DVD-A hardware woes continued... 😕

[mandrix]

For final authority, I would believe what Neil says.
With discWelder, and cppm, here is what I always use for settings. No complaints yet.
Of course the settings can be changed, but everything I do has not been commercial.
Ignore the Max Quality setting.

As for paying for authoring BD's, I understand it can get pricey. No personal knowledge however.
Likewise for cost of authoring SACD's, an unknown to me. SACD is not that complicated, though I've not authored any in a few years, mostly CD-4 rips.

Mr. Erra uses one of the software suites that does not allow much lattitude but will turn out a basic functional DVDA disc. discWelder is not by any means best of best but still runs on Win 11. Sonic I understand per Neil basically takes an XP machine but is much more robust.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

True...but when you have a PC with a DVD drive, it does the job. Especially since DVD drives are so ubiquitous.

Hmmm... A PC is fine and all. But what do you use to play SACD's?

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

Hmmm... A PC is fine and all. But what do you use to play SACD's?

I have a Sony Blu-ray Player for SACDs, when I need to use the physical disc.

 

[DuncanS]

For final authority, I would believe what Neil says.
With discWelder, and cppm, here is what I always use for settings. No complaints yet.
Of course the settings can be changed, but everything I do has not been commercial.
Ignore the Max Quality setting.
View attachment 98130

As for paying for authoring BD's, I understand it can get pricey. No personal knowledge however.
Likewise for cost of authoring SACD's, an unknown to me. SACD is not that complicated, though I've not authored any in a few years, mostly CD-4 rips.

Mr. Erra uses one of the software suites that does not allow much lattitude but will turn out a basic functional DVDA disc. discWelder is not by any means best of best but still runs on Win 11. Sonic I understand per Neil basically takes an XP machine but is much more robust.

BTW Giancarlo only has an Apple so not able to use any Windows software

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

The issue is cost. SACDs are far cheaper....

With regard to hybrid SACD discs this is amazing given their dual layer complexity...

 

[marcb]

Agreed...

And as I've mentioned in previous topics/threads, the 'future' of disc based media for multi-channel lossless (with or without lossy) music is Blu-ray discs.

The blu-ray disc specification supports way more audio formats including lossless 8-channel LPCM up to 192kHz at 24-bits, the disc authoring tools are widely available. And 25GB BD-R blank media is relatively cheap

Future of disc-based media...

 

[jimfisheye]

It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD from a DVD or bluray drive? Is that right? This is still under license and not licensed to drive firmware or media player/ripper software? And no one has hacked it? Is that all still the case? Seems weird this late in the game if true.

DVDA has been "liberated" as it were. That Diskwelder Chrome demo has been abandonware for a long time now. I still have a Snow Leopard partition on my laptop and that's where it still lives.

Blueray drives are cheap and plentiful now anyway.
I still have a PIONEER BDR-206D from around 2011in the Mac Pro. Probably can grab a desktop style drive for $70 now or a slot loader for the laptop for maybe $150. I have a 2nd hard drive in my laptop in the optical drive slot so I never did that.

 

[mandrix]

BTW Giancarlo only has an Apple so not able to use any Windows software

Yes he told me what DAW he uses once but I forget which. He told me with the DAW he can make a DVDA but a pretty limited one. But for pure music playback and no fancy menus it fits the purpose. No complaints here.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD from a DVD or bluray drive? Is that right? This is still under license and not licensed to drive firmware or media player/ripper software? And no one has hacked it? Is that all still the case? Seems weird this late in the game if true.

Yep... It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD using a computers DVD or bluray drive.

 

[mandrix]

It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD from a DVD or bluray drive? Is that right? This is still under license and not licensed to drive firmware or media player/ripper software? And no one has hacked it? Is that all still the case? Seems weird this late in the game if true.

DVDA has been "liberated" as it were. That Diskwelder Chrome demo has been abandonware for a long time now. I still have a Snow Leopard partition on my laptop and that's where it still lives.

Blueray drives are cheap and plentiful now anyway.
I still have a PIONEER BDR-206D from around 2011in the Mac Pro. Probably can grab a desktop style drive for $70 now or a slot loader for the laptop for maybe $150. I have a 2nd hard drive in my laptop in the optical drive slot so I never did that.

