Re: [ARSCLIST] DiscWelder Bronze first blush

[Aaron Z Snyder <aaron@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Tom Fine wrote at length about DiscWelder Bronze, and mentioned the
following: 

> 4. One of the hidden joys of DVD-A is that you can fit a LOT 
> of mono 44.1/16 content on it. Just assign the file to the 
> center channel only and then no need for twice the space used 
> for left and right channels. So if a normal CDR can hold 
> approximately 160 minutes of mono 44.1/16 WAV, a DVD-A disc 
> can hold more than 5x that, and play it back in real-deal 
> mono (ie through one speaker) if you have a 5-channel system. 
> So for all the OTR fans out there, there is no longer an 
> excuse to pack a CDR with hours and hours of junk-sounding 
> low-bitrate MP3 -- just pack a DVD-A with full-monty CD 
> quality audio. This format is also useful for, for instance 
> an opera recorded off the radio. 5+ hours of 2-channel 
> CD-quality audio fit on these things.

One factor which militates against this method is that DiscWelder will not
allow a no-pause situation between tracks when you record mono this way.
Since I record a lot of classical music, which, in most cases, calls for no
pause at all between movements of a symphony (normally you want at least
hall ambience in a live recording to remain constant between movements), I
found this extremely annoying, and contacted DiscWelder to find out why it
was happening. The response: monophonic recording in the center channel, in
the absence of left and right data, is non-standard for a DVD-A, and hence
the no-pause-between-tracks feature is disabled. You could record in either
the left or right front channel, but then you wouldn't have the automatic
routing of audio to both left and right channels during playback. Hence, it
seems that the only way to achieve pain-free monophonic listening with the
possibility of zero-time pauses between tracks is to record dual-mono, i.e.
the same thing in both the left and right channels. On the positive side, it
still allows you to pack a lot of stuff onto a single disc. If the no-pause
situation is of no consequence to you, then by all means use Tom's
center-channel solution!

Aaron Z
maddawgdisks