A suggestion :was: From Hawkwind

[chris at HAWKLORD.UKLINUX.NET]

Hi ya,

Paul Mather wrote:
> On Mon, Dec 08, 2003 at 05:27:30AM +0000, chris at HAWKLORD.UKLINUX.NET wrote:
>
> => I get the impression they will all be soundboard recordings from the
> => current tour.
> [[...]]
> => Small aside:-


It was meant to be just that. But I maintain anyone (with ok hearing not
special hearing) can tell the difference between 44.1 and 48k its a lot.

>
> The great thing about DVD standards is that there are so many from
> which to choose! :-)  That would be one strike against Hawkwind using
> it.  At least with audio CD they know they're selling something that
> will play on everyone's little-silver-platter players.  (Recall the
> confusing "will this play on my player?" thread that attended the Huw
> PAL DVD release.)

No!  That's just not the case.  There is exactly one official dvd
standard.  A 'standard' like DAD must conform to DVD standard first!  So
saying a disk is DAD means it will play on your dvd player.
Its not like the kareoke cd standard which requires special firmware to
read sub channels.

The V in dvd is for versitile, you can do much more than just put audio
/ visual content on a dvd, you can have quite complex user interaction
more so than just 'menu trees', a wide range of audio and video quality
is possible.



>
> As someone has pointed out, it'll be hard enough for Hawkwind to get
> 500 people sign up for something safe and conventional like CD.
> Throwing DVD---with all its format madness---into the mix is not a
> good business decision from their perspective.  The existing proposal
> is risky enough.
>

Given the people on this list are most of the 500??? or between us we
know the 500 its more than doable.
What I was actually suggesting was not a 'standard' just dump 48k audio
on a cd filesystem leave it to us to convert to a cd if we wish or we
can play the higher quality audio on whatever we got. Its not difficult.

There is no dvd standard nonsense (ok try to burn your own video dvd
with motion menus, mulitiple camera angles, multiple ac3 and mp2 audio
tracks - I've no idea if you can on Microsoft OS, on linux 'we' can and
if 'we' find a dvd that won't work in a particular dvd player 'we' fix
the software till it does. Stuff I've seen to create dvd on windows does
not seem to allow you to do much - unless you pay over £2,000) The only
'dvd standard hassle' is really for DVD-R and DVD-RW. Both dvd+ and dvd-
are equal with respect to what you can do with DVDR.  Both standards
meet the current official dvd standard.  There is a slight difference
regarding how you can use RW media, but not enougth to care about.

Existing proposal is a winner


>
> As you said way back in the beginning, these are likely soundboard
> recordings.  I don't know exactly how Colin is doing these, but I'm
> assuming that during the sound check he finds a mix he likes (in terms
> of balance and dynamics), and then this mix is recorded to DAT during
> the show, i.e., as 48 KHz 16-bit stereo.
>
> Anything you do after that is smoke and mirrors.
>
> Okay, so you resample it to 96 KHz.  Have you increased the sound
> quality?  No, and in fact, you might actually degrade it depending
> upon how you do the resampling.
>

Thats my assumption but I have no idea really what is a soundboard or
what you can do with one.  I just 'assume' there must be 48k because DAT
is 48k, but given modern proffessional soundcards for the pc do 128k
maybe Hawkwind PA is up-to-date and starts out really good. I have no
idea but 48k is so simple to do...

You sould never alter sample rate upwards - unless you must because you
want to make a cd.  Doing so _will_ result in distortion.  But down
sampling also results in distortion, though its fairly easy to treat;-)


> So you decide to invent some new channels to do some kind of stereo ->
> surround sound conversion.  Will this sound better?  Again, it's
> doubtful; the best surround sound mixes are done from the ground up
> using multi-track masters.  Sure, a "surround sound" mix will sound
> "different", but not necessarily better (and likely worse).

 From a stereo mix you can calculate what used to be called enhanced
stereo and super stereo, you can calculate 5.1 stereo just as Floyd (and
others) converted certain mono tracks to stereo in the early 70's.
Cheapo 5.1 low-fi makes reasonable job of stereo cd in 5.1 mode.  I'm
sure Hawkwind can do better than that without using any ceribral effort!!!



