Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[bspachman]

I'm nearly done with the process of ripping my CD collection to the hard drive of my HTPC media jukebox. I've started investigating how to get quality playback of my files as well as listen to the occasional DTS CD. The hardware setup is currently:

OS - Windows 2000 Professional SP3
Sound - M-Audio Dio 24/96 (Driver 5.10.00.0027)
Driver set to Consumer mode
Receiver - Denon 3802
Interface - Toslink optical out from Dio to Denon

The software setup includes:

Media Jukebox v8.0.336
MJ ASIO alpha 3

The files are APE/APL files (along with the odd MP3) and the CDs are stock DTS music CDs.

1. All files play fine in MJ when the default WaveOut driver is selected. In the advanced options of the WaveOut driver I made sure the signal is going to the Maudio Delta Dio SPDIF device. The monitor mixer of the Maudio control panel shows the "WavOut SPDIF" input receiving signal as expected. The "H/W Out SPDIF" section of the Patchbay is set to "WavOut SPDIF". I get decent sound as expected. Life is okay.

2. If I enable the ASIO driver in MJ & play my files, I don't get any output unless I change the Patchbay/Router setup to send the "Monitor Mixer" signal to the "H/W Out SPDIF" output. The signal meters in the mixer control panel show activity on the "WavOut 1/2" device. This is unexpected. Can anyone tell me why enabling ASIO with MJ doesn't allow me to keep my SPDIF settings as above? What kind of quality might I be losing in this scenario?

Finally, DTS CDs fail to play with various combinations of the above. I've seen threads touting success with a WinAmp setup using the ASIO output/CDReader input, but MJ just gives me static consistently :-) Does anyone have tips o' wisdom to deal with this? I've mucked about with "Professional/Consumer" "Audio/Non-Audio" settings in the MAudio control panel in a haphazard way without succeeding. Any ideas if DTS CD playback is even possible with MJ?

The possible bug is this:
I got the Internal Play buffer error at one point, but I hadn't done anything unusual. I had been in shuffle mode. I turned off shuffle, then sorted on the track number, then used the contextual menu to "Update Playback Order". That generated the error. Of course, I have subsequently been unable to reproduce it. Sorry....

Thanks for any help!
Brad

[Matt]

Hey Brad,

Drop me an email at matt @ jriver.com and we'll chase this next week.  One of the problems may be that there's no way to use an ASIO output device / channel other than the first one with the ASIO beta.

Thanks for your help.

-Matt

[PhatPhreddy]

I believe your DTS CD issue is the simple Windows limitation... It sees Redbook CD format and assumes (incorrectly) a 16/44.1 format is there without attempting to detect 44.1 or 48 / 96 etc...

What happens when you rip a 24/96 cd to HD ?? If you are able to rip this with EAC or MJ would that not sidestep the CD detection system ??

I am going to have to buy a couple of DTS and DVD-A disks to test with (I know I will only get DVD-V format audio but hey thats pretty darn nice too)...

[Mike Noe]

I tried ripping a DTS CD with MJ and I believe it ripped it 16/44.  Am I missing something or will MJ not detect the DTS greater than 16/44 for ripping?

[bspachman]

Matt,

Thanks. I'll email you this weekend and hopefully we can track down the behavior with the ASIO plugin and the hardware outputs.

As for DTS CDs, I believe they actually are 44.1/16, but they are DTS compressed bitstreams that are usually 5.1 channels. No matter how I rip a DTS album (whether using EAC or MJ), the info window in MJ shows that the format is Uncompressed Audio (PCM)--that's to be expected, and it shows that the sample rate is 44.1/16, but only 2 channels.

Something else I'll try this weekend is messing with the DolbyDigital mix on some of my DVD-As and also seeing if I can rip the 96/24 versions of the DVD-A tracks. It's fun to experiment!

Brad

[bspachman]

While trying to work out the DTS problems with MJ, I was trying for a frame of reference, so I was also trying to get them to play with Winamp. I had zero success with Winamp (not even static) until I actually quit MJ. I think that two programs using the ASIO driver interface at the same time don't like to coexist. Quitting MJ and running Winamp by itself corrected all the Winamp problems. DTS CDs play fine, DTS .wav files play fine, and even Monkey's audio compressed DTS .wav files play fine!

Media Jukebox is still not happy with DTS information, but since the ASIO capability is only at the alpha stage, I'll hold out hopes for the future. It seems that MJ will need to find a way to send the bitstream directly to the SPDIF outputs.

One last interesting thing that I noticed with the Winamp setup: sending the monitor signal to the SPDIF output using the patchbay part of the control panel yields only static no matter if you are sending the bitstream to the stereo outputs or to the SPDIF outputs, so even the internal routing in the sound card seems to corrupt the bitstream.

Best,
Brad

[PhatPhreddy]

Please do keep us updated... I am getting really interested in stepping up to higher resolution audio...

Are those 24/96 CD's like the chesky offerings ?? I got emailed by them and they have a 9.99 sale on lots of interesting titles but I shudder to think what a sale in higher rez recordings may cost me in HW upgrades to make the most of them... If I get time I am going to have a try at building some amps (from AKSA) to get a better system still on some kind of sensible budget..

Also keep up posted on DVD-V audio track rippability...

[Mike Noe]

I've got a handfull of those Chesky's and they're incredible, well worth the dough if you system can resolve.

I'll give Winamp a try with the DTS rip...I had them both running at the same time (not playing).

[Osho]

I have tried ripping a 24/96 record (published by hiresmusic.com) with a lot of frustration and eventually, unsuccessfully.

I have heard reports of people doing rips of some 24/96 music from other DVD-Video audio without problem.

You can read more details in this thread (if you are curious),

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=155853&highlight=online|PLS|24%2F96

Osho

[bspachman]

This thread has kind of wandered off topic, but since the ASIO plugin will probably be needed to deal with 24/96, it should be okay :-)

I also hate posting "See this thread for more info" posts, but people interested in extracting high-res audio from DVD-A discs should check out:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=163722

Looks very promising....hopefully, I'll have some MJ impact info later on.

Best,
Brad

[PhatPhreddy]

Again to reference an external thread

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=164648

The Key quotes here would be....

That's interesting. In my original post, I discovered the only way to listen to music with Media Jukebox using their ASIO driver is to enable the Monitor Mixer (#2 above).

And in  reply

You are bypassing the KMixer only if the client software can talk directly to the hardware mixer. If client software is controlling the hardware mixer you would not have to enable in the Delta Control Panel. I don't know if MJ does hardware mixer or not. ASIO should bypass the KMixer in any case.

And also

Cliff is the expert but from my limited understanding when you do that you undergo 2 sample rate conversions on the card.

Input format to internal 36 bit representation. any processing that happens on the mixer on the card (mainly volume control and mixing multiple tracks) and then resulting signal to 16bit S/PDIF output.

I am just trying to bring these to your attention....

Also I remember readin that all sound is resampled in the app to 32  Bit... Is this the case for 16 bit CD audio ?? Is this resampling possible to turn off as an option otherwise the ASIO bit perfect plug in may not be giving us this anyway...

Personally I am all for having the option to upsample and oversample up to 24 / 192 or whatever for testing checking and experiments but perhaps this ample rate conversion is why the goldern eared seem to prefer w..... with APE and sometimes MAD ??