maxg
10-04-2004, 12:59 AM
This is long - sorry - and the most interesting stuff is at the end....
Where to start with this one? I suppose with my Portable PC...
My portable PC has a built in DVD burner (not a dual layer one - its not that new) which I have used to burn various home movies from my digital video camera and take a couple of backups of important data from the hard disk but not much else.
In the meantime I downloaded an MS upgrade to the media player - to version 10. Now I dont really know what version 9 was capable of - but I started to play with 10 and have been very impressed (not that I have much to compare it to).
Anyway I started to rip various of my CD's to my hard-disk to have some music to listen to in the office. With the on-line Cd DB this is a breeze and a typcial Cd rips in less than 5 minutes.
Problem is that once you get into doing this it is addictive and very quickly your hard disk starts to get rather full - so I thought I would start archiving the results off onto DVD's (with 4.7 Gb a disk that fits about 35-40 albums on a single disk when ripping at 256 Kb/s).
Now I have been told that although my DVD player plays MP3 files it probably wouldnt play back MP3 from a DVD disk - only from CD. I took this as gospel until very recently when I tried it - just for interest - and it worked perfectly!
and when I say perfectly....
I took a bunch of MP3 files and ripped them to DVD. I then took a small sample of the same files and ripped them to a CD (black as it happens - makes a difference?).
Now here is the thing. On the DVD it sounds MUCH MUCH nicer than on the CD. What? Bizzare huh.
So I am trying to find out why and I look into the setup menus on the DVD player. I should state at this point that this DVD player is one of those junky $70 units - labelled, in this case - COMET (actually apparently it should retail for a princely $130 but there was a cock up at the shop and they sold a bunch at the wrong price - my win!!)
Anyway - the audio setup menu.
LPCM options: Ouput 48 KHz - 16 bit or, 96 KHz 24 bit or,......192 KHz 24 bit.
Huh? Isnt that DVDa? Apparently not in this case (I tried a DVDa sampler that came with the sound blaster audigy card that does not have a normal DVD layer and it did not work).
So what is happening? What are these options? Is this unit upsampling the sound? If so - does LPCM imply it is only doing it for DVD sourced audio and not for PCM on a CD? Really confused.
And it gets more bizzare....
I brought the wife into this and asked her which she prefers - first between MP3 on the DVD and MP3 on the CD and then between MP3 on the DVD and the ORIGINAL CD.
Guess what - she chose the DVD each time.
Anyway I cant really explain any of this is my upsampling theory is wrong. Suffice to say - it is rather nice to have 35 to 40 albums on a single disk and be able to hop about from one to another without getting out of my chair - and without having bought a disk changer!!
That the quality seems to have improved is mystifying.
Anyone?
Where to start with this one? I suppose with my Portable PC...
My portable PC has a built in DVD burner (not a dual layer one - its not that new) which I have used to burn various home movies from my digital video camera and take a couple of backups of important data from the hard disk but not much else.
In the meantime I downloaded an MS upgrade to the media player - to version 10. Now I dont really know what version 9 was capable of - but I started to play with 10 and have been very impressed (not that I have much to compare it to).
Anyway I started to rip various of my CD's to my hard-disk to have some music to listen to in the office. With the on-line Cd DB this is a breeze and a typcial Cd rips in less than 5 minutes.
Problem is that once you get into doing this it is addictive and very quickly your hard disk starts to get rather full - so I thought I would start archiving the results off onto DVD's (with 4.7 Gb a disk that fits about 35-40 albums on a single disk when ripping at 256 Kb/s).
Now I have been told that although my DVD player plays MP3 files it probably wouldnt play back MP3 from a DVD disk - only from CD. I took this as gospel until very recently when I tried it - just for interest - and it worked perfectly!
and when I say perfectly....
I took a bunch of MP3 files and ripped them to DVD. I then took a small sample of the same files and ripped them to a CD (black as it happens - makes a difference?).
Now here is the thing. On the DVD it sounds MUCH MUCH nicer than on the CD. What? Bizzare huh.
So I am trying to find out why and I look into the setup menus on the DVD player. I should state at this point that this DVD player is one of those junky $70 units - labelled, in this case - COMET (actually apparently it should retail for a princely $130 but there was a cock up at the shop and they sold a bunch at the wrong price - my win!!)
Anyway - the audio setup menu.
LPCM options: Ouput 48 KHz - 16 bit or, 96 KHz 24 bit or,......192 KHz 24 bit.
Huh? Isnt that DVDa? Apparently not in this case (I tried a DVDa sampler that came with the sound blaster audigy card that does not have a normal DVD layer and it did not work).
So what is happening? What are these options? Is this unit upsampling the sound? If so - does LPCM imply it is only doing it for DVD sourced audio and not for PCM on a CD? Really confused.
And it gets more bizzare....
I brought the wife into this and asked her which she prefers - first between MP3 on the DVD and MP3 on the CD and then between MP3 on the DVD and the ORIGINAL CD.
Guess what - she chose the DVD each time.
Anyway I cant really explain any of this is my upsampling theory is wrong. Suffice to say - it is rather nice to have 35 to 40 albums on a single disk and be able to hop about from one to another without getting out of my chair - and without having bought a disk changer!!
That the quality seems to have improved is mystifying.
Anyone?