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DVD Rips won't play in Surround Sound

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EnglishTiger:
Hendrick - I'm well aware that Dolby Digital and AC3 are just alternative names for the same thing. I'm also aware that the DTS 5.1 is nested under/in the DTS HD MA stream, just as the Dolby Digital Stream is nested under/in the TrueHD stream, as a "fallback" and why. A user who has a Dolby Atmos enabled system theoretically can choose to listen to either the Atmos stream or the Dolby Digital/AC3 stream because the Atmos/TrueHD codec is capable of decoding both streams; but a user who doesn't have an Atmos enabled system will only ever be able to listen to the DD/AC3 stream because the DD codec can't interpret the TrueHD stream; the same applies to the DTS streams.

As far as the "Bitrate" updating every second in the Player Window - To ne that is "Normal Behaviour" that I'm used to - what to me was the "Abnormal/Unusual" behaviour happened when I was using the "Blue-Ray Menu" mode while playing the DVD where the bitrate was changing up till the point where the 1st track started playing.

Regardless of what the MC Database does, or does not, contain there is, in my view, an obvious question that still hasn't been addressed:- other than the DTS 5.1 stream not always being present the right-click streams menu always agreed with the info from MakeMKV, the info on the DVD sleeve, the book that comes with that variant of the album, the slip cover the book comes in and an extremely reliable external source. Information that MC obtained from the DVD or the .mkv file, depending on which one was being "played", why were "Audio Path" and "The Player Window" constantly presenting Wrong/Misleading values especially in respect of Sample Rate and Channel Count?

Oh I misread the sidecar file the rr entry in both Peak Level Tags did have a value. But even that doesn't explain why they have the values for 8 channels when it claims there are only 2 channels present.

Something else that maybe I need to mention - except when playing the DVD from the Blue-Ray Menu, not only was the Bitrate in the Player Window constantly changing (as expected) the range of the values being displayed varied from stream to stream (as expected) as did the "quality (and volume)" of the sound coming out of my speakers.

Hendrik:

--- Quote from: EnglishTiger on October 08, 2020, 03:03:58 am ---Information that MC obtained from the DVD or the .mkv file, depending on which one was being "played", why were "Audio Path" and "The Player Window" constantly presenting Wrong/Misleading values especially in respect of Sample Rate and Channel Count?

--- End quote ---

As was mentioned before earlier in this thread, if you have bitstreaming on, then the Audio Path is not relevant, since it's passing compressed audio and thus the information shown there is not related to the audio format it would potentially decode to, but only the compressed form, which is different.

wer:

--- Quote from: wer on October 06, 2020, 02:27:04 am ---... it might make sense to have Audio Path say "ac3 bitstream" instead of "ac3 2ch" since the "2ch" is usually misleading.  That would both make it always correct and eliminate confusion.

--- End quote ---

David Sydney:
If it's of any help (can't say I completely across all of this post) - the Audio driver used also affects surround playback obviously, but not something which is clear by default. If you have an external decoder like I do. If the Audio settings are specified using Bitstream = S/PDIF and Audio Driver = WASAPI, it decodes to 5.1. If I have used the same decoder box but Audio driver "Default Device[Direct Sount]" it does not decode as 5.1 and comes out stereo 2.1. The name of the driver is counter intuitive perhaps.

The downside of using the WASAPI is that volume control is no longer on the PC but on the decoder which is a reach for me with no remote. So I have 2 audio zones and toggle b/w them "Player Realtek PC Mixer - 2.1" that uses the Default [Direct Sound] driver for TV etc and "Player Yamaha DSP Exclusive - 5.1" that uses the WASAPI driver for DVD, Music. I have only just found out how this all works after using the decoder for 14 years, and MC for 4 years!. I rebuilt the PC and had to fiddle with all the setup and settings to commision the new install - learning something new in the process!

wer:

--- Quote from: David Sydney on October 10, 2020, 04:38:38 pm ---The downside of using the WASAPI is that volume control is no longer on the PC but on the decoder which is a reach for me with no remote. ... I have only just found out how this all works after using the decoder for 14 years, and MC for 4 years!

--- End quote ---

You still haven't quite mastered it, I'm afraid.  :) Unfortunately the way Windows sound works is often not straightforward, so it can frustrate people...

Two points, either for you or so that others who find this thread won't get confused:

First, it's not ideal to use DirectSound.  It resamples everything, and that's not good for quality. WASAPI or ASIO are preferable.

Second, using WASAPI does not cause you to lose volume control in MC. That is just false.  You lose volume control if you disable volume, or if you bitstream.  I wonder if you turned on bitstreaming a long time ago to use with your "decoder" (what device is it, exactly?) and conflated the two. Bitstreaming is the only way to send multichannel audio over S/PDIF: that interface only allows 2-channel uncompressed audio; multichannel must be encoded and compressed to traverse the interface.  WASAPI is distinct from Bitstreaming.

I, along with thousands of others, have been using WASAPI for many years, and volume control on the PC works fine.

All the other "decoding" functions you refer to, having to do with multichannel audio, can be dealt with properly by MC without relying on the vagaries of DirectSound.  DirectSound is designed to be one-size-fits-all easy, not good.

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