Music quality on VCD vs Audio CD?

[sanjivg]

I have an AVR Onkyo-sr508 plus 2 Polk Tsi 200 speakers, philips dvd player. If I just listen to songs from VCD/Video DVD (switching my TV off) rather than the Audio CD, will the sound quality be poor?

Thanks for your opinions.

- Sanjiv

 

[Kittu]

I have an AVR Onkyo-sr508 plus 2 Polk Tsi 200 speakers, philips dvd player. If I just listen to songs from VCD/Video DVD (switching my TV off) rather than the Audio CD, will the sound quality be poor?

Thanks for your opinions.

- Sanjiv

Sorry for going OT, How is paring the TSI 200 with Onkyo ? Can you share some details ?

 

[venkatcr]

I have an AVR Onkyo-sr508 plus 2 Polk Tsi 200 speakers, philips dvd player. If I just listen to songs from VCD/Video DVD (switching my TV off) rather than the Audio CD, will the sound quality be poorv

I am not sure that there are any music recorded and available on VCDs at all.

VCD is a dead format that became popular for short time before the prices of DVDs fell.

The quality of music depends upon a number of factors including the media, player, amplification, speakers, etc. In you case if you keep everything the same other than the media (say an original CD), you may not hear much difference between a Audio CD and a DVD. The reason is that a Philips DVD player may not be able to extra the information properly, separate the channels, do a good DAC conversion and deliver the full body of the music.

The other issue you have to remember is the internal format of the file store. In an original Audio CD, the files are in Redbook format and roughly 40MB in size per song. If you play the same song as a MP3 version from a DVD, the quality difference will be enormous. As a end user you cannot store the original Redbook format on a DVD. The best you can do is WAV format that is the closest to a Redbook format. Even then people claim there is loss in the transfer.

To sum it up, you cannot get the same resolution and bandwidth as a Redbook format from a DVD.

Cheers

 

[captrajesh]

Of course it will be poor; not just poor, but very poor. Also kindly note that a DVD player is no match to a dedicated CD player.

 

[sanjivg]

Sorry for going OT, How is paring the TSI 200 with Onkyo ? Can you share some details ?

I still feel that there is something missing. The Tsi 200 has a rear port. My setup is in my living room, and once when I was standing in the balcony which is about 20 ft backside of the speakers , I was feeling a very good bass even on low volumes. But in front of the speakers I do not feel that. The other problem is the positioning of the speakers. The speakers are only about 5ft apart from each other.

In general, the setup seems okay. I think the speakers are good but I am still to make any judgement on the AVR as I really did not listen to any other AVRs.

One more thing, as other people have pointed out here is that a dedicated CDP will be much better than a DVD player. I think I'll have to buy a CDP.

 

[ontherocks]

If I just listen to songs from VCD/Video DVD (switching my TV off) rather than the Audio CD, will the sound quality be poor?

Yes, sound quality will be poor with VCDs and DVDs.
Why?
Audio CD contains uncompressed, lossless LPCM audio.
VCD contains compressed, lossy MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio.
DVD contains compressed, lossy Dolby(AC3)/DTS multichannel audio.

So lossless Vs lossy format. Simple

 

[askii2]

DVD format is no match for lossless CD format. The quality of songs in movie DVDs is compromised accordingly. It's listenable in many DVDs.

VCD audio quality is nothing much to write about.

Dedicated song Video-DVDs tend to be of really poor quality. I don't understand the reason. Anyone knows why they are so poor? Is that a marketing thing?

 

[KDM]

DVD format is no match for lossless CD format. The quality of songs in movie DVDs is compromised accordingly. It's listenable in many DVDs.

It's a lot more than that, actually.

Every PAL DVD is sped up by 4% if it's mastered from a film source - this is done to prevent flicker that would be visible if it were captured 24-25. This effects the pitch and the tempo of the original piece of music when sourced from film. So yeah, sound quality on PAL DVD is nothing special.

 

[sanjivg]

I am not sure that there are any music recorded and available on VCDs at all.
The reason is that a Philips DVD player may not be able to extra the information properly, separate the channels, do a good DAC conversion and deliver the full body of the music.
Cheers

Hey Venky,
Maybe I am missing something, but when I am passing the output of DVD player using a digital coaxial to AVR, the AVR's DAC will come into play. A CDP or DVD should not make much difference IMO.

