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5.1 flacs, Stereo flacs with confusing results

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FenceFurniture:
I have a flashstick that has some 5.1 Flac files on it. When I plug it in to my Denon 5.1 Amp it will not play due to "unsupported content", but when plugged in to my PC, JRiver will play them - presumably it has decoded them to stereo? The metadata says that they are "6 channel (5.1 Surround)". I expected that exactly the opposite would be the case (the amp would play them, but JRiver would not). The Denon amp won't play 5.1 wav files on the flashstick either.

I know the flashstick is OK because other stereo SACDs ripped to it will play on the Denon.

On the other hand, if I rip a 5.1 DTS CD via dbPowerAmp (using either flac which is not supported in 5.1, or wav which does support 5.1) I only get white noise using JRiver - exactly what I expected. I also tried ripping to stereo wav which only produced white noise with JRiver (kinda expected). I have read that there are (not very satisfactory) ways of getting a stereo result from 5.1 DTS, but I am not interested in doing that. (I would like to rip my handful of 5.1 DTS CDs, primarily as a backup, but it is not my main thrust - it's more the first para of this post).

Smilin_Jim:
Note - Hopefully the moderators will read this and adjust the documentation for MC25 and above.

Your issue may be the same as one that I am seeing on my 2019 Acura RDX.  It supports 5.1 channel FLAC files, but there is very little documentation on what parameters/switches were supported.  It turns out that the level of FLAC compression is a key factor in whether or not some devices will be able to decode the FLAC file.  For my Acura, the compression level must be set to 0.  PCs and most other computers with extra power to burn don't seem to ever care and there is some debate as to why these lower-powered CPUs would care either since all available published works that I have seen indicate that one should be essentially as easy to decode as another.  But the fact remains that they do.

Try re-encoding at FLAC level 0 and see if it gets recognized.

And here is what needs to get changed in JRiver.  The documentation regarding the FLAC compression level is incorrect in MC23 and in the Wiki.  The compression level has nothing at all to do with the quality, as is stated in both places.  It has to do with how aggressive the algorithm is in compressing the sound file.  It is a lossless format and there is (should be) zero difference in the quality of the compression levels.  It is just that level 0 is least aggressive (and thus quickest) and level 8 is the most aggressive (and therefore slowest.)

This really confused me and kept me from finding the answer to your/our problem longer than it should have.

JimH:

--- Quote from: Smilin_Jim on August 19, 2019, 12:56:35 pm ---And here is what needs to get changed in JRiver.  The documentation regarding the FLAC compression level is incorrect in MC23 and in the Wiki.  The compression level has nothing at all to do with the quality, as is stated in both places. 

--- End quote ---
It doesn't say that in the wiki.  It says this for FLAC:

Quality Settings: 0 - 8. Sets the quality of compression (and not sound, which is lossless), 8 meaning most compressed/time/effort.

I can understand how it could be misinterpreted though.  I just changed (compression) to (compression, not sound) at the top.

wer:
FLAC supports up to 8 channels.

I believe dbPa can rip multichannel flac, but since you are trying to rip DTS, you would need a DTS decoder.

Many devices only support "multichannel audio" (multichannel meaning more than 2 channels) if it is part of a video file.  3/5/8 channel audio as part of a wav or flac is just beyond the comprehension of some embedded devices.

If a device is physically capable of playing 5 channel PCM from a video file, there's no reason why it couldn't play it from an audio file except for lack of imagination on the part of the product designers.

FenceFurniture:
Thanks for your responses. It dawned on me when I was reading them that I had just figured that 5.1 was DTS (which the amp plays) but it is not necessarily DTS at all.

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