Converting 24/96 *.wav files to a DVD or CD medium that will play on a Pioneer DV-09 DVD player.

I have been digitizing R to r tapes at 24/96. I want to create DVD's so that I can preserve the 24/96 resolution. The files must play on my DVD player which I know plays 16/48 LPCM, Dolby Digital 5.1 et al, CD's and is supposed to play his resolution CD's. I have not tested the latter. Which resolution should I use? How do I convert to that resolution? What software should I use?

 

So you want to burn a DVD-Video with audio files at the same quality as a DVD-A disc correct? Well ive just found a program that ive used a few times its called Audio DVD creator and makes DVD's that will play on a standard DVD player at 24/96. But you can only fit about 2 CD's worth of music at that higher quality.

 

Any DVD-Video authoring application worth it's salt will allow this.
Adobe's Encore DVD 2, Media Chance Labs DVD-Lab Pro & Standard also.
Sony's DVD Architect I suspect will do this.
Apple's DVDSP
Sonic - all of their apps except the cheap & nasty ones.

The difference between them is down to the details.
Sure, you can use things like the seriously badly named "DVD Audio Creator" which is actually better called "Audio on DVD-Video creator".
The difference with the higher end tools is the detail.

DVD-Video - successful authoring & playback depends entirely on how well the applications adhere to the specs.
And with the Adobe tools, you get some serious creative tools.
Full Photoshop integration.
Correct setting of all Video_TS folders & files.
30 day trial version for download at www.adobe.com

Just check the specs, and make certain it actually supports 24/96 playback before plonking down your cash.
Additionally - make very, very sure that your DVD player actually plays this back - a lot of players decimate a 96KHz stream down to 48KHz, and truncate 24 bit audio down to 16 bits.
You'll need to look in the players setup utility to be certain.

Old Open Reel material sounds seriously good when digitized to 24/96.
Just beware the squeals of hydrolized tapes - if you hear this happening, stop playback immediately, and bake the tapes. Otherwise that horrible noise is the sound of all the oxide shedding from the tape, and the later tearing noise is the backing coming away from the recorded side.

Good Luck - it's a well worthwhile project.
I love my old B77HS, and nothing will part me from it.

 

Wilkes,

I have successfully transferred the 4 R to R tapes to 24/96 files using my Audigy 2ZS card and the Creative Wave Studio application that comes with it. I verified that my Poineer Elite DV-09 has 24/96 DAC's and will play files of this resolution at the 24/96 resolution via the analog line level outputs. It will not output anything via the SPDIF connector, not even 16/48kHz.

I transferred the files to a single layer DVD-RW using Audio DVD Creator. The results are much better than i could have hoped for in my wildest dreams. The DVD player cost me over $1,500.00 new and although it does deliver stunning DVD and CD video and audio, I never would have believed it could play at this high resoution and deliver such magnificently analog sounding audio. I AB'd the tapes and the 24/96 DVD's to my wife. She was not able to consistently choose one medium ove the other. I also created DVD's with 16/48 files of the same material. These sound edgy when compared to either the tapes or the 24/96 DVD's. It brings me great joy to see the 24/96kHz light up on the DVD player's GUI. This has been a project that was really worth the effort. If anyone wants me to make 24/96 DVD's, send me your analog sources. I guarantee you will love the results.

Thanks for all the guidance you all provided.

 

I'm glad you're so happy with your results!
A lot of people forget that DVD-Video actually allows you to have 24/96 stereo, and the only gotcha with this is that you must check your players documentation as to if it will work as authored - a lot of DVD players will not only truncate to 16 bits, they will also downsample to 48KHz as well - and if the output is through the SP-DIF, this is more than likely it'll downsample or just plain refuse to play.
DVD-Video also allows in the specs for up to 8 channels of PCM audio as well, to a maximum bitrate of 6.144 Megabits/Second.
But there has never yet been a player built that will play it back, so it's pointless.

