LD-V4200 questions from a confused Laserdisc newbie
donkeyturds
Can my machine play digital audio?
According to THIS website it can.
http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/pioneer/pioneer_ld-v4200/pioneer_ld-v4200.htm
and here's another website thats says it can.
http://www.omegav.ntnu.no/~eldorko/pioneer/indust/ldv4200.htm
...but, how?
From looking at other manchines that have digital audio functions,
there were two sets of red and white RCA plug ins. I guess one set for
analog audio and another one for digital. This only has one.
Can I get digital audio out of this thing on the back of my machine
that says "efm out"? What the heck is this thing anyway?!
I've looked for this efm thing on other manchines and on some Pioneer
advertising matereals in hopes of figuring out what that is. I
couden't find any manuals or ads for my machine, but here's what is
said about that EFM thing from an ld-v800 model.
"EFM Out Put Terminal: This Terminal facilitates EFM signal output
when LD-ROM discs containing digital data are played, enabling the LD-
V8000 to combine LD-ROM and LaserDisc playback for multimedia
applications."
What the heck does that mean? What machine(s) could my player
connected to? Were there stereo recevers with is EFM thing in the back
that could take digital audio? Or was this a computer hook up? (where
can I even find the chords to this thing?!)
HELP!
oh, and here's a website that has a picture of the remote that went
with this thing. (I don't have one)
http://www.replacementremotes.com/store/productdetailp.cfm?productid=6074
I'm linking that in hopes. perhaps, I could toggle between analog and
digital audio dracks like you can the different audio dtacks on a
dvd...or something. I'm REALLY unfamilier with laserdisc technology. I
was seven when my machine was manufactured. :) I just NOW got one of
these things.
So, if any one of you out there can help me with my machine, that'd be
great. :D Thanks. :)
Silvershot
> I have a few questions about my laserdisc player. (a Pioneer LD-V4200)
>
> Can my machine play digital audio?
>
> According to THIS website it can.
>
> http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/pioneer/pioneer_ld-v4200/pioneer_ld-v4200.htm
>
> and here's another website thats says it can.
>
> http://www.omegav.ntnu.no/~eldorko/pioneer/indust/ldv4200.htm
>
> ...but, how?
>
> From looking at other manchines that have digital audio functions,
> there were two sets of red and white RCA plug ins. I guess one set for
> analog audio and another one for digital. This only has one.
Both sets should be the same - there are two so that you can output to 2
different components - and both can output analog and digital audio.
When you play an LD or a CD, you can use the remote to select whether
the player outputs the digital or analog audio channels, and the red and
white rca jacks will output whichever you select.
As far as the "efm," someone else will have to help you with that since
I'm not at all familiar with it.
-Silvershot
donkeyturds
> donkeyturds wrote:
> > I have a few questions about my laserdisc player. (a Pioneer LD-V4200)
>
> > Can my machine play digital audio?
>
> > According to THIS website it can.
>
>
> > and here's another website thats says it can.
>
> >http://www.omegav.ntnu.no/~eldorko/pioneer/indust/ldv4200.htm
>
> > ...but, how?
>
> > From looking at other manchines that have digital audio functions,
> > there were two sets of red and white RCA plug ins. I guess one set for
> > analog audio and another one for digital. This only has one.
>
> Both sets should be the same - there are two so that you can output to 2
> different components - and both can output analog and digital audio.
> When you play an LD or a CD, you can use the remote to select whether
> the player outputs the digital or analog audio channels, and the red and
> white rca jacks will output whichever you select.
>
> As far as the "efm," someone else will have to help you with that since
> I'm not at all familiar with it.
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
Well, this is something. After hours of searching online, turns out I
CAN get digital audio out of my machine from that EFM port. All I need
to do is find a discontinued LD-ROM addapter called a DA-V1000. As to
what that IS, I have no idea. I can't even find a photograph of it, so
I can't tell if I can even hook that into a T.V. or recever or not.
But there ARE websites that sell...whatever that is...for around 66
and 79 bucks. Lucky me. :P
I found this out by going thi this address
http://www.laserfaq.org/sam/LaserDisc/Pioneer%20LD-V8000%20LaserDisc%20Player/Documents/PIB%20150001%20-%20Player%20Comparison%20Chart.pdf
interesting stuff.
Torsten
> interesting stuff.
