Multi channel DTS-CD?
#1
Question 
I thought I'd start a separate topic about this, for clearity... Hope y'all don't mind. In this topic we've already discussed about this.

I'd like to play my DTS-CD's in XBMC. Most of them are classic albums: quadraphonic tape to DTS-CD conversions. That is: audio CD's with 4 channel 44.1 kHz DTS tracks instead of 44.1 kHz stereo PCM tracks. When I try to play them I get the infamous "failed to initialize audio device" error message. They play fine in GMplayer etc.
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#2
The old Xbox played DTS cds just fine, but after the switch over to linux my cd’s just played as normal 2 channel stereo. However I now use beta3 and using hdmi for the first time ever and when playing a DTS cd something happened I did not expect.

My onkyo switched to multi-channel and played my DTS cd, BUT.. with no surround, well no… very softly I could hear something. A improvement but still no DTS surround.
Case: Ahanix MCE301 Mainboard: M3N78-VM :CPU X2 4200 MHz SSD: 2x OCZ agility 30G Ram: 2G Remote: MS MCE. MSI Geforece 210 & Asrock 330 ION.
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#3
xbmcuser01 Wrote:I thought I'd start a separate topic about this, for clearity... Hope y'all don't mind. In this topic we've already discussed about this.

I'd like to play my DTS-CD's in XBMC. Most of them are classic albums: quadraphonic tape to DTS-CD conversions. That is: audio CD's with 4 channel 44.1 kHz DTS tracks instead of 44.1 kHz stereo PCM tracks. When I try to play them I get the infamous "failed to initialize audio device" error message. They play fine in GMplayer etc.


Lets start with your software/hardware config:
-what version of XBMC are you using?
-what is your audio hardware config - meaning how do you connect your PC to receiver (hdmi,optical,6 channel analog)
-what sound card do you have

What I know for a fact (since I mainly use XBMC to play my DTS wavs) is that you can play DTS wavs just fine is just a matter of configuring it correctly with some workarounds (you gotta love linux Smile )

My setup is DharmaBeta3 installed on the top of Lucid. Optical cable to DTS/DD enable Sony receiver. Sound card is build in on motherboard HDA Intel IEC958.
I can get DTS/DD movies and DTS/DD wavs/flacs to play. I do not have to remove pulseaudio.
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#4
@Uomiarz: Thank you for your kind reply. My setup is:
  • Xbmc: compiled from SVN: ver. PRE-10.5 r34970. Operating system: Ubuntu Linux 10.04 'The Lucid Lynx'.
  • Audio hardware config: Sony DD/DTS capable receiver; PC audio card: Trust 511 (chip: C-Media CMI8738). This audio card does not upsample everything from 44.1 kHz to 48 kHz like Creative SB Live cards do (else: no DTS-CD's)!
  • Connection: one "mini-coax" cable (= RCA cable) from audio card dig. out to dig. in of amp.

My PC and DTS-CD images
I can play DVD's w/ DTS or DD5.1 just fine (tested w/ my retail DVD of the movie 'Gladiator'). Now comes the funny part: w/ smplayer (a gui frontend for the immaculate mplayer) I can play my DTD wav's fine (i.e. multi channel output), however, smplayer does not "read" the accompanying CUE file (I think that that file contains the track info). That means the "CD" is not divided into tracks. It's just one very large big track of the length of the complete CD.

My xbmc and DTS-CD images (wav + CUE)
(dvd's w/ DTS play just fine) XBMC does "read" the CUE file (and I see track names!) and it "tries" to play the DTS wav (amplifier indicates PCM 44.1 kHz). However, only two channels (front L and front R) are played! Note: it is NOT downmixed to stereo! In 'Money' from Pink Floyds 'Dark side of the moon' I can only hear the rinkling cions and the cash register. Not the wrinkling paper and the 4th sound sample!

My xbmc and physical DTS-CD's
Thats even funnier. Xbmc does display all the tracks, times and their names (from cddb?). However, when I press <enter> on one of 'm then xbmc tries to play it, fails and immediately jumps to the next track. So all tracks are "snanned" very rapidly in a infinite loop until I press "X" for stop.

