I bought some DVD music (‘The Planets’ - Holst). It arrived today (about 10 minutes ago, in fact).
I put it in my DVD player, and played it. I heard the music - this is OK. problem is - it seems to be coming from 2 speakers.
The main reason I bought a music DVD was to take advantage of the 5.1 music speakers I have. I played around with the settings a little and set the audio on my DVD player to 5.1 instead of ‘Enable sp/diff output’ (which is what it was on). this caused the music to come out of all 5 speakers. Trouble is - the sound card software causes all music to come out of 5 speakers in the event that it is only stereo.
Question - by selecting 5.1 in the DVD audio options am I utilizing the 5.1 sound of the DVD? or am I just telling the software to play the same at the back as is being played at the front?
I am very tired so I am sure none of that makes much sense. please try to extract some sense from it and figure out what I mean. Thanlks…
Hmmm . . . your explanation was a bit fractured, but perhaps putting it on headphones can narrow down the problem. It seems the ear is mch more accurate when the sound is not bouncing off of walls etc.
We don’t have your stereo, so we can’t know what’s going on, but I suggest a session with the manual (otherwise know as “FM”) and a pair of good headphones will isolate the problem.
OK, question: is this a DVD-audio disc (i.e. audio only)? Or is it a music DVD (i.e. standard DVD that happens have to have a music program; i.e. a music video)?
If the former, you need a DVD-Audio player (some DVD-video players have this capability; it will be noted on the front panel), and you need to have a receiver or amplifier with a 5.1 input. DVD-audio does not output 5.1 through the digital (SP/DIF) output; it is only available at the analog outputs (this is done for copy protection reasons; the RIAA does not want to give end users access to the DVD-audio bitstream). I’m getting confused when you mention a DVD player and sound card software in the same sentence. Is this a software DVD player running on a PC? If so, AFAIK there is no way to play 5.1 DVD-audio on a PC. Either way, it sounds like you’re actually listending to the standard 2-channel audio track (encoded in Dolby Digital, I believe). Perhaps your system is outputting to all 5 channels using Dolby Pro-Logic.
I’m guessing that the DVD you bought is this one, in which case the above answer applies.
If you’re talking about a music video DVD, we’ll need more info.
Nearly All DVD music I have looked at, and also some literature about the idea of DVD music, states that they will play on all standard DVD players, video or otherwise.
(BTW it is not a music video, it is audio only, but for the sake of completeness it displays a picture indicating what track is currently playing in the window where the DVD video would normally be played.)
I am playing mine on my PC with a 5.1 sound system. The music plays fine when the software DVD player is set on 5.1 rather than SP/DIF.
If your speakers are hooked up via a digital out port, then SPDIF should have given you full 5.1 sound. If, on the other hand, they’re hooked up via analog out, then disabling SPDIF may redirect the music to the proper channels. There is, unfortunately, the possibility that your DVD-Audio disc is simply only mastered in stereo.