quality of DVD movie sound

[gaitchs]

how do they mastered dvd background music ? i mean its stereo seperation and harmonic rich,,,,, I guess they apply some phase effect so as to not interfere with the sound effects...... any idea how they did it ?

its like the quality of THX sound in games, if you have no clue check out the music from the game Need For Speed 2 and above..... THE QUALITY

[bachus]

In many ways that is an interesting question. It seems quality is in the ear of the beholder. A story I have from a dear old friend, David, who wrote magazine articles on a range of cinematic technology. Once he was at a "début" of a revamp of THX's main studio out West. After the spiels and the "show" one of the press handlers asked him what he thought of it, "Wasn't that the most fantastic sound he'd ever heard?!" David, looked at him and said, "Sounds like crap to me." The handler took some offence and treated David as if he were a crank. What he did not know was that David was a supernumerary at the Metropolitan Opera and for a good fraction of every year, for many years, spent his nights on that stage, feet from some of the greatest singers in the world and a few yards from the pit, and his idea of quality sound was legitimately stratospheric. To be fair, David was generally more easy going than that might suggest. But by that time he knew he was dieing and that, at least in my experience, tends to make people rather more direct than usual. Anyway, a point worth pondering.

[Sam_Zen]

I think DVD sound is 48 kHz

[bachus]

Isn't it it 96 kHz
http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question344.htm

[gaitchs]

DVD is 48, CD is 44

[bachus]

Looks like there is no one correct answer:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-Audio

But I think you are right about music with video. Do you have a reference?

[bachus]

To get back on topic: The question of "quality of sound" is both highly subjective and highly contextual. I assume that by quality you are not referring to anything that is quantifiable, e.g. distortion, phase shift etc., because those artifacts have been shown by numerous double blind tests to be generally undetectable by the human ear when at the level such artifacts are introduced by todays audio technologies -- except for speakers. That last step in audio reproduction remains problematic, though carefully throwing enough money at it can provide a reasonably good result if the speakers are setup properly in an appropriate environment.

That said we are left with mostly aesthetic issues where general terms like "the quality" without further context are not very illuminating.

I have to say I've never played a computer game. But it does occur to me that the user is generally seated exactly in the center of the line between the R & L speakers which would allow pre-injected ICC to be used with better effect than usual. That could certainly change the "quality" of the sound.

In any case it would be more interesting if there were specific movie sound tracks whose quality could be discussed in more concrete terms. I rather enjoyed the sound track for "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus " and felt it made good use of surround.

[jamiewoody]

i think in the professional world, sountracks are a totally different animal.

but, on a small production level, there are software programs that can accomplish this sort of thing. though i am now behind the joneses with my computer updates, i believe that in apple's DVD STUDIO PRO, one can not only author dvd, create chapter menus, but also master sound in most sound systems, such as stereo, 5.1, 7.1 etc. i may be mistaken, but you should be able to find out for sure on apple.com

i use final cut pro hd, which is a 2003 version. it is dated, but i STILL use it for not only video editing, but some audio things i cannot do in garageband (such as reversing a soundclip, so i can make a guitar track sound like jimi hendrix flipped the tape reel in the studio!).

also, check some video production forums, they could point you in the right direction.

i hope i helped...