Creating your own dvd-audio cd?

My understanding is that the software to encode/decode Meridian Lossless Packing (MLP)--how high-quality audio is compressed without degradation onto DVDs--is licensed out by Dolby to software and hardware OEMs, who must then pass the cost along to licensees (customers).

What I don't know is if MLP is an open standard but currently only has one proprietary source, or if it is a proprietary standard that requires licensing of both the encoder to audio engineers and the decoder to DVD makers. Creative bundles a DVD-Audio player with some of their hardware, which means there must be a decoder in there somewhere (maybe in their sound cards)?

In any case, if there is no freeware MLP codec or encoder out there, there ought to be. Does anyone know where/if there is a detailed specification document for MLP that can be freely accessed?

Other options for lossless compression of high-resolution digital audio are FLAC and WavePacker, but neither can be played on the players out there now, since they are not part of any DVD Forum standard.

BY THE WAY: If you are thinking of purchasing Nero 7 Ultra because its web site advertises "DVD-Audio support" -- STOP. It is false advertising. It has been almost a month since I purchased Nero 7 Ultra based on this false advertising, and they won't even respond to my customer support inquiries.

 

MLP Lossless was developed by a UK company called Meridian Audio, and there is not one single good reason for them to give it away as open source.
They spent years developing this, and as a small company it is quite ridiculous to claim that it should be free. This is the real world here, not some idealized utopia where "everything is free, man".
These people spent a heck of a lot of money developing this. And programmers have families to feed too - SafeWay & Sainsburys do not give food away for free, and the power companies don't give it away either.
There are no detailed documents either - unless you want to go look it up in the patents office, where you will find it is patented for the next 25 years at least.
The encoder is the part with all the complexity, and every DVD-A player is required to be capable of decoding - so where is your problem? Every DVD-A player will decode the stream, so my guess is that you feel you should be able to encode into this format for free, right? WHY? What gives you the right to tell Meridian they have to throw away all their development money because you don't want to pay for the software?

All these are giveaways, unsupported and clearly stated as "USE AT YOUR OWN RISK" software.
Naturally it is not DVD-A legal. The requirements for DVD-A are a lot more stringent than that.

All these "everything should be free" posts are bollocks, they really are.
Look what happened with soft players - it simply lets the thieves in, which is exactly why Sony will not license drives or soft SACD players

 

Man, you are one angry bloke! I made my career inventing and selling software, so I don't really need a lecture about protecting intellectual property for the benefit of its creators.

As a consumer, I am not fond of having the intellectual property I license controlled by one licensing entity, both in its production and when it's played. This is a reasonable grumble I and many people have, no matter how much you choose to stomp your feet about it.

If it has come to pass that the MLP codec is totally proprietary to one licensing entity, then that's how it is. I still benefit from the resulting work product. I hope the creators make money off it, as opposed to cretinous executives or other business types who exist only to syphon off whatever they can from the inventors.

As for this forum site, I'm not coming back, because it has nasty impolite gremlins like you, waiting in the wings, lashing out at people like me who are just asking questions. I don't need a dose of your psychosis today, or any other day. Maybe see a shrink or up the anti-depressants?

In the meantime, b'bye.

 

The only thing that makes me angry are the non stop posts about how everything should be available for free.

WHY should this be free? Dolby did the decent thing and licensed a version of the decoder in software for WinDVD 6 and Creative Labs, and it was promptly hacked and used to steal content. That's what they got for their attempts, and who can blame the licensees for tightening up.

How did you deal with it then - did you give away free versions of everything you wrote? Or did you license it?

 

This is probably a little off topic but as most of you are interested in the future of high resolution music...

If you are considering buying a SACD/DVD-A player but want a test drive of 24Bit quality first you will be happy to hear about QUEEN's 30th Anniversary edition of A Night At The Opera.

It comes with a bonus DVD that works in any DVD player and contains the album in uncompressed 24Bit audio. The DVD also contains an interesting 5.1 channel mix in DTS (if your player/receiver can decode DTS). This is the first time I have heard of an album being available in 24Bit on a regular DVD. I imagine after Brian May released the DVD-A it was the next logical thing to do.

 

I ordered the Queen DVD-A from Amazon, but after reading a negative review of it, I removed it from the order. I imprecisely recall that the reviewer said that the remix really didn't take advantage of all the channels, and came off as much less than it could have. Maybe the reviewer just had unreasonably high expectations, I don't know.

