but it would be pointless anyway, once it goes through DTS compression. The trick is that the DTS track is embedded in a padded WAV file. This allows for a standard red book CD, played on a standard cdp, providing a standard 16-bit PCM stream. Just don't send this stream to a non-DTS DAC! :bigeyes:

One interesting thing about this is that, because the PCM stream is padded, you can still only fit 74 minutes of DTS audio on a CD.
 
SACD Authoring

There is no standard AFAIK for MLP material on CD. MLP and 24-bit audio are only defined as standards in the DVD specs. The basic reason is bandwidth limitation. Full-blown 24-bit PCM or even MLP is high bitrate stuff, which well exceeds the specified max bit rate for CD media. It's doubtful that the player can read back data beyond about 2X speed. Beyond that, all consumer DVD loaders first check the physical medium, to see if it's CD or DVD. If it's CD, they switch on the CD laser and change into a CD read mode. The decoder also usually knows that it's looking at a CD, so only standard CDDA and CD-ROM formats are typically supported.

SACD is indeed based upon the DVD physical standard, which is why most DVD loaders are actually capable of reading the SACD physical layer, although they may not be able to play them back. For some discs, the SACD layer goes right on over a standard CD layer, which can be played by non-SACD players. Interestingly, SACD extends the DVD specification to include an additional signal modulation not present on normal DVD material. What they do is modulate the <i>width</i> of the pits so that the raw RF/EFM+ signal coming out of the analogue read-channel processor contains some information which must be specially decoded by some proprietary SACD hardware. This extra data rides on top of the DVD-like data, and is used to decrypt it and eventually spit out the 1-bit audio data for playback. The process of recording an SACD is therefore somewhat more involved than plain old DVD recording. More to the point, it is proprietary, so I rather doubt you'll see any SACD burners appear on the market. There is a lot about the SACD spec which isn't public, and I'm sure Sony will do their best to keep it that way!

Hello,

I have been asked to remaster a bunch of original recordings into DSD format and publish them on SACDs. For this project, we have the following equipment available:

Sonoma 8 Channel Editing System with 16 channels of EMM-Labs ADC8 and DAC8. (2 each)

Pyramix v. 4 DAW that hooks to the second pair of EMM-Labs converters.

Philips Super Author for authoring SACDs to AIT Tape.

Philips Format Conversion Software

Philips SACD Metering Application

My question is if anyone knows how we could create a playable SACD reference disc from the AIT tape made from the Super Author System? Our budget for creating glass-masters for learning how to publish SACDs without error and with good surround mixes is limited. I want to audition the output of our Super Audio Listening Discs on various consumer-grade SACD players to get an idea of how they are similar/different; then to get a good composite decision on the mastering phase.

Also, another concern I have is that there is no way for me to know if the CD-TEXT part is working properly before committing to the glass mastering phase and also to prevent the possibility of investing in a bad replication run consisting of a 1000 or more useless frisbees, IYKWIM.

I look forward to a useful reply and hope a solution is possible.
 
Oh yeah, I just remembered... I think it is possible to put 24/96 or 24/48 material which has been DTS encoded (compressed) onto a CD
No, the DTS standard is 44.1kHz/16 bit when it is written on CD. It does compress the number of channels (5.1 on a 2.0 bandwidth).

The only wat that you can write 24bit/48kHz is on a DVD-Video as LPCM - any DVD player can play that.
And you don't need superexpensive software, it is not DVD-Audio.
 
This thread is 7 years old. I did a few 24/96 rips of LPs a few years ago on my iMac. I transferred them to DVD using the iLife software but used Audacity to actually do the recording. The biggest problem is splitting and titling the tracks. The audio portion was easy. They sound great too but you can hear the turntable rumble, the pops and clicks, etc...

I also down-rez'ed them to 16/44.1 and you really can hear a difference. I wouldn't necessarily blame the lower resolution though because there was no attempt to optimize the process.
 
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