This EFM box is not needed, if you're satisfied with the digital audio
being converted to analog. The player converts the digital track of
the LD to analog and ouputs that on the R/L jacks. I have the LD-
V4300D and this one works the same. Somewhere on the player must be an
"Audio" button which allows for switching between analog R,L, and
digital R,L. If not: then look around for the remote control which has
the audio button.
publius
ones, act as you describe. Almost all LD machines with digital audio
are switchable, decoding either digital or analog audio internally &
feeding it to the RCA jacks. Those with two or more sets of output
jacks normally have the same signal present on all sets. Switching
back and forth between digital and analog audio (also between stereo/
right mono/left mono) is often a remote-control function ; most
digital-audio players default to the digital tracks if present, so the
major difficulty you may have is listening to the analog tracks.
--publius--
On Dec 16, 6:35 pm, donkeyturds <turdsdon...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have a few questions about my laserdisc player. (a Pioneer LD-V4200)
>
> Can my machine play digital audio?
>
> According to THIS website it can.
>
> http://www.laserdiscarchive.co.uk/laserdisc_archive/pioneer/pioneer_l...
Nico de Vries
Some light on the EFM part. EFM stands for Eight-to-Fourteen-Modulation. It
is the signal that directly originates from the laser-pickup after it has
been processed by the RF processor/preamplifier. Inside the player it will
be fed to video demodulator, which delivers the NTSC video picture.
The second part of the EFM-signal is for the sound. After filtering the EFM
is split in two frequency bands, one for analog left and one for analog
right. These two signals are fed to the analog sound demodulator which
delivers the analog souns signals. Some analog audio demodulators also have
a built-in CX decoder, as is the case with the LD-V4200.
In players with digital audio capabilities the EFM is also fed to a digitial
filter followed by one or two DACs. These two parts are exactly the same as
found in a standard CD player. The DACs deliver the digital sound signals.
After studying the pictures of the various websites, I have come to the
conclusion that the LD-V4200 does not have digital audio BUILT IN (as the
remote has no AUDIO D/A button) but can reproduce it using the extra
DA-V1000 box which according to its model number seems to contain the
necessary digital filter and DACs. The second function of this box seems to
be the capability to use LD-ROMs which, just as CD-ROMs, store digital
computer data. To retrieve this data you would have to begin with the EFM
signal and process it with chips also present in a CD-ROM drive.
One way of finding out whether digital or analog audio is carried by the
audio jacks of LD-V4200 is playing an AC3 title. If the right channel has a
noise signal, the player is analog sound only.
The EFM port has one other potential use: it is likely that it can be used
to create an external AC3 RF-OUT adapter from it. This circuit would have to
be designed from scratch with the service manual of the player handy for
reference.
Regards,
Nico de Vries
"donkeyturds" <turds...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:dcbc25b0-6213-45b2...@e10g2000vbe.googlegroups.com...
donkeyturds
>
> After studying the pictures of the various websites, I have come to the
> conclusion that the LD-V4200 does not have digital audio BUILT IN (as the
> remote has no AUDIO D/A button) but can reproduce it using the extra
> DA-V1000 box which according to its model number seems to contain the
> necessary digital filter and DACs. The second function of this box seems to
> be the capability to use LD-ROMs which, just as CD-ROMs, store digital
> computer data. To retrieve this data you would have to begin with the EFM
> signal and process it with chips also present in a CD-ROM drive.
Ok, thats interesting. But, do you know what was the DA-V1000 meant
to be hooked into? a computer, a stereo recever, or a TV? Both a
recever AND a TV? Or a recever and a computer?
>
> One way of finding out whether digital or analog audio is carried by the
> audio jacks of LD-V4200 is playing an AC3 title. If the right channel has a
> noise signal, the player is analog sound only.
>
Yeah, my machine can only play analog sound. I do have ac-3 discs and
they do make that awful static noise on the right speaker when I play
them.. Thats why I'm so interested in this box. I want to hear the
digital sound-tracks on the discs that I have. One reason is that an
ebay seller recently gave me a "freebee" from buying a buttload of
laserdiscs off of him by giving me the 20th anniversary box set of the
Rocky Horror Picture Show. The disc that has the movie has three
tracks. The analog tracks have the films sountrack on the left
channel, an audence participaton track on the right. The films stereo
sountrack is in the form of a digital track. Not to mention I would
like to hear the digital tracks on those discs that have AC3 sound on
them. (mono is no fun!)
publius
"EFM" does indeed stand for Eight to Fourteen Modulation. After the
digital audio signal is embedded with subcodes, Reed-Solomon coded,
and scrambled, the resulting bitstream is cut up into blocks of eight-
bit length. These blocks are then converted into fourteen-bit DC-free
codes, a trick adopted for the Compact Disc system in order to
simplify the design of the pickup & decoding systems. The output of
the EFM coder, which is what feeds the beam modulator in a CD
mastering system, is filtered and added to the signal which drives the
LD beam modulator. This signal is sometimes known as "AFM" for
"Analog Frequency Modulation" -- I believe there is the odd LD player
which does have an "AFM" jack -- although in fact it is the sum of the
frequency-modulated video carrier (with its embedded amplitude-and-
phase modulated chroma subcarrier), the two frequency-modulated audio
carriers (or one FM audio carrier and one carrier quadrature-modulated
with the digital AC-3 signal) at a much lower level, and the EFM
signal at a level comparable to that of the analog audio.
