Duffinator said:
Nice review. I'm not familiar with the dual disc format. Is the multi channel audio portion of this disc that was reviewed 5.1 Dolby Digital? DVD-A was mentioned but it wasn't specific enough for my thick skull.
DVD-A does not use DTS or Dolby Digital, instead it usually uses Meridian Lossless Packing or MLP (sometimes called PPCM ). The compression techniques with MLP differ from Dolby Digital and DTS which use "lossy" compression. Lossy compression discards elements of the signal which are thought to be inaudible. MLP instead preserves the entire linear PCM signal, but still compresses it (about 50%). MLP also uses data validation to ensure that the signal remains true to the master signal.
The Multi-Channel portion on 'Back Home' is MLP 48khz/24bit in all channels. I'll include this more specific information in future reviews, so thanks for asking.
Also I forgot to note that I could not use my Pioneer 563A for the review because of the unit's firmware issue. It has an inability to play many newer DVD-A discs. This had nothing to do with the Dual Disc spec, this is simply a widely known problem with the 563A. I instead used my backup player, a Toshiba SD-4800, which works equaly well for DVD-A.