I saw somewhere that the Premium Sound package allows you to play DVD audio or digital music which would produce awesome surround sounds but I couldn't find anything in the owner's manual about this. Does anyone know what it is? Is it a special type of CD or is it a special DVD that you put into the Nav DVD slot? Sorry if this sounds stupid and thanks advance for the info.

 

I did not know DVD Audio had come to the E60 Logic 7 system. I know the Acura system has had it for two years, but I have not heard anything about DVD-Audio and BMW.



http://www.dvdplanet.com/main_dvdaudio.asp

 

Thanks for that link 555. I could have sworn I saw it somewhere. I believe it was mentioned on the welcome DVD that came with the owners manual for the 5 series. I will have to go back and look.

Anyone else have additional info?

 

On Nav E60 cars, you may use the DVD drive to play stardard audio CDs.

But they cannot play DVD audio.

 

Alpine F#1 status baby - $5000 just for the head unit and processor.

 

Hey Merzbow, you need to come to our Bay Area Meet: http://forums.e60.net/index.php?showtopic=...81&#entry175781

I need to check out your ride after reading the description.. =)

 

You too 555. If you don't mind the drive.

 

There are a few issues to address in this post.


First, Logic 7 can take stereo audio and steer portions of it to the various channels in a very natural way - it's designed for this task.

Second, there are true multi-channel formats like AC3, DTS, MLP, and SACD (not to be confused with L7 or DLP2).

Third, there are some tools that allow AC3 and DTS to be transcoded to MP3. Some posts suggest that it is possible to retain some surround information, but it is not clear whether this would be mixed in a way that is beneficial to the L7 decoder. Much of the literature on DPLII suggests that true discrete surround mixing is problematic for their matrix decoder and the same could hold true for L7.

Fourth, a tiny tiny percentage of stereo content gets mastered in such a way so that it helps a DPL2 decoder (probably L7 as well) to better steer the audio for the surround effect. If you've ever seen video game titles touting that they were "designed" for Dolby Pro Logic II systems, this is what I'm referring to. I think some demo CDs were released for PLII that had been mixed specially as well, but this isn't the norm.

I've meant to try to transcode some AC3 audio tracks into MP3s to test, but haven't gotten around to it. Maybe I'll try it this weekend.


As a long time listener of DVD-Audio (MLP) and SACD, I'll say it's nice - but there isn't any content. So while our cars do not support these formats, I hardly see why that's a problem.

 

Thanks for the detailed info UUronL. I just thought that it was possible and even remembered the claim that it was better so I was curious.

I was actually watching this concert of Andre Rieu on one of the local public channels and wondered how awesome it would sound with L7 or DVD-Audio.

 

For TV content, I'd imagine if your home system has Dolby Pro Logic II(x) - this will break the stereo audio out to 5.0 (7.0 for x) and steer some bass information from the mains and center to the subwoofer. DPLII has a Music and Cinema mode - each is quite effective at recreating multichannel separation. My receiver is permanently in PLII Cinema mode for TV watching, clicking over to DD when the program has it. Logic 7 works similarly, and can be found on HK AV receivers.

DVD-Audio uses a lossless codec called MLP - which stands for Meridian Lossless Packing - named after the company Meridian, its inventor. If you ever want to get sticker shock, investigate their components and speakers.

While broadcast audio is limited to Dolby Digital and stereo audio, next-gen DVD has many codecs. HD-DVD actually includes MLP (called Dolby Lossless in the spec) as an optional codec that can be used. There is also a lossless DTS (DTS HD) that is optional as well. By optional I mean that studios aren't required to release titles with these codecs. Part of the DTS HD spec includes some higher lossy bit rates in addition to the lossless one. Dolby has a higher quality version of Dolby Digital, DD+ which can support up to 13.1 channels at high bit-rates. These "better" codecs will likely be mainstays, and we'll be lucky if we see the lossless ones in my opinion. BluRay omits MLP and adds DSD, the codec used for SACD.


So... for concert material that gets released on HD-DVD/BluRay, you might get higher-rez audio.

For movies, I'm really hoping we get lossless tracks - if you've ever seen a DLP Cinema presentation or a Hollywood film released on IMAX (both use uncompressed digital soundtracks), you'd immediately notice the stunning audio quality.