Topic: Some ripped surround sound DTS-CDs are no longer playing (Read 9897 times)

jaredw · « **on:** May 23, 2015, 05:36:54 pm »

This is my first time writing in a forum, so I apologize if it takes me a little time to get the hang of this. As the subject states, some of my ripped DTS-CDs are no longer playing. First, let me give info that seems relevant:
1. MC20 for windows ver. 20.0.103
2. Ripped via dbPowerAmp to wav
3. wav Playback Method: JRiver audio engine (using DirectShow filter)
4. Last time playback worked: Mid January 2015
5. When attempt to play a song that won't play, it is now silent for up to about 10s before stopping play

When I first ripped a DTS-CD, I experienced the problem of the static noise but that was resolved by forcing the playback method. I can still get the static back by returning the playback method to Automatic.

I've also noticed importing irregularities that didn't exist before. For example, I just re-imported Debussy's La Mer and one of the tracks includes a lot of tag data that the others do not (eg, Album, genre, track). The bit rate (1411kbps) and depth (16) look good though in all cases. I also ripped Don Henley's End of the Innocence and all songs played fine except for one (Gimme What You Got). And that one lacked a lot of the tag info. Other examples: Sting's Nothing Like the Sun plays but the Police's Every Breath You Take: The Classics does not.

Some things I've tried that I remember:
1. Changing playback methods
2. Forcing file type to dts (based on a previous thread)
3. Ripping in JRiver

Again, I'm new to this so I don't really know how it works. But I hope someone can help with this. Thanks!

JimH · « **Reply #1 on:** May 23, 2015, 06:31:57 pm »

Welcome.

> 3. wav Playback Method: JRiver audio engine (using DirectShow filter)

Set MC to use "Automatic" for the WAV file type.

Do the files play in Windows Media Player or any other player?

jaredw · « **Reply #2 on:** May 23, 2015, 07:58:32 pm »

Thanks for the response, JimH. With "Automatic" selected, I get the static or hissing noise for Debussy's La Mer and the Police hits compilation. Interesting though that Sting's Nothing Like the Sun still works. And yes, I've listened to these exact files before via JRiver this past winter. I've also listened to the discs in my car (acura els system). I did notice in the revision history that there were some changes to the dts decoder for dts-hd support, or something like that, since I last listened to those files. Again, I really appreciate your with trying to debug this!

JimH · « **Reply #3 on:** May 23, 2015, 08:09:10 pm »

These aren't ordinary WAV files are they?

jaredw · « **Reply #4 on:** May 23, 2015, 08:23:54 pm »

No, they are 5.1 surround sound DTS files that are written on a redbook CD (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.1_Music_Disc). I had no clue this format existed until I bought Nothing Like The Sun and almost returned it because I expected a DVD-A. I originally got the hissing sound and was completely confused. I read some JRiver forum threads and one of them suggested to rip it as a wav and set the wav playback method to the jriver audio (using DirectShow filter), and that did the trick at the time (but obviously not anymore).

glynor · « **Reply #5 on:** May 23, 2015, 10:29:10 pm »

I know what you mean. I think I have a few of these kicking around, but I'd need to dig them out and see if they still work.

EDIT: Nah. I converted them all to multichannel FLAC files many moons ago. Sorry.

Can you use Dropbox or Wikisend to post an example file?

glynor · « **Reply #6 on:** May 23, 2015, 10:49:47 pm »

By the way, if you want to just convert them to a less troublesome format, this application can do it without needing to resort to command line ffmpeg trickery.

They have a full-featured 30-day trial.

I'd recommend extracting them to "real" multichannel flac.

jaredw · « **Reply #7 on:** May 24, 2015, 12:13:23 am »

Thanks for helping me try to figure this out, glynor! I've never used dropbox with a link like this so I hope it works:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/oxkwrfxik3bln1m/02%20Police%2C%20The%20-%20Can%27t%20Stand%20Losing%20You.wav?dl=0

And yes, I'm considering your conversion process just so I don't have to do this again. I have dvdae, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to use it to convert a dts-cd. It seems to only want dvds. I found online discussions on how to convert dts from a dvd or bluray to a dts-cd, but I haven't found info on how to extract from one. Do you have recipe for that process? Still, I might start looking at ffmpeg as a backup. Thanks again!

