Monday, October 22, 2007
96 kHz / 24 bit media

Constantin describes in this article how to create an DVD-Audio disc on Linux/Solaris (and also emphasizes the difference between DVD-Audio and DVD-Video).

I assume that most people who are interested in DVD-Audio know that there are also commercial DVD-A solutions out there, like DiscWelder.

However, for the task at hand Constantin would not have needed to create a DVD-Audio disc, but instead could have simply used his favorite DVD-Video authoring tool and create a stereo 96kHz/24bit LPCM track on a DVD-Video. All fully compatible DVD-V players must support this format, thus you do not have to resort to DVD-Audio.

This is obviously different for multi-channel formats where the DVD-Audio format is the only viable alternative. For high-resolution, multi-channel tracks, you will also need an MLP encoder ... and here we are talking about some serious licensing fees.

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PS: Here is an overview on the DVD-Video audio capabilities.

Monday, October 22, 2007 1:17:55 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #    Comments [2]  | 
Tuesday, October 23, 2007 12:13:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
Hi Gerald,

yes, I found about DVD-Video supporting 24/96 out too, while including a link to the Wikipedia DVD-Video page into my blog entry :). OTOH, it is not known how typical DVD-Players would react to that format, given that it is used not very commonly. It might be that the DVD-Video routing will just down-convert to 16/48 for the sake of feeding the S/PDIF output which does not support a higher resolution than that.

Cheers,
Constantin
Constantin Gonzalez
Wednesday, October 24, 2007 8:20:35 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)
Actually, S/PDIF (and also AES/EBU) do support higher bitrates - for stereo streams actually up to 192 kHz @ 24bit. A DVD player that is built to spec, should pass the bitstream unmodified up to the external DAC (either stand-alone or in the receiver/pre-amp).
As an example: I have a few DVD-Video discs with LPCM 96/24 tracks (e.g. Elliot Carter). When passing them through the digital interface the receiver recognizes this and decodes the bitstream accordingly. Most DVD-Video players will allow you to downsample at the source, though.

Best,

Gerry
Gerald Beuchelt
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