 

[ontherocks]

Yes, sound quality will be poor with VCDs and DVDs.
Why?
Audio CD contains uncompressed, lossless LPCM audio.
VCD contains compressed, lossy MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio.
DVD contains compressed, lossy Dolby(AC3)/DTS multichannel audio.

So lossless Vs lossy format. Simple

Hey Venky,
Maybe I am missing something, but when I am passing the output of DVD player using a digital coaxial to AVR, the AVR's DAC will come into play. A CDP or DVD should not make much difference IMO.

Which part of my post did you not understand?

 

[sanjivg]

That question was for a post from Mr. venkat.

 

[captrajesh]

Hey Venky,
Maybe I am missing something, but when I am passing the output of DVD player using a digital coaxial to AVR, the AVR's DAC will come into play. A CDP or DVD should not make much difference IMO.

Hi Sanjivg,

No offenses meant but VenkatCR is one of our mods and is fairly senior in the forum as well as age. IMHO, one needs to be a bit more formal when addressing him. No flames please, just my personal opinion.

 

[venkatcr]

Maybe I am missing something, but when I am passing the output of DVD player using a digital coaxial to AVR, the AVR's DAC will come into play. A CDP or DVD should not make much difference IMO.

It does make tremendous difference in more ways than you can think of. I have explained all this before, but let me recap.

(1) Have you heard of EAC? It is a PC software that has a reputation of extracting music from a CD of the highest quality. How does he do that? Simple by what is called re-reading. He reads a track from the CD up to 40 times (if needed) and uses complex mathematical routines to identify which is the best extraction.

Similarly a CDP can re-read a track multiple times and decide which is the best read. This is very similar to data transmission across a network. In an network, each packet of data goes with checksum. This checksum is re-calculated at the receiving end. If the calculated and received checksums do not match, the receiver concludes the data is incorrect, and instructs the sender to resend the same packet. This is repeated until the two checksums match exactly.

When you are reading audio data you do not have checksum. But you have other ways to ensuring the read data is closest to the data on the CD. Just one of methods is called sampling.

When a DAC is executed on an AVR through any digital cable, this re-reading cannot be done. If there are errors in the data received, that is what you will hear.

(2) The other issue is the laser reader. A DVD can have upto 9GB of data while a CD has a max of 800MB. Thus the laser mechanism of a DVD Player moves in much shorter bursts to read the larger amount of data, say over the same 1mm of media. When this is being done, it is quite possible that some data points are skipped. This will again lead to errors.

A CDP is meant to read and play just two channels. Everything in the player is optimised for that task.

Cheers

 

[sanjivg]

Hi Sanjivg,

No offenses meant but VenkatCR is one of our mods and is fairly senior in the forum as well as age. IMHO, one needs to be a bit more formal when addressing him. No flames please, just my personal opinion.

Sure. Will take care. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[captrajesh]

Sure. Will take care. Thanks for pointing that out.

Thanks buddy for taking it in the right spirit.:thumbsup:

Cheers


Rajesh

 

[marsilians]

Hey Venky,
Maybe I am missing something, but when I am passing the output of DVD player using a digital coaxial to AVR, the AVR's DAC will come into play. A CDP or DVD should not make much difference IMO.

Any DAC, however expensive, cannot make a bad recording sound good. Songs on DVD is not the best possible format. Audio CDs are comparatively better. A good quality CD will sound better in any setup than a bad one. So source recordings have a big influence on how it will sound through speakers.

Garbage in/Garbage out with any DAC that is out in the market.

 

[hemantwaghe]

Garbage in/Garbage out with any DAC that is out in the market.

Love this theorum
hyeah:hyeah:hyeah:hyeah:

 

[tommyriantoro]

Yes, sound quality will be poor with VCDs and DVDs.
Why?
Audio CD contains uncompressed, lossless LPCM audio.
VCD contains compressed, lossy MPEG-1 Layer II (MP2) audio.
DVD contains compressed, lossy Dolby(AC3)/DTS multichannel audio.

So lossless Vs lossy format. Simple

thank's ontherock you answer the question perfectly on term what the quality of the vcd audio is .....