I instead ordered the DVD-A remix of "Fragile" by Yes. If you like this record, I can attest that the 5.1 version in clean 24-bit, 96KHz audio is beyond amazing. Really, I was blown away. I heard details I have never heard before. Even the DTS version on the disc is very, very impressive.

And DVD-A content *is* compressed, in the digital sense, using the MLP software. The difference is that no quality is lost with MLP, similar in concept to .ZIP files, but MLP has features and requirements that are specific to digital audio. So when you play DVD-Audio tracks, it is bit-for-bit identical to the master 24bit mix on all channels -- a first for consumer-grade decks. The same is NOT true of SACD.

Other kinds of compression on DVDs result in loss of quality from the original masters, and not all of the loss can be controlled by the engineer.

In short, if you want mass-consumer-level access to a perfect reproduction of the master recordings, DVD-Audio is the only way to get it.

 

Here is a link for an interesting review of the DVD-A (both the Stereo and 5.1 mixes) that counterbalances the amazon review. The review gives some interesting technical history as well. Check it out at :

http://www.avrev.com/music/revs/queendvda.shtml

2005 saw the release of a new remastered cd that includes a bonus DVD . I was talking about the 24Bit stereo mix that is on this bonus DVD. This is a regular DVD disc and the stereo mix is non-lossy. The surround mix on the DVD is in DTS which is of course lossy but with this they have chosen the best quality setting within DTS and it sounds fantastic.

I can't comment on Fragile as I havent heard the DVD-A but as far as lossy compression goes:

As you know regular DVD players can't offer 5.1 channels of 24Bit/96KHz without using lossy compression due to the data transfer rate limitation inherent in DVD. Faced with this problem, Meridian Audio came up with MLP, a non lossy compression format that has data small enough to meet the data rate transfer specs of DVD. Thus was born the DVD-Audio player.

You of course know this as you write "So when you play DVD-Audio tracks, it is bit-for-bit identical to the master 24bit mix on all channels".

I wanted to clarify your post for the other readers as you also say that "MLP has features and requirements that are specific to digital audio." From my understanding the only other feature of MLP is that it includes a different form of copy protection. This of course was a requirement from the record companies. The companies considered 24Bit as practically "transparent to source" and were not prepared to have their master recordings copied.

Now with the release of the cd/dvd of "A Night At The Opera" Brian May is telling his record company that he wants his stereo mix available in 24Bit (without loss of quality) on a regular DVD. So at least as far as this album is concerned, you no longer need to shell out for a DVD-A player to hear "...a perfect reproduction of the master recording..." Let's hope its the start of a trend.

Of course if you to hear the 5.1 mix in non-lossy then you'll have to buy a DVD-A player BUT if you want to hear ye olde stereo mixes of your favourite albums on regular DVD's you just might find these will start to appear, thanks to Mr May.

As far as SACD goes that's a different animal altogether. I'll leave comment on SACD for another post.

 

Thanks for the detailed reply. I got cold feet on the Queen DVD-A, based on the review, even though I brought the LP to my 7th grade music class I was so impressed (and still am).

I think I read that DVD-A can contain stereo as well as or instead of 5.1 surround. For two channels, it can even have 192KHz sampling @ 24bits lossless. MLP itself is capable of any number of tracks, but is practically limited to DVD data throughput.

And you are correct, most DVD players out there don't support DVD-Audio. If I had to guess which would be more common in a few years, it would be SACD over DVD-Audio. But I don't think they are really at odds, like Betamax/VHS were back in the day. For example, you can buy a player today for $159 that plays virtually every disc format, including DVD-Audio and SACD.

 

Yes, for example the Pet Sounds DVD-A contains mono, stereo and 5.1 channel mixes, all in 24Bit/96KHz.

Yes, DVD-A supports sampling rates up to 192KHz.

Yes, the universal player is the answer as far as the consumer goes.

As far as which format will survive, I'll put my 2 cents on a hybrid dvd disc that has a cd layer on top and a DVD-A layer underneath. What tips me towards DVD-A as far as the market is concerned is that no studio boss is going to convert his studio to DSD unless Sony pays for it.

 

Fascinating subject, and there's so much to know about Disc Wars. Thanks for enlightening me! Now I'm off the crank up the Yes DVD-A!