Stereo High Resolution on DVD-V works, and works well. A lot of people tend to automatically think "Surround" when you mention High Resolution, and especially when you mention DVD-Audio (different format, obviously). They forget High Rez sounds just as good in Stereo - and the difference between 16/44.1 or 16/48 and 24/96 is really like night & day.

Happy transferring.

 

wilkes

Haven't seen you online for quite a while.

You are right about the differences in sound bewtween the old and outdated 16/44.1 and DVD Sound 24/96. The problem that a lot of interested aficionados' have is that their sound equipment can't reproduce it. More and more PC's are sporting onboard audio which is Okay for general play back of games and CD's but they fall seriously short of DVD sound quality. We should have dumped the old CD 16/44.1 sound quality the moment that technology evolved to the Pentium but in the end everyone got trapped in the working format loop of the time. If anyone here is interested in moving to higher quality sound then they have to know that their system's audio card has to be able to reproduce it..

BTW, I'm looking at a low priced Porta studio and your advice would be welcomed.

 

Wilkes and Sophocles,

I use the analog audio output fom the DV-09. When playing back the 24/96 files, my Sony ESP9 will not read optical or coaxial lines from the DV-09. This DVD player is/was a truly outstanding product where Pioneer engineers took a cost no object approach to the design. At the time of its design, progressive outputs had not hit the market. I believe the inclusion of high quality audio DAC's was an effort to be unique. Today, DVD-Audio players and SACD devices use 24/96 DACS. This DVD player permitted high quality audio years before it was available everywhere.

I can only recommend that all those who have been disappointed with CD sound try this. In their DVD, "Nashville Sounds", the Beachboys opted for 16/48 LPCM rather than Dolby Digital. If they has more room on the DVD, they could have encoded in 24/96 but then very few could have played the discs. The 16/48 LPCM sounds superb. My 24/96 sound better.

 

@ Sophocles.
Good to speak to you again too!
IMHO, even if the afficionado's gear won't accurately reproduce the upper frequencies, they will still hear a major difference just by upping to the 24 bit word. That is 256 times the resolution of 16 bit - and 16 bit is just so fragile, as any DSP done on it at all has to increase the wordlength - even if it's only by a factor of 0.001 to 0.009, this is the area where all the extra detail is going to be. It's one of the least well understood aspects of Digital Audio to get across to the old analogue heads, but once you get them to listen for themselves, you gottem. in 16 bit especially, wordlengths expand when you do any processing on them at all.
16 bit has 65,536 possible equivalent values for analogue voltage or amplitude. 24 bit has 256x this, or 16,777,216 possible values. No contest.
The increased sample rate also helps a lot - with 96KHz the effects tend to be more cumulative than immediate on stereo files - but if the transfer is done at 96KHz, even when played back through a system that has speakers cutting off at 23KHz, there will be an improvement in quality as long as the DAC used are of high quality and are good 24/192 or 24/96 found in all higher end players. But the wider word is where the immediate improvements are to be found.
As far as a Portastudio goes, I don't know off the top of my head - we don't record (smartest move we ever made) except for rare overdubs.
I will ask though - just avoid the M-Audio ProTools type setups. You'll be disappointed.
Do you want a digital or analogue multitracker, and an independant unit or computer based?

@MrHifi
I don't use digital outputs from my Denons either - both the 2910 in the studio and the 3910 in our private listening room are set to output throughh the analogue outs from the player. The 3910 is set to output direct as authored, in the studio is the same. I often disable the Video board in the 2910 as well, meaning a purer audio path (no video output enabled at all, less happening electronically)
That Pioneer you mention is a good unit. Their Elite series is very good - it's just their cheaper consumer products like the dreadful 563/565 and the 578 that I have issues with. Awful things. Pioneer seem to do their own interpretaions of specs on those models and the poor consumer pays the price. In DVD-A playback, I remember reading that when outputting from analogue it routes all below 200Hz in the 5 main channels to LFE! Yet the Elite range are not like this.
But the only way I will change my Denons is for a Meridian player, maybe. The Denons have never yet let me down, and the MultiRegion issue is a simple handset routine.