[johnmatrix]

I got my emu 0404 over the holidays and I was looking into better source material for my new soundcard. I decided to try dvd-a and I was wondering what is the best way to play it back on my computer.

 

[L01]

the best way I know, is to play it back as a copy, which might be illegal, depending on the country someone lives in.

Andreas

 

[Twombly]

Only the Audigy2 can do it, as far as I know.

 

[johnmatrix]

I did find two software options. Both PowerDVD and WinDVD offer dvd-a support . They have the cprm keys to unlock the signal and let your sound card do the decoding.

PowerDVD then takes the signal and outputs it at 44.1 which hurts the signal quality. I am not sure about WinDVD.

 

[Twombly]

The thing is, only the Audigy2 can decode the resulting MLP stream.

 

[thomaspf]

This thread is confusing.

When I tried this last with WinDVD I had lots of problems to get a version of the player that could actually decode DVD-As but even then it did not provide high resolution output on my M-audio DIO-2496.

All content was downsampled to 48Khz and at that time only certain Creative cards were enabled to play back 24/96 and 24/192 and only over the analog outputs.

Is this still the case or has there been any update?

Cheers

Thomas

 

[johnmatrix]

It sounds like it is still the case with both software playback options. I can hear very little difference(if any) between the cd and dvd-a versions of Supernaturnal. I guess it is resampled to 48 kHz still in WinDVD.

 

[nicknameless]

Is it worth it to go for DVD Audio? Is it multichannel or single? I was going to buy a Terratec Aureon 7.1 FW or a Phase 24 FW and I know the Aureon said it could play DVD-A I am not sure about the Phase 24. I still need to decide which one but I am not sure.

 

[johnmatrix]

The difference is slight. So unless you plan on upgrading to a stand alone dvd-a player or going through the hassle of ripping it, I would not recommend it.