ToTo Man
the band not the dog
I probably won't get any replies to this as it's a very niche subject, but you never know!
When I was into surround sound in the mid-2000s I bought a handful of DVD-Audio discs. I recently discovered that the DVD Audio Extractor app for Mac can extract not only the audio tracks from DVD-Video (stored in VIDEO_TS) but also the MLP-format audio track from DVD-Audio discs (stored in AUDIO_TS).
Having noticed on the dr-loudness database that Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will" album has significantly more dynamic range when the 6-channel version on the DVD-Audio disc is mixed down to 2-channel stereo, I decided to see if I could extract it myself.
I first let DVDAE do the 6ch to 2ch mixdown. I also extracted the 6ch audio, imported it into Audacity and used it to do the 6ch to 2ch mix down. (I didn't adjust the levels of any tracks in Audacity prior to the mixdown, but the resulting mixdown was around +8dB above 0dBFS in level so, to avoid clipping, I had to lower it to below -0dBFS before exporting).
The two methods produced slightly different results. The mixdowns performed in Audacity typically has slightly more dynamic range than those done by DVDAE, around 0.75dB more on average. Not a huge difference but big enough to suggest the two programs have different mixdown approaches.
Both sound great and are a MASSIVE improvement on the brickwalled stereo release that's very fatiguing to listen to. However, given my OCD tendencies, I'm curious to know what the difference is between the two mixdown approaches, and which is the more theoretically 'correct'?
The dynamic range values DVDAE extractions match those on the dr-loudness database, but there is no mention of how the latter were obtained. The only info is a reference to it being a 5.1 DTS downmix, which is odd because there is no DTS codec on this disc?!
When I was into surround sound in the mid-2000s I bought a handful of DVD-Audio discs. I recently discovered that the DVD Audio Extractor app for Mac can extract not only the audio tracks from DVD-Video (stored in VIDEO_TS) but also the MLP-format audio track from DVD-Audio discs (stored in AUDIO_TS).
Having noticed on the dr-loudness database that Fleetwood Mac's "Say You Will" album has significantly more dynamic range when the 6-channel version on the DVD-Audio disc is mixed down to 2-channel stereo, I decided to see if I could extract it myself.
I first let DVDAE do the 6ch to 2ch mixdown. I also extracted the 6ch audio, imported it into Audacity and used it to do the 6ch to 2ch mix down. (I didn't adjust the levels of any tracks in Audacity prior to the mixdown, but the resulting mixdown was around +8dB above 0dBFS in level so, to avoid clipping, I had to lower it to below -0dBFS before exporting).
The two methods produced slightly different results. The mixdowns performed in Audacity typically has slightly more dynamic range than those done by DVDAE, around 0.75dB more on average. Not a huge difference but big enough to suggest the two programs have different mixdown approaches.
Both sound great and are a MASSIVE improvement on the brickwalled stereo release that's very fatiguing to listen to. However, given my OCD tendencies, I'm curious to know what the difference is between the two mixdown approaches, and which is the more theoretically 'correct'?
The dynamic range values DVDAE extractions match those on the dr-loudness database, but there is no mention of how the latter were obtained. The only info is a reference to it being a 5.1 DTS downmix, which is odd because there is no DTS codec on this disc?!