So I am getting pretty close. Ha ha. How do I tell xbmc to NOT clip 3 of the 5 channels... Hmmmm.
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#5
First thing to try is to play your wav files with DVDplayer and not PAPlayer.
Music is handle by PAPlayer and it currently does not handle passthrough.
DVDplayer that handle videos plays my DTSwavs fine.

In XBMC go Music and pick up single track (DTSwav)
Press "c" on keyboard and from menu choose "play using..."
and pick up DVDplayer.
Make sure in alsamixer everything is maxed out (as far as volume) and also (VERY IMPORTANT) XBMC volume (+/- keys) is at max.
At this point if your passthrough device is working with movies it should play your DTSwav correctly.

With that being said...
My motherboard build in card works fine but my newly purchased USB X-fi surround is not working fine (it will not play DTSwavs - just noise, same setup)

Seems like Anssi took care of this issue in latest SVN revision, check the other topic and try his new version. I will test it tonight.
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#6
Thanks for the tip. But both PAplayer and DVDPlayer result in the same: 48 kHz "stereo"...
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#7
Out of curiosity. Try to download that and see if you can play it with DVDPlayer
http://rapidshare.com/files/427163657/11...-_Help.dts

--
Other option is to update to newest SVN and change settings in advancedsettings.xml. Anssi add some changes that may help decoding correctly and ignore file sample rate. More details here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=6...post631915
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#8
uomiarz Wrote:Out of curiosity. Try to download that and see if you can play it with DVDPlayer
http://rapidshare.com/files/427163657/11...-_Help.dts

--
Other option is to update to newest SVN and change settings in advancedsettings.xml. Anssi add some changes that may help decoding correctly and ignore file sample rate. More details here:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=6...post631915
Again, thanks for the help. And thank you for 'Help' by The Beatles. Which played fine w/ dvdplayer (instead of the standard paplayer)! Is the Help file 48 kHz DTS? Must have been...

Will update my SVN now (while I'm out for the groceries). Strange thing is that I do not have an "advancedsettings.xml" file on my PC. Concerning this Xbmc Wiki that's because Xbmc 9.04 and below (is that the socalled "Dharma" version?) used that file and now it's "playercorefactory.xml" inside "~/.xbmc/userdata/" (creatite it first).

So I created that file (playercorefactory.xml) and pasted the following in it:
Code:
<advancedsettings>
        <audio>
                <dvdplayerignoredtsinwav>true</dvdplayerignoredtsinwav>
        </audio>
</advancedsettings>
Didn't help... You sure that if I upgrade SVN that it will work then?
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#9
You have to create advancedsettings.xml and put it in .xbmc/userdata
So just rename your playercorefactory. Maybe it does not matter what the file name is but if you want to follow developers directions you should use advancedsettings.xml

Sample file is 48kHz and that is exactly why it works.
So as of right now if advancedsettings.xml does not work for you then you need you hardware (soundcard)
My default IEC958 plays everything fine (dts wavs at 44khz) while "higher end" cards (x-fi,live5.1) can't do it. Apparently as of Dharma this is expected behavior. Next XBMC generation should utilize new audio engine that will hopefully fix that.

You can also try to provide Debug Log for Anssi in the other thread.Maybe he can help.
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#10
Thumbs Up 
I corrected my mistake and pasted the "don't touch my DTS in wav" code in the file: /home/my_name/.xbmc/advancedsettings.xml (created it first). For completeness (or my own future reference), this is said code:
Code:
<advancedsettings>
        <audio>
                <dvdplayerignoredtsinwav>true</dvdplayerignoredtsinwav>
        </audio>
</advancedsettings>
AND NOW IT WORKS! Forgive me the caps lock, but I'm so happy I could scream and jump! Unfortunately, a burned (physical) DTS-CD still jumps from track to track in an infinite loop. But I'll rip those to wav/cue then. Laugh