JimH · « **Reply #8 on:** May 24, 2015, 07:11:30 am »

Can you play them in any other player?

blgentry · « **Reply #9 on:** May 24, 2015, 08:35:35 am »

I tried the file provided (Can't Stand Losing You) in MC 20.0.94 for Mac. It shows up as 2 channel WAV and plays static.

I then tried it in VLC, and it correctly recognizes it as DTS audio and "3F2R/LFE", which is how it displays 5.1 audio.

I don't know what to do to troubleshoot this further, but maybe someone else does...

Brian.

glynor · « **Reply #10 on:** May 24, 2015, 10:08:10 am »

Thanks for the sample. I grabbed a copy and will play around a bit to see if I can get it working.

Leave it up for a bit if you can, because someone from JRiver might need to take a look at it.

jaredw · « **Reply #11 on:** May 24, 2015, 11:32:43 am »

Glad the file upload worked and the problem has been verified by blgentry. Thank you all for helping with this! This filed played in my MC earlier in the year. I believe something was changed in the last few months with one of the updates. Also, as I mentioned at the start, some of these files are no longer importing like they used to (although I didn't verify for this particular song; that was mostly with the Debussy DTS-CD). And yes, I won't touch the dropbox upload until this gets resolved one way or another. Thanks again!!!

glynor · « **Reply #12 on:** May 24, 2015, 11:59:50 am »

Media Center now has a re-written DTS decoding engine, and no longer requires a third-party filter to decode DTS-HD Master Audio. That's awesome, but I wonder if it broke DTS-WAV.

That's a guess though. It could have been something else. DTS-encoded WAV files are a very fiddly format. They've broken many times in the past, which is why I eventually gave up and converted them.

Quote from: jaredw on May 24, 2015, 12:13:23 am

I have dvdae, but for the life of me, I can't figure out how to use it to convert a dts-cd. It seems to only want dvds. I found online discussions on how to convert dts from a dvd or bluray to a dts-cd, but I haven't found info on how to extract from one. Do you have recipe for that process? Still, I might start looking at ffmpeg as a backup.

It has been so long since I did it, that I don't remember (and I'm sure it is all different now).

There is a very nice description of how to do it available online with ffmpeg for OSX. But I didn't find much for Windows in a brief search (but I'm sure there is some description somewhere).

fitbrit · « **Reply #13 on:** May 25, 2015, 09:03:26 am »

Quote from: glynor on May 24, 2015, 11:59:50 am

That's a guess though. It could have been something else. DTS-encoded WAV files are a very fiddly format. They've broken many times in the past, which is why I eventually gave up and converted them.

They have broken for me too on different occasions - in the past.
I just tried one of my favourite albums that is in this form and it plays just fine.
I tried OP's dropbox link and it plays static.

Hendrik · « **Reply #14 on:** May 25, 2015, 09:18:08 am »

I'll give the file a try tomorrow, if its valid DTS-CD then I'm sure I can make it work.

glynor · « **Reply #15 on:** May 25, 2015, 09:28:36 am »

Quote from: fitbrit on May 25, 2015, 09:03:26 am

I just tried one of my favourite albums that is in this form and it plays just fine.

Can you post a copy of a working one? It might be useful to Hendrik to have a working and non-working example.

blgentry · « **Reply #16 on:** May 25, 2015, 02:52:40 pm »

As most of you probably know, VLC is one of the most forgiving players on the planet. It consistently plays back more damaged, weird, and whacked out files than any other player I've tried.

When I played the sample file with VLC, it should have been a red flag to me that the CODEC information panel shows a bitrate of 0. That's not a great sign.

Quicktime plays loud static from this file. Audacity, like JRiver, detects this as a 2 channel file, not 6, and shows (and plays) static.

Conclusion: This file is damaged and whacked out.

Brian.

6233638 · « **Reply #17 on:** May 25, 2015, 03:42:29 pm »

Quote from: blgentry on May 25, 2015, 02:52:40 pm

As most of you probably know, VLC is one of the most forgiving players on the planet. It consistently plays back more damaged, weird, and whacked out files than any other player I've tried.
When I played the sample file with VLC, it should have been a red flag to me that the CODEC information panel shows a bitrate of 0. That's not a great sign.

Displaying a bitrate of 0 is not necessarily a sign of a damaged file.
I suspect it reports "0" because it's a compressed audio format contained in a WAV file.