> This can be true, but it is not necessarily true.  This is
> *especially* pertinent for consumer-grade mass market equipment, which
> may not use, shall we say, the finest quality components.  (Have you
> ever considered what is the *real* resolution of a DAC?)
>

Yup!!!  I got a socket A motherboard that has via82c833 chip.  That is
certainly not the best chip but it performs as well as my 'proper' card.
But I prefer a Audigy2 cause its more usefull and has much better midi,
the DAC is worth the price.  If I need to I can use both cards to
record, and I'll get the channels to synch OK:-)   If I were in any way
'proffessional' I'd want a card capable of recording at 128k but at
moment they are >= £1,000 or they were last time I looked.   If you got
something like a soundblaster live you actually have a better DAC than
most recording studios had in the 80's !!!!  If you can't take full
advantage of your kit change operating system.


> If you are worried about the sound quality of your audio, you should
> actually be more worried about the quality of the analogue components
> of your system (and that includes the analogue stages in your DVD
> player).  A cheap DVD player is likely to be just that: a great
> potential with a lousy realisation.  A good CD player will beat it
> hands down *every time*.
>

I think you miss the point.  (Ok I don't actually have a tv as such so I
have no dedicated dvd-payer) A pc dvd player costs less than £50 the
only 'analoge' stage is the ad converter to mantain compatibility with
pc analogue audio cd input.  Most pc dvdplayer has also a digital audio
out now, and good cheep soundcards like soundblaster live really are
fine hi-fi devices, hell ancient cards like Ensonique and GUS sound
great.  So computer is very much the center of my hi-fi, its how I
control 2 cheep 5.1 sound systems and an old 80's Hi-fi.  The result is
supprisingly cool.
Almost by accident I've ended up with 3 tv cards in the pc, so its
possible to watch 3 different channels at once each on its own hi-fi for
sound.  (definately you can't do that on MS, on linux the limit is four
cards).
Speaking to people that use dedicated DVD players I get the impression
the cheeper players are actually better than mid range players in that
they are less choosy about what they will play and what they reject.
The video quality will be limeted not by the dvd player but the tv its
played on. All you really get for extra money is 'better' sound ie
speakers and ability to play propriety formats.
Yea I can record tv from digital source, either encoding to mpeg in
hardware or I can record to avi and do encoding with software.
I can get the video at a higher bit rate than dvd standard allows!
Probably you only need spend about £200 to get this functionality.
Why do you feel need to spend money to get quality?  Pick your kit with
care, technology is very cheep now.   Sometimes you'll get better
results from a second hand £10 Hauppauge card than you will from a new
one costing £150 - depends on what you are doing or more importantly
_how_ you want to do it.
A second hand dxr3 card (Hollywood+) is all you need for tv out (£20
secondhand and they have _great_ audio + they give you hardware
de-coding)

> (BTW, there is a DVD-Audio standard (DVD-A), but the mastering software
> is not commonplace, like for other DVD applications, and is somewhat
> expensive.  It is also targeted at studio-quality sourced projects.)
>

Do you have details about this?  Have you tried linux lately???  The
software is free.  Not simple to use but even old versions of dvdauthor
are capable of any DVD audio standards I'm aware of.

The only audio standard I have problem with is SACD like pink floyd
dsotm.  You need special player that might or might not also be a dvd.
I think relience on non-standard hardware means the take-up for the
standard will be small, there is no advantage over using dvd instead.
If it does become popular pc drives will appear.

Something thats been driving the evolution of my pc (The 'GigaHawk') was
my desire to offer a video dvd of kinetic playground - sadly that ain't
going to happen.  A desire to clean up an ICU recording (which I'm
trying again now, this time it'll work - I hope). and I want to do an
audio cd created entirely on gigahawk to see if ya like it.  And maybe
add video later.

Sorry I'm getting completely off track - Man! heres how Fuc&ed up my
life is right now. - I've never done coke, I'd quite like to once to see
what the fuss is about, went to doctor yesterday and she perscribed me
1.5 grames of cocaine - Guess what?  It ain't white powder:-( It ain't
for up the nose either;-(

Chris