DiscWelder Chrome "demo"? Please enlighten me. I use one or both of the last two versions; one because it is more supportive of dual layer discs and the other "just because".

 

[mandrix]

...but yes, in popular terminology, discWelder is abandonware, unsupported, not sold, goodbye so long. But it still works on Win11.

 

[Owen Smith]

It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD from a DVD or bluray drive? Is that right? This is still under license and not licensed to drive firmware or media player/ripper software? And no one has hacked it? Is that all still the case? Seems weird this late in the game if true.

You need extra hardware in the drive to read the decryption key for SACDs. It is called Pit Signal Processing and is encoded in the width of some of the pits, which is meaningless on CD, DVD and Blu Ray. Unless the drive has the hardware to read that data encoded in the width it is impossible for it to read it. Only the drives in early PS/3 models and audio SACD capable players have the hardware, the industry bodies that control licencing won't allow the hardware to be in normal DVD or Blu Ray drives for PCs. This does mean that home produced SACDs usually on SACD-R are perfectly readable on standard DVD PC drives, but then a lot of audio gear won't play SACD-R because those same industry bodies forbade it since it must mean piracy (yeah right, like you can't record your own music). Oppo were forced to remove SACD-R playback for example.

 

[Owen Smith]

Yep... It's still not possible to play/rip an SACD using a computers DVD or bluray drive.

It's a hardware problem not a software problem, so unlikely to ever be possible. Unless someone works out how to interface some model of SACD audio player drive to a PC.

 

[mandrix]

lol. Looking back many years ago, I had 2 Audigy 2 ZS sound cards. The included software had a DVDA player, which at the time I thought cool as all heck.
Still got those cards boxed up, I guess for sentimental reasons.
For a brief time, PowerDVD, I think maybe versions 9 & 10, had DVDA playback capability. Long gone now, of course.

After manislutken produced his SACD & DVDA add on components for Foobar at least we have SACD & DVDA .iso playback via Foo.

EDIT: still have to rip with proper hardware though.

 

[JoshBasswood]

So...I ended up buying a Panasonic DV-575A (recommended by the guys at quadro-surround.de for playback of their discs) only to find that my receiver doesn't have inputs for separate 5.1 RCA plugs (I hadn't looked that closely at the sockets on the rear; I just knew it had a ton of them and assumed I'd be okay.)

Advice from quadro-surround.de is to play them via a hookup composed of discrete 5.1 RCA connections, which my receiver just isn't equipped for.

I'd still like to listen to my quadro-surround.de quad-channel Ogre DVD-A's, but I can't play the discs on my UBP-X800, and all I can get from the digital connection with the Panasonic DV-575A is virtual surround.

I'm basically about to throw my hands in the air and just walk away from independently authored DVD-A and am wondering what advice people might have?

Is there a cheap legacy receiver I might be able to pick up on eBay that has sockets for discrete 5.1 RCA plugs...?...or maybe a slightly older player that might do the trick (and which doesn't cost the earth)...or, is it time to just let go and find some kind of other option?

Maybe this thread might be of help. See e.g. my post in it. These Denon receivers can no doubt be found for reasonable prices 2nd hand.
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/fo...ad-receiver-denon-avr-3802.35102/#post-737929

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

So...I ended up buying a Panasonic DV-575A (recommended by the guys at quadro-surround.de for playback of their discs)......

I think you mean a Pioneer DV-575A

 

[hdlistener]

Why can't you just convert the DVD-As to 5.1 flac files and play those? DVD-A is a truly dead format.

If you have the right hardware to play back DVD-A it's not a dead format, especially when you can author hi res flac files onto a DVD-A disc yourself and have a physical disc of the album you want to enjoy.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

If you have the right hardware to play back DVD-A it's not a dead format, especially when you can author hi res flac files onto a DVD-A disc yourself and have a physical disc of the album you want to enjoy.

Out of interest.... What software are you using?

 

[mandrix]

I think about all the dedicated DVDA authoring software is "abandonware" though there are some DAW's that will make a basic DVDA.

 

[mandrix]

Well there is a crude free app. Never really got far into it.