There are more than a few threads about Digital sound, I will bump this one as it is almost the same as my request.
What I want to do is have a selection of .wav files that are DTS Surround, and be able to play them with the full DTS being passed to the Receiver, and, I want the same choice of Visualizers while playing them. This seems impossible currently.
Here's what I have done: I was hooked up coax to a good receiver that decodes all the formats. If I play a standard mp3 all is well. If I try to play the .wav MC complains the hardware is not capable of playing the file. MC does not see that the coax digital port on my PC will output DTS encoded tracks. I can turn on Dolby Digital output in the DSP and I get Dolby Digital on the Receiver, and the music output is 5.1. My classic song test "Money" by Pink Floyd, has the money sound effect go around the room ending on Left Rear right at the start of the song. A great test.
But while it says Dolby Digital, it does NOT say DTS. Researching both, DTS uses higher bitrates, and less compression, etc to achieve a better sound (according to many).
My big question to any expert in the field here..: If I play a DTS file and the Receiver shows it as Dolby Digital because the MC is set to output Dolby Digital, is the sound as good as it would be if I actually passed the DTS through? Perhaps it is my imagination, but the best A/B tests I can do show me the DTS sounds fuller, maybe just equalization, but there's a difference.
If I use HDMI out on an addon NVidia card, I can get Dolby Digital out to the receiver without setting MC to Dolby Digital in the DSP. Like MC is happy thinking it is outputting to a TV, and allows DD, but if a coax or optical connection it says it cannot do it. Strange.
No matter what connection so far tried, I cannot get DTS to be sent to the Receiver. Unless I do the trick outlined here. If I lie to MC and tell it that all .wav files are video files, it happily send the full DTS signal to my Receiver. BUT, if I do that, MC does consider it a video and turns off all options for a visualization (which makes sense, of course). I have money tied up in Aeon and Gforce and others, and if I use the Video engine to play back .wav files, all I get is the cover. No track info or pretty colors
So to the mighty coders of the MC, is there a way you can let MC pass through DTS without having to convert to Dolby Digital, or think it is a video file?
Thanks for reading. I am a bit wordy..
Don