INTERACT FORUM

Just wondering how to take advantage of DVD-R storage space.  I'd like to quit making CD-R's and make DVD-R's of my music instead.  I have absolutely ZERO interest in lossy compression (MP3, etc..)

I see absolutely no reason whatsoever that I could not burn a wav file to a DVD-R blank and simply play it from my home or car DVD player...  So can someone tell me how to do this?

Health Nut,

Apologies in advance if you already know any of what I am about to say.

There are a few things you should take into account: (1) when you rip "cda" files from a music CD to your HDD, the files ripped to your HDD are called "wav" files. According to your post, you have converted all of your "wav" files to "Ape" lossless. When you want to burn a blank CD-R, Media Center converts the APE file to WAV and then burns the WAV to the CD-R as a "CDA" music file. WAV and CDA are identical except for the filename extensions.

This is why the music CD you bought in the store and the CD-R mixes you create on a blank CD-R both wind up with the identical ".cda" format files. That's why DVD/CD players can play music CD-R's as if they were the original CD.

HOWEVER, (there's always a "however")

since you want to burn your music to DVD-R and play it as such, there is a problem. To my knowledge, DVD's don't use or understand the CD music format (CDA) to store music files. As far as I know, MC isn't designed to burn music to DVD-R in the correct DVD-R music format.

When you insert a burned DVD-R disc in you dvd player (home or car) it expects to read music or video data as either "DVD Video" (VOB files) or "DVD Audio" (AOB files = MPEG-2, LPCM, AC3, DTS, DVD-A {(24/96 hi-rez audio}). These dvd formats are not compatible with CD audio. While your home/car dvd player, will no doubt, play CD-R's with music, I don't think it can play DVD-R's with "cda" type files.

This in no way prevents you from burning your WAV/APE files to DVD-R for safekeeping using Nero 5.5 or 6 and burning the DVD-R as a data disc.

I'm sure, that if I am wrong about this, now that I have posted it, someone with more knowledge will correct me.

so it is just a matter of getting the DVD player to simply be able to see the wav header and play it accordingly... it seems so obvious... and if this is a problem, I cannot imagine this staying a problem for very long... it is too much desired

That's the hitch.

It'd be great if DVD audio was just uncompressed WAV's or else a very simple, free source, patent free lossless compression scheme.

The technology would be simple enough, but I don't think the industry will embrace anything without DRM and encryption.

We already know that DVD players can play both CD Audio and DVD formats... so it is just a matter of getting the DVD player to simply be able to see the wav header and play it accordingly... it seems so obvious...

Again, I am no authority on the subject, but what you believe to be a simple problem to solve runs up against the DVD Forums' established standards concerning how a dvd can be authored. What you want is non-standard for dvd. The firmware/hardware in the dvd player is simply not designed to read and playback, as music, straight WAV files burned to dvd-r discs. J River would have to modify MC to convert the WAV files into AOB or VOB container files, which as a mentioned before, can hold several different types of audio like LCPM (normally 2 channel stereo), AC3, DTS, mpeg-2 or dvd-a.

It can be done, but I don't think the J River crew has this high on their list of feature additions for MC10; though it sure would be nice to have.


 

Something doesn't sound right because this should be a non-issue and there are most definitely people out there ripping their CD collection to DVD-R

I don't personally know of anyone ripping cd wave files to dvd-r and being able to play the wave's on dvd-r. I do know that you can put mp3's on dvd-r and most newer dvd players will see and play back the mp3 files because they have firmware that recognizes mp3 audio on dvd-r discs. I think this is what you may be referring to.

I see that Matt has already told you, more or less, that J River won't be doing anything along these lines anytime soon.

I have been looking for something to do what you want, but I haven't found it yet either as freeware or shareware.  You might want to try looking up www.dvdrhelp.com or www.doom9.org for more info.

Good luck.

As far as I know, the problem is with the DVD spec - the standard for what is "legal" to put on a DVD disk.  The DVD spec does support PCM, but only as part of a mpeg video stream.  The NTSC DVD spec states that an PCM or AC3 audio stream must be present.  However, most NTSC DVD players sold these days can also decode mp3 audio - again if it's part of the video stream.  Note that audio DVD is yet a different spec, that's why ordinary DVD players won't play back DVD Audio disks.

There probably is a way that you could do what you want, and that is to treat your audio files as a soundtrack to a (blank) video file that's encoded at a very low bitrate in order not to take up a lot of space on the DVD.  You could even set up a menu system to point to the different albums.

Since you can create a legal mpeg video stream that can be authored to a DVD by encoding video with an with an empty audio stream, it might even be able to author mpeg video by multiplexing the audio stream with a blank video stream.  I don't know the answer to that.

In any event, there's much more to it than burning files on a DVD as with data, you must use a DVD authoring program to create a file structure the player can read - just as what happens when you burn an audio CD, although the audio burning progams make the process transparent, so it just looks like you're dragging and dropping files - but of course there is much more going on.

If you really want to explore doing this, I suggest you post your question on one of the forums at dvdhelp.com.  The people there are very knowledgable and helpful, they can give you answers if anyone can.

Awesome... thanks!!!

Just read it and it makes sense... not sure if upsampling from 44.1 to 48 Khz is degratory in terms of CD audio quality?

Phat Phreddy in the house!

On another note, I passed this topic on to the surround sound list which contains all the prominent recording engineers, physics/acoustics experts, etc...

Handling music at 44.1 or 48 kHz is a delicate task. That's why there is so much difference between CD players (besides their analog output stages of course). Different players have different impulse responses for their anti-aliasing filters, and some impulse responses sound better than others. Similar impulse responses are involved in the 44.1 -> 48 kHz conversion. And just like you probably won't play back CDs on a $39 discman when you desire the highest quality, you should also be careful in choosing the software that does the resampling.

Playing 44.1 kHz by first converting to 48 kHz and then feeding it to a high-end DAC can have a quality very close to playing the 44.1 kHz directly, as long as you use a high-end sample rate conversion to go to 48 kHz.

If you would be able to upsample from 44.1 kHz to 96 kHz and store that on DVD, you would be in an even better situation. Then the software resampling is the only step that is really critical.