Quote from: blgentry on May 25, 2015, 02:52:40 pm

Quicktime plays loud static from this file. Audacity, like JRiver, detects this as a 2 channel file, not 6, and shows (and plays) static.
Conclusion: This file is damaged and whacked out.

Neither of these decode DTS. You'll be hearing the raw bitstream, and not the decoded DTS audio.

VLC seems to decode the DTS audio to a 6 channel output just fine, and the track plays to completion.

blgentry · « **Reply #18 on:** May 25, 2015, 04:27:16 pm »

If I'm understanding this correctly, this file, from a DTS encoded physical CD, has packed the 5.1 channel DTS encoded bitstream into 2 channels of CD, using CD's sample and bit rate.

To play it, a program has to reverse this process. That, by definition, is whacked out!

Seriously, I'm always amazed at the new and insane things people come up with for audio. If the OP has any way to do so, PLEASE transcode these as soon as possible to something else. FLAC would seem to be a good choice for maintaining full quality.

Well, at least I learned something.

Brian.

6233638 · « **Reply #19 on:** May 25, 2015, 05:16:57 pm »

Yes, DTS signals are a 2 channel bitstream, which decodes to a multichannel signal.
This was done to fit within the limitations of Toslink specification, which can only do 2 channels of uncompressed audio.

Since DTS is a lossy codec, it means that the data is stored using floating point values, and it would both lose quality (negligibly so if you convert to 24-bit, but technically a lossy process) and increase the file size by converting it to a 5.1 FLAC file.

I'm not sure that I have any DTS-CDs, but I do have DTS tracks that I've taken off "Audio DVDs" (not DVD-A discs which use MLP audio) and those are about 500MB an album in their native DTS format, but end up around 2GB if I convert them to FLAC.
Better to leave them in their native format in my opinion - though Media Center does not currently have the option to bitstream audio-only DTS tracks for some reason (if you wanted to output 5.1 via a Toslink connection) that setting only works with vidoes that contain DTS audio.

glynor · « **Reply #20 on:** May 25, 2015, 06:46:38 pm »

Quote from: 6233638 on May 25, 2015, 05:16:57 pm

but end up around 2GB if I convert them to FLAC.
Better to leave them in their native format in my opinion

In my opinion, the space is well worth the increase in compatibility and decrease in fiddly.

Of course, the episode of Game of Thrones I recorded last night is 2.7GB.

6233638 · « **Reply #21 on:** May 25, 2015, 08:44:46 pm »

You could be right with DTS-CD, since many applications won't decode the DTS track and just play it as "bad" WAV audio.
With the Audio DVDs that I ripped, I put the DTS audio in an MKA container which has worked without any real issues thus far.

The main issue is that you can't enable bitstreaming in MC for some reason, but if you convert to FLAC you can never do that, since you no longer have the original DTS audio track. That's the main reason I'd rather keep the tracks as DTS.

But I can see the advantages of FLAC as well.
As long as you have an HDMI-connected AVR FLAC should work on any device which supports multichannel PCM without any problems.
I can think up a few scenarios that I haven't tested, which might have issues with my MKA files too. E.g. trying to stream to a mobile device, selecting individual tracks remotely.

Hendrik · « **Reply #22 on:** May 26, 2015, 07:07:02 am »

It looks like the file is indeed somehow corrupt. Its not only a factor of identifying it as DTS, our decoder also doesn't manage to handle it.

glynor · « **Reply #23 on:** May 26, 2015, 07:37:09 am »

Quote from: 6233638 on May 25, 2015, 08:44:46 pm

With the Audio DVDs that I ripped, I put the DTS audio in an MKA container which has worked without any real issues thus far.

Yeah. I have two that I ripped a long, long time ago that I put in MKAs and I've left those alone. It was mostly the WAV ones I was complaining about. WAV is just a bad container format for this.

jaredw · « **Reply #24 on:** May 28, 2015, 01:04:46 am »

Thanks to everyone who has been looking into this! I was originally receiving emails telling me that people had replied but that stopped (maybe it got spam-filtered). So I thought no one else had responded since this weekend and was getting ready to just ask about how we can get jriver involved (bat signal?). I agree with glynor that I should have another version just because this format seems so temperamental. I have the hd space. I just need to put the time in. Regardless, this album used to play in jriver (along with my Debussy DTS-CD), and so I believe this is a bug that occurred in an update (perhaps the one that glynor mentioned). It makes me wonder if my DTS-CDs would work with foobar 2000

. Now, if Hendrik is claiming that the file has a random defect (eg, from a damaged cd), than that is very improbable because I ripped it with dbpoweramp, and the rip was deemed "accurate (7)". I believe that means its CRC matched with 7 others that have been ripped, and it is therefore is very unlikely to have a random defect. However, that doesn't mean a systematic error could exist and be shared amongst several CDs, and I could be interpreting that accuracy rating wrong. Anyway, thanks again to you all!!

glynor · « **Reply #25 on:** May 28, 2015, 01:34:18 am »

Maybe try uploading one or three more, in case the upload itself got damaged.

