Hi Def Stereo II

Posted by: Mr Underhill on 19 June 2008

I would have added this to the original thread, but it is closed:

http://forums.naim-audio.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/7801938...672907117#4672907117

Over the last couple of weeks I have been buying HiDef files online and downloading them.

As I then burn them to disc I think this is a more suitable place to note a couple of issues than the Distributed Audio forum.

I am going to start a thread on the DA forum noting where I have bought/obtained files - and their quality.

Just a quick re-cap:

DVD can carry PCM files up to 9624.

These can be burned using Lplex.

There has been an update that allows the source files to be wav OR flac.

If you place the files to be burned in a sub-directory and drop this on the Lplex exe it does the rest; observations:

1. It needs a reasonable amount of HDD space - work on 3x the size of the wav files; it warns you if this will be an issue.
2. Lplex creates an ini file when it is first runs, which can be manually edited. DO NOT try and use the work area as the TEMP space, it will produce some intermediate files, then delete them, THEN warn you it cannot handle encrypted files - because there is nothing there for it to process.
3. It will burn the DVD using a jpg which will be displayed when the disk is playing. The JPEG has to be a specific size - in the README file.

The processing can take a loooooong time. I now kick it off when I go to bed.


As a part of some experiments I download a LINN SuperMaster set of flac files.

These files were produced at 88.2KHz 24bit. This is NOT compatible with the DVD standard - why choose this as the output rate?

Anyway, I decided I would upsample the files to 9624, for which I used Voxengor8brain_19_WinGUI_setup.exe:

http://www.hitsquad.com/smm/programs/r8brain/

Not convinced of the quality - as the DVD sounds OK but not great, but that could be a recording issue. Just bought the SACD to do a comparison.

Hope this helps anyone experimenting in this area.

M