Darth Mallwalker said:

I wouldn't need to ask those tough questions--
if you would post an NFO file! :D

I did see bilditup1's Post_495 but didn't pay much heed.
Since he mentioned Fox fanfare specifically, I just assumed it was the comparative lower fidelity of the 1954 Alfred E. Newman recording to blame.

Reading Harmy's thread, it sounds like hairy_hen got the problem sorted already.
Bravo!

I thought that also, but I've listened to that thing in fairly compressed format in the past, and it never sounded this bad. The rest of it it was hard to pick up anything, but then I never listened to this track before and don't really know how it 'should' sound.

hairy_hen said in this post:

Okay, I think I figured out what the problem was.  My AC3 encoder has adjustable settings for dealing with the high frequency cutoff point, and I seem to have inadvertently done this wrongly.  The AC3 format's lossy compression throws away the most detail in the highs, I believe, and the range is dependent on the bitrate used, so that's probably why it was so noticeable in the 448 but the 640 came through mostly unscathed.

Which encoder are you using - Aften, or professional Dolby-certified software?

IIRC, the pro encoders I've used in the past (Surcode and Sonic Foundry/Sony) have just a low pass filter that can be turned on or off, the purpose being to roll off high-frequency content that could cause artefacts in the encode. It is recommended by Dolby to turn this filter on.

I think that the audio bandwidth is adjusted automatically by the encoder; at low bitrates the bandwidth is decreased in order to maintain high audio quality. However, I wouldn't have thought that 448kbps (for a 5.1 mix) would be problematic, and certainly not 640kbps.

I've downloaded what appears to be a version of the DVD5 of Harmy v2 that claims to have the fixed h_h audio off usenet. Listening, it is difficult  for me to find the differences between the two. Is it legit? Can h_h shed light on what we should listen for?

bilditup1 said:

Is it legit?

Darth Mallwalker said:

 

bilditup1 said:

Is it legit?

Chewtobacca would never roll his own!

 

LOL, I wasn't accusing chewie of doing something like that. I was thinking that maybe someone pretending to be chewie released some fraudulent thing, as there was no announcement here.

hairy_hen said:

Yes, it's for real. I sent the fixed 448 kbps track to Chewie and Harmy first, so they could integrate it into the DE and get it out there as soon as possible.  I'm going to post the links here once I'm done uploading a new 640 kbps version also.

The other had a lot of distortion on the high frequencies, and sounded like a bad mp3 in those parts.

@ Moth3r: I use a GUI for the Aften encoder since I can't afford one of the professional ones.  It has a lot of user-adjustable settings for things that should perhaps not be open to manipulation, and I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one for high frequency cutoff, so it came out screwed up even despite using the low pass filter.  This time I forced it to accept full bandwidth, with only the filter providing any cutoff, and it's much better than before.

When listening on hifi, the quality reduction at 448 kbps is somewhat noticeable, although it still sounds quite good.  640 is difficult to distinguish from the lossless source, and would be my recommendation for watching on a format that isn't restricted by DVD's 448 limitation.

Thank you very much for laying it all out for us, hairy. I'll be burning Chewie's DVD en masse and giving it out to my friends tomorrow (Raiders night)

So, AVCHD doesn't need to be 448Kbps, that's just for SD DVD, right? If so, I'll probably use the 640Kbps version for the AVCHD and get rid of one of the other soundtracks.

@rnranimal: they probably weren't affected but just in case, h_h sent me replacements for those too.

Harmy said:

So, AVCHD doesn't need to be 448Kbps, that's just for SD DVD, right?

Yes, 640Kbps is within spec. :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVCHD

http://www.avchd-info.org/format/

Any download links to fixed audio?

Fantastic, thanks much!

Thanks a ton for posting the fixed audio!

I'd have to concur.  Both the 640 and 448 audio extracted fine for me, no errors.

For me too.