DVD-Audio ( DVD-A ) audio playback on VLC .

[bobchewy]

Yes it would be nice to have DVD Audio Playback and convert, even if, as mentioned that great little program DVD Audio Explorer does exist...as there aren't enough DVD Audio players. Only to the best of my knowledge WinDVD 7+ ,PowerDVD7,8 also its claimed to be able to play mlp files..im sure it did once but of late argues that it isnt happy with the dvd audio disc that clearly doesnt exist!..now then, an idea and some info...DTS ...vlc plays dts material yes?, and also dts cds..of which i create myself and also of which i have purchased (yep they do exist-check out bonnie raitt 'road tested double dts cd its 48khz 24bit) ive done a few dts cds and am puzzled as why the dts encoders claim that at 48khz its only for dvd video and not cd...when ive bought dts cd that is 48khz !!! one wonders if theres a codec for dts 96/24 too..hmm..ok heres a compliment for vlc..i created a 4gb 192khz 24bit 5.1 (ie six channel) uncompressed WAV file..and VLC just got on with it - no fuss and played it (its akin to bluray master audio ie same specs i believe )- in the media info it even described it as such (what is this waveform extensible stuff that flac makes a big fuss about..god that program is annoying...) ..ok SACD , right, today i joined a group and...it seems that SACD has been cracked as such..theres a blog about it on surround sound site:
http://groups.google.com/group/SurroundSound added to that, another site http://www.sacdlab/cn that does sacd convert to dvd audio downloads (even charges 6 usd for the privilegof doing so. tut tut hmmm well theres some PDF docs you can download from that site which explains surround audio and the MLP format in detail an also the SACD DSD format and even what appears to be some sort of program structure like source code..did you know that DSD is an IFF interchange file format that use to be found on amiga computers,,so what with this DSD to PCM TricK thats been 'known' for a while it seems maybe theres room for all this stuff..i dont know if the humble pc/mac drives can read SACD or hybrids (apart from the overly expensive new SONY vaio number ??? and a new wonder dsp chip that can read sacd and convert and save DSD and convert -oh its oh so clever - for a price! concerning SACD the hybrids the pc dvd rom only reads the top layer (why the heck do rippers always rip the top layer at 320kpbs thinking that some how it would sound be better..?? nevermind...one of my DVD authoring tools has an option to import/convert DSD IFF audio eg to 96/24 (not sure if its stereo or 5.1 ) where the heck to you find DSD material? and yet it must exist in fact on the surround sound group site its mentioned there i think someone has already done that...making a comparison between DSD and PCM... btw power dvd when reading dvd audio discs has message 'waiting to update cppm key' that thats mkv file on the disc..ok anything her that help i hope so..oh btw is it my pc or vlc but aftre laoding an mlp file it plays ok but its in stereo instead of multichannel..the media info says channels says ERROR is it a bug?? or has something messed up as when i went to install vlc 1.0.0 it wanted to uninstall the previous version and had trouble re installing the v 1.0.0 but it sort of sorted itself out - i think, i hope..so does that mlp playback play in multichannel or not? also btw does vlc now play WMA Pro.and in 5.1 ?? a friend of mine is running linux and he wants to play WMA pRO..in 5.1

[jeroensky]

For your information:

http://dvdadecoder.sourceforge.net

Great! Didn't know that, this Foobar2k plugin makes me Mediasourceplayer independent
But it only works on newer Foobar2000 versions, so the latest version for Windows2000 (0.9.4.5) doesn't support this newer component dll.

Because it's open source, what do you think, will this also made it possible on Linux, that Linux plays DVD-A in full resolution (i thought that pulseaudio didn't support 192KHz 24bit).
LOL found this line: Project UNIX name: dvdadecoder
Oh sorry, that's Linux not windows topic.

@ bobchewy: PowerDVD7 plays DVD-A too(i use that on Windows2000 HTPC device i have, because foobar 0945 doesn't support dvdadecoder plugin(it works for 9 years now, self assembled ATX pc).
But Powerdvd7 needs internet connection for getting the key to play the DVD-A.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Some experimental support for .aob files has been commited to VLC 1.1.

WE NEED SAMPLES!!

[jeroensky]

Some experimental support for .aob files has been commited to VLC 1.1.

WE NEED SAMPLES!!

What kind of samples? DVD-A discs? Because *.aob files seems to be the files who have the DVD-A audio if i look at the filesizes.
I already offer to send you VLC developers 2 DVD-A discs for free(it was not a joke you know ). But i didn't get a reply.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Well, let's do it the other way, can you try latest VLC NB with unencrypted .aob?

[jeroensky]

Well, let's do it the other way, can you try latest VLC NB with unencrypted .aob?

EEh, i prefer vlc 1.0.0 here because the newer ones don't have AAC encoder.
I'll try binary of latest vlc (with no installer) so that the installed vlc 1.0.0 here will be unchanged.

Ok here we go:
System: Windows Vista Home premium 64bit.
Player: VLC 1.0.1 Goldeneye (downloaded as 7zip binary, and so use it without being installed)
DVD-A disc; Foofighters-One By One (best kickass DVD-A ever, play at volume 10, grin.) I don't know if it's unencrypted AOB, how can i recognize this?

Ok I started VLC 1.0.1 Win32 (no win64 vlc unfortunately) by clicking on vlc.exe
then when vlc runs i clicked: media->open file -> media files: all files , and navigate to DVD-A AUDIO_TS directory and selected the first ATS_01_1.AOB file (1,048,544 KB). And it plays, but 2 weird things: no sound & playing time is just 1minute 41 seconds. And that is not correct.
The DVD-A did give correct sound when i open it as DVD, but then it's like a DVD-V player, and so not as DVD-A player tracks.(this Foofighters DVD-A disc is DVD-V compatible)

Oh the installed version VLC 1.0.0 win32 does exactly the same as the 7zip VLC1.0.1 win32 i used for this test.
Also VLC1.0.2 git win32 does the same, totalplaytime isn't correct, and no sound. It does show as codecinfo lpcm.

[VLC_help]

NB = nightly builds. And currently they are 1.0.2 (branches)
http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/?C=M;O=D

[jeroensky]

YES! vlc-1.1.0-git-20090814-2204 (I use the win32 trunk version) play *.AOB Files! In Foofighters words: F*cking Great! (LOL)
(time indicator, at the bottom right does show however a wrong total playtime).
But it plays *.AOB files! It shows as codecinfo: Audio, MLP/TrueHD audio, 3F2R/LFE, 88200Hz, 32bit
Now I listen the first song of FooFighters One By One DVD-A album - All My Life, other songs plays ok and other *.AOB files too. It seems that a DVD-A album is cut in AOB files of one Gig(1,048,544 KB)...
Can it be possible that we just need to open the single *.IFO file in AUDIO_TS (like how foobar dvdadecoder plugin works) then you got all audio files of DVD-A with a single file to open(the IFO file)

Wow VLC developers, you rulez! You all get a strawberrie pie + beer of me.
I hope we also got AAC encoders back in final VLC1.1.0 (oh and of course, please win64 version )