DVD-A sound cards

[solaris]

Hey I have a old sound blaster card that does DVD-A but I was wondering whats out now that will play DVD-A

 

[neil wilkes]

Pretty well anything with 6 channel output & WDM driver models, coupled with a suitable Software player.
WinDVD 6 Platinum is by far the best, WinDVD Platinum 7 worked up to a point, then the compromised MKB keys were removed from it's database & it stopped playing any released disc that had been pressed up to the point the morons hacked it.
PowerDVD allegedly works, but I never had any joy at all with it.
Ended up getting a refund as it broke so much on my system.

 

[solaris]

ok I have a Layla24 sound card and have WinDVD 6 Platinum, I can not get more than two channels working. Any ideas

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

I have been playing with this lately, since I don't own a dvd-a player and was thinking perhaps I can just use my computer as one, now that I have one of my machines wired into the stereo. What I've found is you have to have a soundcard that you can setup in windows to be a surround soundcard, then windvd will recognize that and route things to the proper channels. So, my aardvark card won't do, because windows sees that as 3 stereo pairs of outputs and 2 stereo pairs of inputs, and only lets me choose a pair as a default sound device, and windvd isn't advanced enough to allow me to tell it where to send each individual channel, it just uses what windows is setup to use. My cheap soundblaster audigy card that I just threw in there for something to have in there for other uses on that machine does work as a quad output with windvd, but I don't know how great that ranks for sound, it's probably downsampling and such. So, the next step is figuring out what a good soundcard to get would be to make it worth using a computer for a dvd-a player over buying a standalone dvd-a player. One good thing from this, so long as I'm able to get a dvd drive for a pc, and have windows xp and windvd 6 to install on one, I will always have a means for dvd-a playback once all players die and are no longer manufactured. SACD, on the other hand....I still need to figure that one out, before my player dies, which it eventually will.

 

[neil wilkes]

WinDVD - at least here - will not output 24/96 surround mixes, or 24/88.2 surround mixes.
All I can play through it are 24/48 & DTS-CD type.
Running on an RME HDSP9652 card, out to a bank of ADI-8 DS converters.
It must be a soundcard that has WMD drivers, and even then you still have the limitation of what will go down an ADAT/SP-DIF (IE a "consumer" type digital output) and that restricts you quite severely.
Or at least - it restricts me quite severely.

 

[Lucanu]

I own a Delta 1010LT and it plays DVD-A through PowerDVD 7 very well.
Delta has a software/router that can do bass management, emulate 6.1 or 7.1 in 4.0 (like me) or 5.1.
I just have to setup PowerDVD to play in 6-channel mode (I prefer to re-route center+sub by Delta drivers).

 

[georgeshannon]

I also own the M-Audio Delta 1010LT. It can play 24/96 surround from WinDVD 6 Platinum. At $199, its a great value.

 

[ssully]

Since DVD-As can now be ripped directly to hard disc as .wav files (which can then be FLACed or compressed by whatever method you choose, and played by freeware such as foobar2000) the main issue becomes outputting, rather than playing, the audio.

A card with HDMI output would be nice. ;>

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

When you say windvd won't output 24/96, do you mean it just doesn't do it, or that it downsamples? Because I used my latest conversion as a test, and it is a 24/96 4.0 only dvd-a. windvd 6 was able to play it, powerdvd wasn't.

 

[elshagon]

I've used Powerdvd, Windvd and the Creative Mediasource dvd-audo player. Windvd seemed to downmix to 48/16 so it was out. Powerdvd will play all my back-ups of dvd-a, even one's with watermarks. This will only work with Powerdvd build of 3319a or earlier for the watermark. One problem with Powerdvd is it seems to not sound as nice as the Creative player which came with the Creative Soundcard. The new Creative Mediasource player works very well, but won't play most back-ups with watermark (some seem to play). I've really enjoyed the new Creative player due to the ability to create your own playlists, or shuffle the songs from a dvd-audio disc. What I often do is create virtual drives (with Daemon Tools) and mount multiple dvd-audio discs at once. This allows me to load up songs from as many dvd-audio discs as I want and create playlists or randomly play songs. Surfing or working on the computer is great when you have over 100 songs loaded up and playing in all their surround glory.

 

[georgeshannon]

Just to clarify my previous post I include a link to a screenshot of WinDVD 6 both playing and outputting a dvd-a 24/96.

http://home.comcast.net/~georgeshannon/windvd2496output.doc

WinDVD 6 can be made to downsample but needn't do so if properly set up.

Hope this helps.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

I've not been able to get any of them to successfully playback a commercial dvd-a. windvd keeps downmixing the surround to stereo on commercial dvd-a's, while mine playback in surround fine. powerdvd says it can't verify some key and will play the dvd-v. This is annoying, I bought the damn disc, and the copy protection is blocking me from playing my own disc. What bullshit!

 

[neil wilkes]

I've not been able to get any of them to successfully playback a commercial dvd-a. windvd keeps downmixing the surround to stereo on commercial dvd-a's, while mine playback in surround fine. powerdvd says it can't verify some key and will play the dvd-v. This is annoying, I bought the damn disc, and the copy protection is blocking me from playing my own disc. What bullshit!

WinDVD needs to see WDM drivers to work correctly, and you will also have to go into setup & switch it to 5.1, and again in the Windows Sound to 5.1 as well.
Build 6 Platinum seems to be the best one.
Build 7 (early versions) play most, but interface is bad.
Build 7 (mid versions) have CPPM keys revoked because the CP got hacked. These guys who do this are *not* your friends. The DVD-A specs always made it plain hacked keys could - and would - be revoked.
Build 7 (later versions) removed DVD-A playback altogether.

