XXHighEnd

For extracting CD's many people , including myself , use EAC. But what tools can I use to get good 24/96 or 24/48 stuff from DVD's into a wav or flac file.  Of course to feed it to our beloved XX. I have just bought the awesome Donald Fagen box which included four dvd's with all his material also in 24/96 stereo format. I would love to hear that through XX. Not to mention all those dvd's with great live music that I have.

If you have no idea how to do, try this:
http://www.castudio.org/dvdaudioextractor/

If you ask for a more sufiticated or audiophil program (like EAC is compared to Windows Mediaplayer CD extraction) I can't give you an answer.

It's a solid programm and easy to use.

best regards

Ava

Thanks very much. Works like a charm. I am now listening to de the 24/96 version of Morph the Cat by Donald Fagen. I will compare it with the cd version tonight. Both through XX of course :)

Hey Leo,


This is from your signature. Could you please eloborate a bit on

a. what GainClone you use (could be the "official" GainClone obviously);
b. what hypex you use, and what for ?

Sorry to be OffTopic, but since we were so much in seek for amps in this direction over at BD-Design (assuming yuo know) you can imagine my interest.
Don't hesitate to express your perceivements on them. You won't get flamed ...  :)

Peter,

I use Hypex 700HG amps in my quad-amped setup. I searched around extensively for class-D amps that sounded at least acceptable in the high fequencies. These did the best job, though not as good as my trusty old single-ended class-A Pass Labs Aleph 4  :(

They're phenonmenal in the bass though... and my electricity bills remain manageable :)

Mani.

Thank you Mani.

Funny. Some year ago "we" were extensively seeking similarly, tried them all except for the UcD700 which wasn't available back then in its best version which was ... because I personally wanted it better which Bruno dove into. Then I waited for months and in the end never heard it. Might you be interested, here it happened : http://forum.bd-design.nl/forum_entry.php?id=12629&page=0&category=0&order=last_answer
(once you are there, switch to Board View (top right) which reads more conveniently).

Might you want to experience a lead-in with I think some good laughing, you can start here : http://forum.bd-design.nl/forum_entry.php?id=12555&page=0&category=0&order=last_answer where you will experience some guys with the finest systems and ears on earth, and which is the birth area of XXHighEnd at the same time.

Special message to Gerner : I just took 1.5 hours reading that back, and I laughed harder than I recall from back then.

Ok, this is one of the numerous threads in search for the best amp. We hired, bought, flew them in by courier 1000Km travel etc. - all (except for the UcD) and ended up with ... a GainClone. A special one though.

What happened to yours (since you now changed your sig) ?

Peter

G'day Leo :smile:

is this the box set ??

http://donaldfagen.shop.musictoday.com/Product.aspx?cp=1134_11283&pc=6DAM03DVDSET (http://donaldfagen.shop.musictoday.com/Product.aspx?cp=1134_11283&pc=6DAM03DVDSET)

I play those 3 albums quite regularly here and have them in DTS surround also, but didn't know there was a complete set with higher bitrate until I read your message. Thanks for the pointer.

Oh , and I've been using DVD Audio Extractor for ages now .. works well.

Cheers,

Russ

Thanks for the link(s). Very funny. Looks like you all had a blast with this stuff.

I was also in contact with Bruno and Peter at Hypex before the 700HGs appeared on the market. My specific requirement was to buy 8 identical amps to run a quad-amped system... and class-D seemed the way to go.

I wanted (and still intend) to do a detailed comparison between different crossovers for Hi-fi World magazine here in the UK:
1) passive (from speakers)
2) analogue (Pass Labs XVR1)
3) digital (DEQX PDC3.0, when it's available - I wasn't impressed with the PDC2.6)
4) PC (probably Acourate)

I think many people underestimate the importance of the crossover. I my case, pulling out the passive crossovers and using my XVR1 analogue crossovers (set to 1st order) is the biggest improvement in SQ I have ever made...

Mani.

It is indeed the Fagen box set. I find (but Dr. Placebo may be doing his bias-trick) that it is quite a step up in SQ. More 'layers' in the bass , more room around instruments, even more complex parts I can follow with ease.
And of course with XX the hirez 24/96 material brings much more joy than through my modified Oppo 981 multiplayer.  I will definitely extract more audio from dvd.Tomorrow I will look at 24/48 material from de Led Zep live box.
DVD  takes more time than CD's ,  no database with track info like EAC, and of course it eats up diskspace. But so far, I am very happy with it.
So a multichannel XX would be a nice step in my opinion :)

My amplifiers. I have presently a multichannel, multiamp system for my Silver Iris and Augie speakers (Hawthorne). 16 amps in total. Tweeter and mid/bass with each a gainclone. I use the (modified) passive filters of the speakers still. The Peter Daniels group buy of a couple of years ago is the source of that. I tried different t-amp versions for that role in my system, but get back to gainclones. Less excitement but more real imho.
The hypex 400 watts (6 of those) are used for the subwoofer part below 50 hz, they do that very well. It is the old version, with the better opamp and a diy modified supply for the opamp part. I use a Behringer dcx for the subwoofer part. I will do an 'extreme' modification of a Behringer to see whether I can replace the passive filters.
But that means to lose my beloved Altman dac in the system.
I then will probably ty to get digital out from the Behringer and use more Altmans (or Twindacs).