By the way, the reason that 44.1 kHz DTS streams do not work w/ SoundBlaster Live cards (from Creative) is that they upsample 44.1 kHz (= 'ye 'ol standard for the audio-CD) to 48 kHz (= the "all new and improved" standard for DVD's). That is, they mess w/ the DTS stream and they do NOT literally pass the stream to your amplifier. This messed up digital 48 Khz stream does not contain any readable code anymore and thus one only hears some static then. The only solution for this is to buy another audio card (like I did w/ the El Cheapo Trust 511 card) or to hope and pray that your on-board S/PDIf (= Sony / Philips Digital InterFace) does not upsample, like the good s/pdif on your MoBo. Meaning: you're lucky, SB Live users are out of luck because the upsampling is coded into the hardware and cannot be set off by any driver nor by software. Feel free to ask me more if you want (though I'n most certainly no audio- or computer professional I do have some physics knowledge which always helps in the digital world).

P.S. I hope this fix/workaround will keep on working in future releases of XBMC.
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#11
uomiarz Wrote:Next XBMC generation should utilize new audio engine that will hopefully fix that.
Even if it won't, I'll be fixing it in some other way anyway.
xbmcuser01 Wrote:P.S. I hope this fix/workaround will keep on working in future releases of XBMC.
Well, the plan is to make the workaround unneeded in 11.0 Smile
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#12
xbmcuser01 Wrote:AND NOW IT WORKS! Forgive me the caps lock, but I'm so happy I could scream and jump! Unfortunately, a burned (physical) DTS-CD still jumps from track to track in an infinite loop. But I'll rip those to wav/cue then. Laugh

P.S. I hope this fix/workaround will keep on working in future releases of XBMC.


Happy to hear that and thx for soundblaster clarification (I am still not sure why they do that if it make the signal not readable by receiver - what is the point then - I guess I don't fully understand it)

BTW will you be interested in exchanging some of your DTS wavsBig Grin ?
I have a small collection myself so maybe you can find something you like. (for testing purposes of course Big Grin) Send me private message I have FTP server running.
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#13
I was testing a DTS-wav file/album and that's what I can see so far.....
  1. On the receiver, 5.1 icon is displayed but the "PCM" is written instead of "DTS"
  2. Even though 5.1 icon is on the display only stereo is being played
  3. If I use DVDplayer, I get proper DTS output
  4. The DTS album is not being added to the Library
Can any one confirm/explain if that's the thing are expected to be seen? Or am I missing something here? Cheers!!
MINIX NEO U22-XJ | Denon AVC-X3800H | KEF Q750 | KEF Q150 | KEF Q250c | KEF Q50a | KEF Kube 10 MIE | LG OLED65G16LA | CoreELEC
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#14
MacUsers Wrote:I was testing a DTS-wav file/album and that's what I can see so far.....
  1. On the receiver, 5.1 icon is displayed but the "PCM" is written instead of "DTS"
  2. Even though 5.1 icon is on the display only stereo is being played
  3. If I use DVDplayer, I get proper DTS output
  4. The DTS album is not being added to the Library
Can any one confirm/explain if that's the thing are expected to be seen? Or am I missing something here? Cheers!!

AFAIK this is expected. For whatever reason PAPlayer (responsible for playing music on XBMC) cannot do passthrough. It will play DTS correctly but only through analog 5.1 setup (but then channels are mixed up)
You can setup XBMC so it always uses DVDplayer instead of PAPlayer when it sees wav/flac/dts files.

Don't know about library.
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#15
uomiarz Wrote:You can setup XBMC so it always uses DVDplayer instead of PAPlayer when it sees wav/flac/dts files.
That's the next thing I was going to ask: How? Something in the Advancesettings.xml?
uomiarz Wrote:Don't know about library.
Didn't you try adding your DTS file/albums to the Library yet? Or you did and worked for you? Cheers!!
MINIX NEO U22-XJ | Denon AVC-X3800H | KEF Q750 | KEF Q150 | KEF Q250c | KEF Q50a | KEF Kube 10 MIE | LG OLED65G16LA | CoreELEC
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