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You guys are right in your assumption that DVD audio has a HUGE amount of data compression applied to make the audio fit on the DVD in the first place.
I don't know the specs, but it's pretty much an .mp3 type data stream.
I have a few books on audio for film and TV and they pretty much stress how historically audio has been thought of as a "special effect" in film. It definitely is considered as "support" to the picture, so it will always get less consideration.
Truthfully, in film production the only "hi-fi" portion of the audio is the music score which was recorded in a pro studio or soundstage.
The dialog is almost 99% mono, up the center and if you've ever been on a film set you'll quickly see that the sound recordist and his boom man are about as important as the union truck drivers! They'll almost never do another take for sound reasons and besides, they can always do ADR. It's almost like the thought is that it's great if the sound recordist gets the dialog during the take, but all audio can be re-done, so it doesn't really matter.
The SFX and ambience are added in post and since everything has to happen really quickly they don't have the luxury of taking their time. Also, since picture has precidence any editorial changes mean that the audio mix people have to quickly adapt to the new edited verson. All this adds to a "hurry up.. yeah, that's good enough" attitude.
The whole mind set in film production is that since audio supports the picture it is inherently secondary. This is why if you listen to the soundtrack without picture the edits seem sudden and jarring. They have developed techniques that are totally different than music editing. A large part of film editing wouldn't "work" without the picture to "explain" the edits.
So... don't expect too much!
As an interesting note:
I used to install and service EXTREMELY high dollar home theatres for millionaire types who had nothing but money to spend. I was always amused that they'd spend thousands of dollars on audio gear only to playback crappy DVD audio!
Ever look at the pixelation on DVDs?
The picture is just as data compressed and lossy!
Ahhhhh.. It's just a remake of a TV show from the '60s or a remake of another movie anyways! Most music is "consumed" by people wearing iPod headphones, so why shouldn't the DVDs and video suck, too!
Danny Brown
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