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Howto - 96k/24b Audio, Linn Masters, Lplex, and Imgburn

Posted by ctbarker32 (A) on February 28, 2008 at 16:01:28

Hi,

I have recently made a discovery that I wanted to share with my fellow audiophiles.

As we know, the world has been moving to direct digital downloads for some time. iTunes is now the second largest music provider. The downside to this is that the audio quality of these lossy downloads is an anathema to true lovers of music and sound.

Thankfully, more and more labels are starting to fill the void with better than redbook (44k/16b) audio downloads. Linn Records has been providing Flac files at up to 96k/24b for some time now.

One of the challenges is how to get these files to play back on your audio system at full resolution. The obvious approach would be to author DVD-Audio discs on your computer and then play them on a DVD-Audio compliant standalone player. Unfortunately, not all DVD players can also play DVD-Audio files. Another approach is to play the files with a computer based system or server such as the Slimdevices Slimserver and Squeezbox products. The one glitch is the Squeezebox 3 currently tops out at 48k/24b and that leaves only the Transporter product at $2k that supports the 96k/24b files.

I recently learned of a free open source project called Lplex that ingeniously skirts these problems by allowing one to burn DVD discs that contain full resolution audio up to 96k/24b using a standard DVD video disc layout. The trick here is it embeds the full pcm bit stream into an Mpeg2 container so that it can play back literally on any DVD player.

I have tested this with several hi-def sources. I purchased the the Linn SASC Vol 3 Sampler from the Linn website in the Studio Master quality (95k/24b) and downloaded the files. You do need a high bandwidth connection as the files in Flac form are over 1 gb. Once you have the files it is merely a matter of dragging and dropping the directory onto the Lplex.exe program and a command window will open up and proceed to create your DVD. This may take some time. At the end of the process it will create both a DVD directory with the files in the proper layout for a DVD. It will also create an ISO file which is an image file that is very easy to burn to a DVD disc. I would suggest you use the free Imgburn to burn the ISO file.

So for no more cost than the purchase of hi-rez audio files you too can enjoy them in full fidelity on your audio system.

I'd like to acknowledge Robert Collins, who I don't know personally but took the time to inform the audio torrent community about the Lplex program and provide some great live hi-rez audio torrents.

Hope this helps some of you.

Here are the links:

http://audioplex.sourceforge.net/

http://www.imgburn.com/

http://www.linnrecords.com//index.aspx

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

VH Audio

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