I thought the DVD rules were that a linear PCM track was mandatory. You don't want to un-compress and then re-compress an AC3 track, especially when you have the superb sounds on the Tubular Bells album, mastered on instrumentation tape which is why it sounded so good after so many years.

Linear PCM isn't necessarily a stereo track, in fact LPCM in it's raw form represents a single channel only and multi channel support is achieved by interleaving the signals in to the one channel, or by synchronizing multiple streams. (As I understand it).

 

The specification for PAL DVDs is that it should contain at least one of Linear PCM (which could be a 5.1 mix) or Mpeg-2 audio.

I thought the DVD rules were that a linear PCM track was mandatory. You don't want to un-compress and then re-compress an AC3 track, especially when you have the superb sounds on the Tubular Bells album, mastered on instrumentation tape which is why it sounded so good after so many years.

 

Given that a car is not the best place to listen to music anyway, compression almost becomes irrelevant. The point was that, this time round, Mike did the re-mixes in 5.1 and in 5.1 on my system at home they do sound quite exceptional (as did Tubular Bells, Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn - shame the Incantations master is still missing), the remixes are very different to the originals (there is a lorry-load more bass on Taurus II for example). What I was after (and since achieved) is the ability to listen to these in the car, even if it onlu in stereo, in compressed MP3, being played on an old tin box and listened to by a cloth-eared nincompoop.

cloth-eared nincompoop.

 

Are we going to be getting a remix of Amarok do you reckon?

Are we going to be getting a remix of Amarok do you reckon?

 

Apparently so, though, apparently Mike has said that Discovery and Islands / The Wind Chimes will not be in 5.1. Nothing has been said about if The Killing Fields will be part of the re-mix series either (given that 4 hours of music was recorded, it would be a shame to miss out on that). Either way in theory it won't be until 2015/2016 that it would happen. Too far away to get excited about at the moment