• Registered: 2023-07-03
  • Posts: 8

Topic: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

Hi

I had friends over for an audition of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon through my RME ADI-2 DAC FS. I searched the web for the best possible files and got a DVD-A which opens in VLC (but not in Foobar) and shows a menu with two options:

- dolby digital 4.1
- DTS 4.1

I don't know what this means, or if playing it this way makes the best use of my setup (Windows 10, RME ASIO Madiface USB driver, ADI-2 DAC FS connected to only two speakers).

But I do notice that (on any of those choices) I don't hear all the channels. I would hope the 4 channels would mix into my two speakers, but that doesn't seem to be automatic. Ok, fair enough.

This totally ruins the audition. Are there options I can tweak to play this through my 2-way system, with nice sound quality, or should I just settle for looking for a different source, different files?

Thanks

2 Reply by KaiS (edited by KaiS 2023-07-04 17:10:09)

  • KaiS
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2020-02-05
  • Posts: 3,525

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

DTS and Dolby Digital are both highly lossy formats that kill all treble definition.

Get the original 1983/1984 CD release from Ebay for a $ and enjoy one of the best albums ever made, in it’s original form.

Then listen to the Pink Floyd album “Pulse”, contains the same songs, for another great pleasure.

KaiS's Website

  • Registered: 2023-07-03
  • Posts: 8

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

I have the CD! Of course. I was just under the impression that there had been hi-quality releases more recently.

It's not just one of the best albums ever made, musically, but also sonically. It's very, very, interesting to listen to all those sounds. Excellent audition to get people into audiophily.

  • KaiS
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2020-02-05
  • Posts: 3,525

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

A 4.0 (4 discrete channels, no LFE /sub) original mix exists.

It does only make sense, if you have a proper speaker setup.

KaiS's Website

  • rawac
  • AES/EBU artist
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2020-09-23
  • Posts: 122

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

A lot has been written about the different editions of the album. Everyone has an own opinion. In the end, a matter of taste. Perhaps this link may be interesting: https://magicvinyldigital.net/2023/03/1 … -versions/

Ralf
(ADI-2 Pro FS with ThinkPad Yoga L13, Dynaudio Focus 600 XD or Focal Clear — and a lot of Jazz)

rawac's Website

  • jlm70
  • ADAT user
  • Offline
  • Registered: 2020-08-13
  • Posts: 19

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

I just purchased many years ago the SACD remaster of DSOTM. Superb, especially in its original multichannel format.
Now I recently used my old Oppo BDP-105 to rip my sacd in DSF files, so to play it more easily even through my stereo studio equipment (MacOS / Audirvana / RME ADI-2 DAC fs / SMSL DA-9 / JohnBlue speakers).

About your question, both DD and DTS are lossy (if you do not consider the Master Audio/TrueHD versions), but DTS bitrate is always better than DD.

7 Reply by KaiS (edited by KaiS 2023-07-06 12:41:15)

  • KaiS
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2020-02-05
  • Posts: 3,525

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

jlm70 wrote:

About your question, both DD and DTS are lossy (if you do not consider the Master Audio/TrueHD versions), but DTS bitrate is always better than DD.

Yes, DTS always sounded significantly better than DD for me.
Best, in general, was DVD-A(udio) with it’s PCM stream, I’m not sure the album was released on that format.

Often the original CDs sound best, released before the “Remastering”-virus killed the sound.
Typical example: Earth, Wind & Fire - Raise, having 10 dB more dynamic than every later release.

KaiS's Website

  • Registered: 2023-07-03
  • Posts: 8

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

I appreciate the answers do far, thanks.

Nobody mentioned anything about merging the 4 channels into 2. Are there no options in the DAC (or Foobar?) for that? Or would it surely kill the sound quality?

9 Reply by KaiS (edited by KaiS 2023-07-06 17:44:17)

  • KaiS
  • DAW Mastermind
  • Offline
  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2020-02-05
  • Posts: 3,525

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

pgorod wrote:

Nobody mentioned anything about merging the 4 channels into 2. Are there no options in the DAC (or Foobar?) for that? Or would it surely kill the sound quality?

Few people do face this “problem“.

Usually you select from the available DVD- etc.-streams the one that fits to you speaker configuration.
Or the TV-Set or AV-Amp does the fold down for you.
Even the PC’s audio stack or the player soft might have those options.

ADI-2 handles stereo signals only, even the “Pros” with their double-stereo inputs don’t mix multiple channels.


Folding down the channel format is a simple addition that does not introduce any losses, besides that the levels of all sources need to be slightly reduced to avoid clipping.

KaiS's Website

  • From: Milan, Italy
  • Registered: 2012-02-19
  • Posts: 213

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

There's a "Downmix Channels To Stereo" DSP built in to FB2k.

https://musicwall.app/hermetech

Babaluma's Website

  • Registered: 2023-07-03
  • Posts: 8

Re: Dark Side of the Moon, 4.1 DTS audio through two speakers

Ok, I think I made some progress.

Following the suggestions, I went looking for that DSP to downmix the channels in foobar, and remembered I couldn't even read this in Foobar, I had resorted to VLC because it's a DVDA. And VLC doesn't even use the Madiface USB driver properly (I think).

So I looked around some more and found that Foobar can open a DVDA! https://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdadecoder/

To my surprise, this is what opened up in Foobar:
https://gist.github.com/pgorod/afcc4adc … nt-4621887

So, despite the tangled mess*, sure enough, it has some ready-made stereo downmixes there! And I confirm I get all channels coming through the stereo, and sample rate is 96Khz. It sounds good on my (cheapish) headphones but I will have to check someday the quality on the big stereo.

I guess I have a good-enough source, then. From the link provided above by @rawac I just thought I would like to check the "Ed 24: Blu-ray Stereo – 2023", if I can get my hands on one.

-----

(*) explaining the files shown there, from what I can gather: some correspond to individual songs, which I can identify by the minutes/secs, others (the longer ones) are sequences of songs.

The individual ones show a file length of 10KB, which means they're likely just "shortcuts" into the correct starting points in the actual big sound files.

The sequences of songs are two big files:
DVDA\AUDIO_TS\ATS_01_1.AOB (1GB)
DVDA\AUDIO_TS\ATS_01_2.AOB (595 MB)

And the shown time length is not correct.

For example, the 10:51 thing is from "us and them", all the way to the end of the album, which is really 17:13. I can see that Foobar is confused and shows wrong times on the progress bar as the song plays, and then lingers for minutes near the end. But it plays the sound correctly. I guess this just a minor bug on the plugin.