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SUCCESS: Bit-Perfect Audio Capture!!!

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gosh, what a pain this is to find a proper way to check if you can bit-perfect capture. some hints were posted from members of the forum. but ultimately i found the right pieces of the puzzle and combined them to a working solution

test subject

dts audio cd from the eagles - hell freezes over

equipment

m-audio firewire 410
macbook pro running mac os 10.7.5

recording software

audacity
adobe audition
cockos reaper

other tools

dts parser
eac3to

so why dts? simply put: if you can successful capture the audio from dts-cd, then your capture is able to do bit-perfit recordings. the problem was which software and tools you need to have success. in my case it was a trial and error testing, which almost made me loose interst in the whole thing. there was no real guide out there, not even here, on how to test it properly.

that's lead me to test various software with no real success. but i kept looking and i finally found the answer. my recording software just didn't do it right or maybe i forgot something in the settings - feel free to add information that are crucial for proper dts-cd/ld audio recording - in audacity and adobe audition. i just couldn't get a proper file with these applications. i was making sure that i had 44.1khz and 16bit selected, but that seams not good enough. both failed for me.

then i came around another recording software. for shits and giggles i made a test recording and everything went the same way as the other two.

okay, now you wont be able to listen to the dts audio from the recorded wave file. that's where dts parser comes into play. i tried bsplit for my previous recordings, but it didn't work for me. probably because audacity and adobe audition didn't record the audio properly. so a new tool test my audacity and audition recording... nope, not working right. i had a half success, though... the "fixed" audio imported in eac3to showed dts information in it, but it was only 823kbits. so something was missing.

after continuing my search i found the right recording tool: cockos reaper. someone else did an extensive test on bit-perfect recording and he had success with this application. so i thought "lets give it a try." i made a 1 minute test recording with it and nothing new was seen. i exported the recording to a new wave file and send it to my windows machine. in dts parser i did fixing and low and behold a proper dts 5.1 audio file came out... SUCCESS AT LAST

so now i can officially say that i can capture bit-perfect :D

in short...

1. connect your device to your cd/ld player and to your computer
2. record audio at 16bit 44.1khz - for me it worked only in cockos reaper
3. export your recording to a wav file without any adjustments
4. open wav in dts parser, select rebuild stream and click start batch - app needs to be restarted for each new rebuild. i don't know why.
5. enjoy your dts file :)

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Yay! :-)

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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I'm happy you finally did it!

Welcome to the bit-perfect-audio-capture-card-owner family! (^^/)

Sadly my projects are lost due to an HDD crash… 😦 | [Fundamental Collection] thread | blog.spoRv.com | fan preservation forum: fanres.com

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Nice tutorial.

Was the M-audio required, or were you able to capture through the optical-in of the MacBook Pro?

Cheers!

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 (Edited)

consumerx said:

Nice tutorial.

Was the M-audio required, or were you able to capture through the optical-in of the MacBook Pro?

Cheers!

soon i will do some testing and report back.

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 (Edited)

Interestingly, I get a bit-perfect capture using the following chain with my Late 2012 Mac Mini.

Runco LJR-II{TOSLINK output} =(TOSLINK->mini-TOSLINK cable)=> Mac Mini{mini-TOSLINK input}

(Hint: Make sure to set 44.1/16/disable in Audio MIDI Setup :-)

It only works with Cocko's Reaper (thanks for the tip!), but DTS Parser 2.0 breaks the file. VLC is able to read the DTS stream straight from the WAV. I wonder what I'm doing wrong...

I'm using the Strange Days DTS LD for testing.

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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Any luck capturing with your macbook pro? I have never been able to get this to work, save for one time a couple minutes. If I kept adjusting the plug, pulling partway out, I eventually would get a digital input signal. But usually for only seconds. I've tried this on 3 different mid-late 2007 macbook pro's and all the same deal. Maybe they just don't like the little adapter end I bought. Weird, because the digital output port works flawlessly with this adapter.

My current setup involves a G4 MDD tower, an Audiophile 9624 soundcard with digital coax input and an optical>coax adapter for my Panny laserdisc player. I've confirmed that this setup is not altering the digital signal. However, I am not always getting bit-for-bit accurate rips. A couple laserdiscs are not matching up when I compare two captures. Other LDs were 100% identical. The one that has me pulling my hair out right now is not giving two captures that even come close to matching. A canceling out leaves behind a lot of static and clicks. I could get over the fact that the capture's aren't bit-identical if I weren't able to hear some random clicks when listening to the audio. I would figure it's the LD's fault, but this is a Japanese import that plays flawless video. No visual signs of rot. The whole reason I sold my previous player was to buy one with digital audio output. The only remaining LDs I have that aren't on DVD are music titles and I was planning to transfer these to digital, capturing the digital audio signal. This worked perfectly on 2 discs and is giving me problems on two discs. My next step may be to try and clean the player's lens. I have very little faith that will change anything, but I have no idea how and where this player was being stored, so maybe it's full of dust.

Btw, if anyone has these LDs and could do a bit-perfect digital audio capture for me, they would be returning some of my sanity:

Lou Reed: The New York Album

Lou Reed: Magic and Loss In Concert

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 (Edited)

AntcuFaalb, the reason you're having problems working your DTS rips from laserdisc is that DTS on LD has different frame headers than DTS on DVD.

Run your DTS Wav file through DTS Parser, then open the resulting dts file in the hex editor called "xvi32."

Link:   http://www.handshake.de/user/chmaas/delphi/download/xvi32.zip

Run this script in xvi32 on your file, then save the file.  The script will fix all the frame headers, making the file compatible with regular dts decoders.

To run the script: 1) Choose "XVIscript" dropdown menu.  2) choose "Editor..."  3) Choose "Open" from the "Script" dropdown menu. 4) choose the correct script file (link below). 5) Click "Execute."  6) Close script editor, then save file.

Link: http://www.sendspace.com/file/1d7v50

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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The xviscript for DTS audio LD correction on sendspace is no longer available.

Did someone save this file and can make it available for upload again?

Thanks!

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 (Edited)

kaarma33 said:

The xviscript for DTS audio LD correction on sendspace is no longer available.

Did someone save this file and can make it available for upload again?

Thanks!

Oh, no! schorman13: Please reupload it!!! :-)

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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 (Edited)

If I have a Macbook pro with Mavericks OS and firewire or USB or a Dell Laptop with Windows 8.1 OS and USB, which M-audio digital external box would I choose?

Otherwise, I have a Hauppauge HD PVR version 1 and an El Gato HD game capture box to get the audio from the LD player's digital audio demodulator.

A better question would be, "How can I tell that the ripped LD audio is bit-perfect?"

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Wow, never realized that this file went missing, I'll reupload later. 

Sorry, I've been away from the forum for a while ;)

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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schorman13 said:

Wow, never realized that this file went missing, I'll reupload later. 

Sorry, I've been away from the forum for a while ;)

Thanks! Welcome back!

A picture is worth a thousand words. Post 102 is worth more.

I’m late to the party, but I think this is the best song. Enjoy!

—Teams Jetrell Fo 1, Jetrell Fo 2, and Jetrell Fo 3

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 (Edited)

Here’s the link to the script file:

here

Remember to run the recorded wav through DTS parser first.

Here is the text of the script file, just in case the link goes down again:

http://pastebin.com/W7QNPwSM

If I had some gum, I’d chew a hole into the sun…

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 (Edited)

Great info here, thanks! I was able to get bit perfect recording working using Reaper as well. I wasn’t aware of the app to rebuild the DTS stream so that was a real life saver.

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does this work for dolby digital/AC-3 streams from toslink?