Oh, and the notice emails may have gotten filtered, but it only notifies you once until you come back. So, even if ten people reply, you'll only get one notice until you come back and check the thread (while logged into the forum, so it knows it is you). Keeps it less spammy on popular threads.

jaredw · « **Reply #26 on:** May 28, 2015, 10:09:04 am »

Thanks for info regarding how the forum email system works, glynor. Here are some more files for people to play with:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/98tilshl369y693/02%20Jean%20Martinon%20-%20Nocturnes%2C%20for%20female%20chorus%20%26%20orchestra%2C%20L.%2091-%20No.%202%2C%20-Fetes%C2%BF.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wam9xaj21gnwur6/06%20Sting%20-%20Fragile.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/9ve7e9c16hl7u16/09%20Police%2C%20The%20-%20Spirits%20in%20the%20Material%20World.wav?dl=0

We have one from another cd that's no longer playing, one from the same cd we've been looking at, and another from a cd that IS playing. I'm becoming pretty confident that this is a problem with the dts decoder update. At what point does jriver get involved to fix it (or prove me wrong, but either way, it'll work again)?

Matt · « **Reply #27 on:** May 28, 2015, 11:15:04 am »

I downloaded "02 Jean Martinon - Nocturne…etes¿.wav". I imported it into MC and it played as static.

Then I changed the File Type to dts and it played perfectly!

Does that match what you're seeing?

jaredw · « **Reply #28 on:** May 28, 2015, 11:41:45 am »

Thanks for helping me look into this, Matt! I saw that in a previous thread before I started mine, and tried it on other files before and it didn't work for me. I just now attempted to do it on that particular file, and it didn't work for that one either. But perhaps I'm doing something wrong with the process. I selected file type as dts as shown in the attachment. Also, the dts playback method is set to "Automatic" as shown in the other attachment. Am I missing a step? Do I need to reboot or explicitly change the file extension from .wav to .dts and re-import? Also, I'm using MC 20.0.103. Thanks again!!

glynor · « **Reply #29 on:** May 28, 2015, 04:49:06 pm »

Matt and Hendrik are both developers from JRiver. Hendrik wrote the DTS decoder and all of LAV. Matt is the lead developer (and COO, I think).

You have the best help money can't buy.

fitbrit · « **Reply #30 on:** May 28, 2015, 11:27:17 pm »

Quote from: glynor on May 25, 2015, 09:28:36 am

Can you post a copy of a working one? It might be useful to Hendrik to have a working and non-working example.

I just saw this now. Is a copy still needed?

jaredw · « **Reply #31 on:** May 28, 2015, 11:54:15 pm »

So the big guns are here! Thanks for letting me know, glynor. And I included one that works in my last post, fitbrit, so I don't think it's necessary that you do the same.

jaredw · « **Reply #32 on:** June 05, 2015, 01:14:03 am »

So I finally got some time and found the ffmpeg conversion approach to multichannel flac, and that seems to work. I'm going to probably want to put together a script that will automate this across all of my dts-wav files. However, at this point, I have to manually put in the tag info. Perhaps I can somehow include that as part of the automation. But I'm really not looking forward to doing this. I saw a new update was ready (MC 20.0.115), and I crossed my fingers, selected file type = dts, and it didn't work again. I know Matt said it worked for him, so either there's something wrong with my setup (user config or perhaps even on the windows side) or we're operating on different versions. I'd prefer to reconcile this. If not, I guess I'll script away. Another question: Since I know it was working back in late January or early February (turns out, La Mer is not a good piece to play while attempting to sleep), is there a way I can revert back to a previous version of MC 20? Again, thanks to everyone who has attempted to help me with this!

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Author Topic: Some ripped surround sound DTS-CDs are no longer playing (Read 9897 times)