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Author Topic: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?  (Read 2418 times)

Ton

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I have a few dts audio cd files in wav and/or (converted to) flac format.
When I try to play them in MC 17, having set "5.1 channels" and "mixing to JRSS" in DSP Studio, I only get a lot of noise/hissing.
However when I set Channels to "Source number of channels" and Mixing to "No", I do get 5.1 channels sound. But the strange thing is that Audio Path tells me that Input AND Output are 2 channels and that no changes are made.
Is this normal behavior and to be expected ? Or am I doing something wrong and do I have to change some settings in Options ?
Thanks in advance.
Ton
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Matt

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #1 on: April 23, 2012, 11:07:06 am »

What type of connection does your soundcard use, S/PDIF, HDMI, or analog?
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

Ton

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #2 on: April 23, 2012, 11:21:09 am »

What type of connection does your soundcard use, S/PDIF, HDMI, or analog?

Thanks for your reply.
I use a HDMI connection. I don't use a soundcard (anymore) but the NVidia HD Audio drivers for my GTX 460 video card.
In Windows I have set sound to 5.1 surround if that is of importance.
Bitstreaming in MC is set to None btw.
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JimH

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #3 on: April 23, 2012, 11:24:13 am »

Thanks for your reply.
I use a HDMI connection. I don't use a soundcard (anymore) but the NVidia HD Audio drivers for my GTX 460 video card.
In Windows I have set sound to 5.1 surround if that is of importance.
Bitstreaming in MC is set to None btw.
Try setting Windows to stereo and turning bistreaming on.
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Matt

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2012, 11:24:28 am »

DTS WAV files are complicated, because they're sort of "hacked" into a stereo-looking WAV file.  A little more here:
http://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/DTS_WAV

If you encode a DTS WAV as FLAC, it might not be playable in Media Center.  Although it might unintentionally bitstream to your outboard decoder.

If it's a WAV file, we should detect that it's DTS and decode it to 5.1.  You would see this in Audio Path.

If you have a WAV file that we don't detect / decode, could you provide a sample to matt at jriver dot com?  The first 1 MB would be enough.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

Ton

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2012, 12:54:17 pm »

@JimH: That didn't work unfortunately.

@Matt: With one file it played fine as WAV, but not as (converted to) FLAC.
            But I have another WAV file that doesn't play properly and only with noise. I can send you a part of it  
            but what is the best, simplest, way to cut a small part of it ? Is that possible in MC ?

Update: Already found a way. Will send it to you.
            
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Matt

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2012, 04:16:13 pm »

The audio data in the sample you sent starts with 63,804 empty bytes (0x00). 

We only look at the first 16384 bytes of audio data to decide if the stream is DTS.

Since 0x00 is silence in PCM (and not a DTS header), we play the file as PCM.

I'm not sure what the solution is.  Do you know why the file has these 0x00 bytes in the audio data?
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

Matt

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #7 on: April 23, 2012, 04:20:45 pm »

We'll try this in a coming build:
Changed: Increased the probe size used to analyze if a WAV file contains DTS from 16kB to 256kB.
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Matt Ashland, JRiver Media Center

Ton

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #8 on: April 23, 2012, 05:22:04 pm »

Do you know why the file has these 0x00 bytes in the audio data?

To get a file of around 1MB in size, I did cut the first 10 seconds of a track. Could that be the cause ?
Anyway: I thought of sending you another file, cut from the middle of the same track, and tried to play that before sending it to you and that played fine, without noise AND reporting 6 channels Input in Audio Path.
So I think the solution you proposed in your last reply will probably solve it.
I didn't send you another file btw.
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Ton

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Re: How should I play DTS audio cd (files) ? Am I doing something wrong ?
« Reply #9 on: April 24, 2012, 07:43:39 am »

Meanwhile I saw (in an audio editor) that there is indeed an small empty space at the start of the 1st track.
I cut that off and now the whole album plays fine.

Btw, I used an external audio editor but (as I already asked above) is it also possible to edit audio in MC ?
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