How did everyone extract Hobbit DVD audio without distorting the sound?

[bollemanneke 3,348]

Hi everyone,

 

I've been experiencing annoying issues with my Hobbit DVDs. Even though I'm not trying to extract music in particular, it seemed a good idea to start a discussion on this board because I would imagine lots of people here tinkered with the DVD/Blu-Ray audio at some point and you don't seem to have discussed this topic yet.

 

I don't know how or why they did it, but you just can't play the Hobbit DVDs through stereo speakers without horribly distorting the music (and to a lesser extent sound effects). Have any of you noticed this? The music, especially in AUJ, sounds like it's partially muffled or as if someone is shielding your ears when you play it in stereo.

 

I'm currently trying to extract the film audio (5.1 AC3) and convert it to stereo MP3 files, dialogue included. All the programs I usually use for this can't properly handle them. Because this issue is only happening with these particular DVDs, I asked around on an audio encoding forum and the bottom line was that I'll never be able to create normal stereo mP3 files without totally excluding the rear channels, which are apparently much louder than the other channels.

 

So my question now is, how did people who wanted to extract unreleased score material from these DVDs do this? Did you all exclude the rear channels? Also, even if I would be preapred to exclude rear channels, it involves using lots of tools that only work via CommandPrompt. Not to be difficult or anything, but typing all those commands is extremely time-consuming and then I'm not even talking about all the separate decoders/encoders you have to use in order to succesfully perform all those commands.

 

Any thoughts would be most welcome.

[Nick1Ø66 4,718]

The DVD's don't come with a 2.0 stereo track?

 

If you're serious about this, your best bet would be to use the uncompressed audio from the Blu-Ray as your source.

[bollemanneke 3,348]

Nope, sadly not.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

1 hour ago, bollemanneke said:

Have any of you noticed this? The music, especially in AUJ, sounds like it's partially muffled or as if someone is shielding your ears when you play it in stereo.

 

Yes, definitely. For some reason, the music in that film sounds really weird, but I don't think it has anything to do with stereo, 5.1 or whatever.

[bollemanneke 3,348]

It definitely does. I have surround speakers. When I play it in true 5.1, it sounds fantastic. Any stereo playback, whether on my PC or the TV, sounds terrible.

[BloodBoal 7,538]

[bollemanneke 3,348]

Right, but why should I have to remove the rear channels? If two separate speakers can play them, why can't they just be mixed in the stereo channels? They're used quite often in this film.

[Nick1Ø66 4,718]

It's a pity, DVD's used to generally contain a 2.0 stereo mix that was actually mastered by a human being, rather than relying on your equipment down converting the 5.1 mix.

 

As I said, you if you can get your hands on the lossless, uncompressed audio from the Blu-Ray you might have more luck. 

[bollemanneke 3,348]

Rigt, I'll try and ask around for the Blu-Ray.

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Who still buys DVD's?

[Faleel 5,349]

Apparently the stereo track was .ixed incorrectly with the rear channels too loud or something. 

[bollemanneke 3,348]

@Stefancos: People

- who refuse to switch to Blu-Ray because their $1500 laptop still doesn't support it

- who just don't hear the difference between DVD and Blu-Ray audio or who think the difference is too minimal to justify the extra back-up space

- who think the price difference isn't justified

- who are still very happy with DVDs in general

[#SnowyVernalSpringsEternal 10,265]

Ah yes. If you cant see the difference between SD and 1080 then I understand.

[Jay 37,364]

Stefan - he's blind!  Of course he can't see the difference!

[Wojo 2,453]

[bollemanneke 3,348]

It's not just that, I also don't understand the big deal about the supposedly better sound. Granted, there is a SLIGHT improvement in sense of direction, like when one sound goes from one speaker ton the next, the transition is somewhat smoother, but other than that... DVD sound still blows me away at times.

[Skelly 261]

It's largely placebo. You can't tell the difference between 448k DVD audio and LPCM Blu audio, unless you have Jedi hearing.

[Nick1Ø66 4,718]

It's not that. He wants to rip the audio, compress it and do...well, who knows. But if you're going to do that and start messing around with the track, it's best to start with the highest quality you can get. In this case, lossless. 

 

And FYI, when you start talking about not being able to tell the difference between compressed 448kpbs audio and lossless on a forum that probably contains more than a few people who fancy their hearing to be pretty good, you're just asking for trouble.

[Skelly 261]

17 minutes ago, Nick66 said:

It's not that. He wants to rip the audio, compress it and do...well, who knows. But if you're going to do that and start messing around with the track, it's best to start with the highest quality you can get. In this case, lossless.

 

In this case, it seems like bollemanneke just wants to do a quick transcode from 5.1 to stereo... so I see no harm in using the DVD audio for such a task (things are different in this instance, though, since apparently the DVD's sound wasn't mastered properly).

If you're doing real audio editing, you're right; the highest available quality should be used.

[Nick1Ø66 4,718]

Right, but he had said there was something wrong with the DD 5.1 mix when he converted it to stereo. It's possible that whatever is going on there won't be an issue with the lossless DTS 7.1 mix.