One complaint I have to make about XX is that I now listen much longer and concentrated than before and it eats into my diy-time !

:rofl:


Careful please, because I don't think any 44.1 or 48 setting supports 24 bit yet (for Input ! ... output it does (32 actually)).
Heck, the combinations seem endless. :swoon:

Multi-channel is doable (and I always preserve good audio tracks from movies I watched, mainly the end tuses) but at this moment I don't have the faintest idea on how to do that DTS encoded, *or* it must work by itself already. So, the (for me) normal way would be PCM decoded, but *then* you guys would be having problems with the distribution of the channels, right ?

Here is the key to my being unexperienced on this, because I don't have a DTS decoder, and what I play is software decoded. So, my preserved audio from movies never got a chance so far to be played by XX, because *I*'d need the multi channel (PCM) support explicitly.

Btw, be very careful to follow the the good procedure and appropriate program to rip DTS from movies and preserve it. It is 100% easy to do it wrong and loose data (without much notice). I'm fairly sure Russ will recognize this *and* knows what to do/use  best, although I should know myself but need to dig up things when at home (didn't have much time for movie watching lately :) let alone ripping music from them).

I don't understand your remark on the 48 not being 24 bit for Input.
Yesterday I listened to Nightfly by Doald Fagen which is 48 kHz and 24 bits according to the rip software. It played through XX and my system. And it did sound better than the CD version of same.
The other two albums in the box are 24/96.

I would like a PCM solution with the computer (XX plus) doing the distribution to the 5.1 DAC's. Perhaps even with digital crossovers. Even more Dacs ! (I sure hope Bert is not looking at this post :) )
 

Ok, I use DVD Audio Extractor (http://www.castudio.org/dvdaudioextractor/) for it.
Not free.

I just looked it up, and I don't see how that would work. However, by coincidence there's one parameter wrong only, and I think this is not important for playback, while the "attachment" of the DAC is so much tweaked by now that it actually does something else (not important for playback mode), but with the most important part that it's accepted.

:scratching:

I will build in the support for it officially. Seems better to me. :yes:

Question which I think may belong in this topic :

Is it me (never being oriented towards music DVDs), or are we doing here by kind of accident things which are rather new ?
I can hardly imagine that, but I mean, if I see how much excited people are to find another site with downloadable 96/24 material ... then I don't understand.
Of course, the DVD Audio (that's what we're talking about for the main part in this topic, right ?) is there to use by means of boxed players that can utilize them. But playing them (ripped) via software ... ?
:blink:

Oldfashioned Peter

Perhaps not quite old fashioned Peter, more likely ... shall we say ... not keeping up with the developments of transferring contents of DVD-Audio onto your PC for playback :smile:

Now that XXHE is a competent player of these hires files there isn't the need for an external player to do that. Well .. with DVD-Audio titles at least.

Cheers,

Russ

BTW Leo ... thanks again for the heads up on Fagan's trilogy set. Couldn't find it locally so sent off o'seas for it.

I agree with Russ 100 %. Peter replace DVD with CD in your post. Using XX for DVD, it is exactly the same: replace optical storage with harddisk and memory.

I really laughed reading you talking about dedicated boxes'

Okokokokok  :blob8:

But now why is everybody being enthusiast about sites like from Linn then ? Is that better material ?

But (!) the biggest fish in the sea for high res audio, DVD-Audio (around 1000 titles), is not possible to playback on XXHE.
Isn't it?
At least it would be illegal to rip a DVD-A.
I know that some hackers achived that, but for wide use?

I think we'd better think of a way to playback DVD-A (is there any way to achive this anyway????)

best regards

Ava

Well for the sole reason that it is closer to or even equal to the SQ level that it was recorded on. So no downsampling etc, well I think that should appeal to you strongly.
I made a blooper however with my remarks and claims about 24/48 material. As you said it won't play. I confused the albums I compared.
So my remark about hirez sounding better (to me) than 16/44 only applies to the 24/96 stuff. For now.

The iTrax and Linn material I can not compare to other digital formats of the same because I only have it in hirez. But it sure is nice with the iTrax being more in my taste re musical style.

Leo

Now it will ...
(if all is right :grazy:)

It does !
Now Nightfly, soon Zep in 24/48

Thanks

will test 16 against 24 later and tell you about it. Thought that it allready was better with 24. Will test a bit more.

Great Friday night for this nightfly !