LPCM vs Dolby 2

[Billy_Black]

Been playing around in Nero Vision Express with some Xvid conversions.

I'm stumped about the audio. With LCPM the file becomes quite large compared to Dolby 2. But when playing the resultant DVD through my Harman/Kardan the Dolby 2 ones sound pretty terrible (weak, tinny no real ambiance) no matter what mode I try (Prologic II emulation, music, movies etc). With surround off they sound OK. Yet if I re-do the same AVI with LPCM it sounds great (although there is slight trade off in vid quality due to the larger audio file), full, rich with great surround. The LPCM discs will also allow the full use of all the various surround modes the Harman/Kardan has, the Dolby 2 discs will not.

I've let NVE encode and used MainConcept, the audio results are the same. Using 2 passes through MainConcept though seems to take care of the vid quality drop compared to NVE.

Am I misiing something here? Or is this just a Nero thing.

Thanks

[celtic_druid]

I wouldn't recommend Nero to do converting. Well accept for he/lc aac encoding, but that is a different story.

LPCM is lossless, AC3 is not. At a decent bitrate AC3 should be transparent though and still much smaller.