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natethomas
Enjoying Retirement by Staying Busy
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First, let me say that I don't have an HDMI 1.3 version compatible card. Thus, anything I say is based only on reading and conjecture and, as such, is probably less than useless.
If you tell XBMC to output Analog Audio AND tell it not to Downmix to multichannel, it should spit out 5.1 or 7.1 LPCM sound. The recent versions of ATI HDMI cards are supposed to then be able to send this LPCM sound directly to a compatible receiver. To my knowledge, no current crop of video cards can send DTS-HD or True-HD, though I haven't read enough about the most recent cards to be absolutely correct about that.
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The 5000 series ATI cards can bitstream DTS-MA and True-HD, but as I haven't picked one up (yet?) I can't comment on how this would be achieved with a media player such as MPC-HC or XBMC.
My current ATI 4670 will bitstream DTS/DD, and everything else it sends out as a PCM 7.1 signal.
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I'm using an ATI 4890, connected to my receiver and from there to my plasma TV.
I use it with the WASAPI driver and set it as digital, activating DTS and AC3 bitstreaming.
With this setting, I can listen to FLAC 5.1 96/24 with bitperfect accuracy (decoded to LPCM by XBMC), while DD and DTS is handled by my receiver.
TrueHD and DTS-MA are bitstreamable only with an approved software and hardware (ie. the 5xxx series with TMT I think). But you can kind of easily convert both to FLAC and place the FLAC inside an mkv.
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How did you managed to get DTS passthrough working on a 4890 hdmi? I can send DD to my reciever and its fine. DTS doesen't get recognized no matter what. Reciever says analog and no audio output whatsoever. Can't do that on an integrated Intel HDMI solution g41 chipset also. Everything works spledidly cept DTS. Did i missed something along the way? Works perfect with onboard audio (coax spdif) ... Any ideas?
Pioneer high series reciever.
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2010-01-13, 04:11
(This post was last modified: 2010-01-13, 04:16 by vvcepheus7.)
ashlar,
you has wanted to say this?
video 5.1 dts-hd format ==> video 5.1 flac format ==> xbmc decode to LPCM 5.1 ==> driver WASAPI convert lpcm to ac3 or dts ==> out to spdif/hdmi in 5.1 dts/ac3 format
it is correct? but, ac3 or dts are not lossless, what you win? you increase the standard bitrate of dts/ac3 ?
thanz you!
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natethomas
Enjoying Retirement by Staying Busy
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Newer ATI graphics cards do not need to do a spdif bridge. They natively support audio, which is how they're able to do 5.1 or 7.1 LPCM sound.
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Hi. I use the HDMI out of my 4890, so when I input a FLAC 24/96 or 24/48 file the output is LPCM 24/96 or 24/48. What I gain is total fidelity.
Am I able to tell the difference between a 96/24 5.1 stream and a DTS 1536kbps 5.1 stream? Am I able to tell the difference between a 96/24 stereo stream and a V2 Lame encoded MP3?
Honestly I say no. But I do it because I can, it's that fuzzy and warm feeling you get when you things are *right*.
Although there are still problems in playing back FLAC encapsulated .dts files, but for those can use my Squeezeboxes for now.
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hehehe ok! i understand you! you have reason!
Really, the difference is not noticeable. Too much money for notingh i think.
thanz u ashlar
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2010-01-13, 11:04
(This post was last modified: 2010-01-13, 11:23 by liquidskin76.)
The ATI 5xxx cards can bitstream HD audio (TrueHD/DTS-HD). So can the new Intel Core i3 via it's integrated gpu. It slowly becoming mainstream. Zotac have just released a mitx motherboard based on the H55/Core i3 that looks like the perfect htpc board!
The ffdshow tryouts project have crack HD bitstreaming via these cards (as well as the Asus Xonar HDAV 1.3) via reverse engineering from TMT3 and PDVD9. This allows use via an external players like MPC-HC.
Also, by using the DSPlayer build of XBMC, you can configure it to use a separate install of ffdshow, therefore opening up HD audio bitstreaming from within XBMC. Beware thought that the DSPlayer is still at a beta stage.
Would be nice though to see this working via DVDPlayer as well. Hopefully a XBMC dev will pick it up for DVDPlayer or tiben20 will introduce to DSPlayer! If so, they should pick Albains brain (the amazing dev over at ffdshow/doom9 that performed the miracle!).
Of course the above relates only to Windows builds at the moment.
Cheers
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Interesting! thank u for the information liquidskin76
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2010-01-13, 11:11
(This post was last modified: 2010-01-13, 11:30 by liquidskin76.)
Also, yes we can spit the audio out as 5.1/7.1 lpcm however it's gonna be resampled at some stage by the windows mixer, so you're not seeing untouched HD audio.
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Other HDMI 1.3 cards (like geforce 9300/9400 or ATI 4xxx) in theory should be able to bitstream hd audio (as ffdshow has proved that PAP isn't needed as long as source is decrypted) however the driver support for hd audio doesn't exist on these cards.
It's only the new cards with PAP included.
Hope this info all helps!