PowerDVD may be better - the only experiences I have of this are all bad though - but this has to be admitted it was
A - for DVD-V only,
B - on an Authoring system (lots of conflicts) and
C - an early version (PowerDVD 4 or 5, cannot remember which)
so my experiences may not be typical.

For desktop or computer-based playback, ripping to WAV files (or MLP if you have a player that can play an unexpanded MLP stream) and playing through whatever setup you have. This also gets around the dreaded watermarking issues, and these days ripping the discs is a very simple matter indeed (just a few mouse-clicks gets you the audio files in WAV or MLP format)

 

[georgeshannon]

I've not been able to get any of them to successfully playback a commercial dvd-a. windvd keeps downmixing the surround to stereo on commercial dvd-a's, while mine playback in surround fine. powerdvd says it can't verify some key and will play the dvd-v. This is annoying, I bought the damn disc, and the copy protection is blocking me from playing my own disc. What bullshit!

PowerDVD version 7.3 will playback commercial, watermarked, surround DVD-A discs without downsampling.

Hope this helps.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

My experience is that powerdvd will not play them back. It tries to obtain a cppm key, fails, and goes to dvd-v mode. Anything I read on other forums about powerdvd says the same thing.

Windvd 6 keeps downmixing surround on commercial dvd-a discs to stereo, and playing jumpy, while it will play dts and my dvd-a discs just fine in surround.

 

[elshagon]

My experience is that powerdvd will not play them back. It tries to obtain a cppm key, fails, and goes to dvd-v mode. Anything I read on other forums about powerdvd says the same thing.

Windvd 6 keeps downmixing surround on commercial dvd-a discs to stereo, and playing jumpy, while it will play dts and my dvd-a discs just fine in surround.

Which version and build of powerdvd are you using? Go to the "about" on powerdvd by right clicking on the player screen to find the build number. When the About dialog is open, drag your mouse cursor to the user name field and click your mouse button. I've read that Powerdvd will ignore the watermark up until 7.3 build 3319a. There's also the creative mediasource dvd-a player which does a good job but won't play copies of discs that have a watermark.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

It's build 2605, which should be before 3319 and would work by your explanation. But, it doesn't, it tries to find a cppm key, doesn't, and goes to video mode, every time.

Meanwhile, I've played with windvd on 2 machines and 3 different sound cards, each with different bad results. It seems to me the problem is standards, there aren't any. Even though in windows the soundcard is set as a surround device, with front and rears, windvd takes one look at it, and doesn't have a clue where to send what. So, on one card it mixes down to stereo and sends it out the fronts, on another it sends the fronts to both the front and rear, and on another it sends only the fronts out the front, the rears nowhere, and nothing out the rear. And since I'm just a stupid consumer that doesn't know how to do anything except double click on an icon and press play, I'm not given the option to setup the damn program so I can do the equivalent of saying "hey stupid, send this audio there, and that audio there....good, now keep doing that." The weird thing is that it does work perfectly for non-commercial dvd-a discs (ones I've made), and dts audio cds. So, windvd does know how to output surround properly.....there's something weird about commercial dvd-a discs that suddenly confuses windvd on where to send what, with different bad results on different sound cards. It has me stumped.

 

[georgeshannon]

Go to the "about" on powerdvd by right clicking on the player screen to find the build number. When the About dialog is open, drag your mouse cursor to the user name field and click your mouse button. I've read that Powerdvd will ignore the watermark up until 7.3 build 3319a.

Thanks for the information you shared in post 10 of this thread and your post from which this quote was taken.

I have it on good authority that PowerDVD version 7.3 build 3516 also ignores watermarks while playing commercial, watermarked, surround DVD-A disc backups. I prefer PowerDVD to WinDVD now.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[ArmyOfQuad]

Well, windvd 7 proves to be crap, as I expected. I must've gotten a later version of 7, as early dvd-a discs would only play as a dvd-v. Yeah...that makes perfect sense.....someone decides to crack a code, and then no one is allowed to playback their early discs anymore. Yeah, that's fair. So, I pop in David Bowie - Stage, and it plays back wonderfully. So then I pop in Queen - A Night at the Opera, thinking it would default to dvd-v. And, by some chance, it plays it as a dvd-a. However, it tries to play the 96kHz as 48, without downsampling. Yeah....great programming, forget whatever the sampling rate is, just throw whatever crap out the speaker you can.

Ok, any software developer out there reading this that wants my money....make a damn dvd-a software player that will output the audio to a surround sound card, no copy protection blocking it bullshit, a simple play stop and skip buttons, and it works, nice and stable. That simple. Someone makes that, and they'll be my friend for life.

I guess that would be too much to ask for. As a consumer, I have no rights, not even to play the discs that I pay my hard earned money for.

 

[Old Quad Guy]

I have it on good authority that PowerDVD version 7.3 build 3516 also ignores watermarks while playing commercial, watermarked, surround DVD-A disc backups. I prefer PowerDVD to WinDVD now.

PowerDVD version 7.3 build 3723.0 also ignores the watermark. I've had no problem with playback to complain about - once the drive starts spinning fast enough. I can choose the DVD-A or DVD-V layer.

I've also experienced the same as elshagon, that Powerdvd seems to not sound as great as the Creative MediaSource DVD-Audio Player. Mine came with the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi card. Perhaps PowerDVD sounds better with a different sound card?

Creative Mediasource DVD-Audio Player 2.00.74 player won't play back-ups with the watermark. It recognizes it's a DVD-A, but won’t play it by spinning the disc slow or not at all, so it seems.

The sound quality of Powerdvd 7.3 IMO is still very good, fairly close to Creative Mediasource. A must have for DVD-Audio fans who wish to save their irreplaceable discs from damage.