What the player in question does is to filter the EFM signal out of
the AFM signal produced by the pickup, before the video demodulator,
just as any ordinary digital-audio LD player does, and present it at a
special connector, without doing what digital-audio LD players
ordinarily do, that is, unpacking the information and creating audio
data. This is because, under the "LD-ROM" system, the audio track
could be replaced with CD-ROM data ; while CD-ROM data is EFM encoded
for recording, it uses a completely different data structure, error
correction system, &c. from CD-Audio, and so attempting to decode it
as CD-DA data would result in nothing but gibberish which would be
muted by the fault detector.
It's certainly rather easy to get confused on this subject, & it
doesn't make an enormous amount of difference, but the above should
explain why the EFM output would be quite irrelevant for AC-3
adaptation. What the adaptor pack referred to does, if one may judge
from the "laserfaq" linked document, is to supply (probably using the
"Interface" port as well) something resembling a SCSI interface, in
other words, make it possible to access the data as if the LD machine
were a CD-ROM drive... and, apparently, on the off chance that the EFM
data is really CD audio, to convert it to audio & present it at a pair
of RCA jacks on the adaptor itself, which would feed a stereo system
just fine. Accordingly, it would indeed seem that the only way to get
digital audio would be to purchase the DA-V1000. I'm not sure it
wouldn't be easier to get a different LD player, although the 4200
appears to have a very nice feature set, & as a full-fledged
industrial player should be quite robust.
--publius--
On Dec 18, 4:42 am, "Nico de Vries" <n.de.vrie...@hetnet.nl> wrote:
> Hello group,
>
> Some light on the EFM part. EFM stands for Eight-to-Fourteen-Modulation. It
> is the signal that directly originates from the laser-pickup after it has
> been processed by the RF processor/preamplifier.
(snip)
Torsten
Okay, so it seems you're really looking for a capability to play
1. the digital (PCM) tracks from LDs
2. plus the AC3 multichannel tracks
I was confused by your original post, but it seems indeed the 4200 is
not able to decode the PCM tracks (confirmation:
www.pioneerelectronics.com/pio/pe/images/portal/cit_3424/30928814CLD-V2600-2400.pdf,
page 3-11 in the Note under Fig 3-G)
Please note that digital sound on LD (=PCM) and multichannel (=AC3 or
DTS) are different cups of tea. In order to extract the AC3 data from
LDs the player needs an AC3-RF-output (and I'm not sure whether the
EFM output into the DA-V1000 provides such a signal path). On the
other hand, for DTS your player needs a digital audio out (SPDIF or
Coax), and again, not sure whether the DA-V1000 has a digital audio
output.
Nico de Vries
You do not have to hate to correct me, as I am omly human too and can make
errors. So so correction is indeed appreciated.
As Donkeyturds is looking for a solution to enjoy the standard digital
tracks and/or AC3, I think it would be simpler to look for another player
with digital and AC3 RF out already on it, rather than trying to get a
DA-V1000 and still having to find a solution for enjoying AC3 sound,
assuming the DA-V1000 provides digital sound outputs and an S/PDIF
connection.
Regards,
Nico de Vries.
"publius" <cfca...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:b60d2067-4087-4e96...@d36g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
donkeyturds
> page 3-11 in the Note under Fig 3-G)
>
> Please note that digital sound on LD (=PCM) and multichannel (=AC3 or
> DTS) are different cups of tea. In order to extract the AC3 data from
> LDs the player needs an AC3-RF-output (and I'm not sure whether the
> EFM output into the DA-V1000 provides such a signal path). On the
> other hand, for DTS your player needs a digital audio out (SPDIF or
> Coax), and again, not sure whether the DA-V1000 has a digital audio
>
> - Show quoted text -
well, I just want the PCM tracks. That AC3 stuff I don't really care
about. I haven't really read up on much of what that is. But I'll get
to it, hee hee, one step at a time. :) right now I gotta conqure this
digital thing-a-ma-bob