HD audio handling in Media players

[ravi_rn]

Dear friends,
I have been a follower of this forum for a long time and many thanks for sharing all your valuable insights. I have a question that has been bugging me for a long time. I did search and found some related threads but not able to get conclusive answers. Appologies if this has been already answered.

I bought HT recently ( Onkyo 307 receiver with pure accostics speakers). Intend to buy a media player like WD TV or Xtreamer. 307 does not process hd audio thru hdmi, so wanted to know how do these media players handle files with hd audio over optical. Do they
1. do they downmix hd dts and hd dd to normal 5.1 dts and dd respectively or
2. downmix this to 2.1 stereo or
3. will not send anything over optical ?

Regards,
Ravi

 

[reju]

What content do you plan to play?
Normal MKV HD movies do not have HD audio. They only have DTS and DD.
So they work fine thru optical/ co-axial.

Well if you are playing untouched Blu-rays/ ISO images then the answer is 1.

 

[ravi_rn]

Thanks for confirming.
I was under the wrong impression that you can send the hd audio over optical from the players and hence went ahead and bought the receiver without hd audio decoding capabilities. Later reading thru this forum, realised this is not possible.
Other best option was to decode this in the BR player and send this thru 7.1 or 5.1 analog. My reciever 307 does not even have this.
So it is relief to know, atleast media players have the capability to downmix this to 5.1. Do WD and Xtreamer both capable of doing this?

 

[santhosh]

Yes Ravi, both WD and Xtreamer have this capability. If the format is DTS MA HD, it will be downmixed to DTS 5.1. Similarly for Dolby Tru HD, it will be downmixed to Dolby Digital 5.1.

 

[reju]

Thanks for confirming.
I was under the wrong impression that you can send the hd audio over optical from the players and hence went ahead and bought the receiver without hd audio decoding capabilities. Later reading thru this forum, realised this is not possible.
Other best option was to decode this in the BR player and send this thru 7.1 or 5.1 analog. My reciever 307 does not even have this.
So it is relief to know, atleast media players have the capability to downmix this to 5.1. Do WD and Xtreamer both capable of doing this?

Do you have much of blu-ray iso?

 

[ravi_rn]

No, not a lot of BR iso at the moment. But maybe in future once the storage costs come down.
Also, wasn't aware that the ripped BR files do not have HD audio? why is that ? Is it because the ripping software does not have the capability?

 

[skumar]

Also, wasn't aware that the ripped BR files do not have HD audio? why is that ? Is it because the ripping software does not have the capability?

The capability is definitely there, otherwise the s/w can't compress the HD Audio hyeah:, it is a matter of size versus lossy/lossless compression. In fact, retaining HD audio may mean just a copy-paste for which we don't need special codecs/algorithms in the s/w.

 

[dolfin]

Hi Ravi,

There are high end Media Players like Dune, HDX, Popcorn Hour C-200 which will decode both Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio natively. However, they are no match to decoding done by the receiver in terms of quality.

Usually people prefer to bitstream HD audio to the receiver and let the receiver do the job of decoding. These high-end lossless formats need equally good (read expen$ive ) hardware to experience their true potential. Media players are jack of all trades but master of none...

 

[madbullram]

dolf: The jack of none have given a run a to many very expensive DVDp which had major names in upscaling at 1/20th of the price. I believe technology is closing on this expensive gap. When we did the shootout, the WD which was 4500 rs gave Oppo 981 a real scare matching to 95% quality at 25k.

Having said that receiver is one, speakers are most imp components in the chain. Reading digital data like DTS-HD etc does not need real high end components unlike a Video Upscaling.

 

[reignofchaos]

Hi Ravi,

There are high end Media Players like Dune, HDX, Popcorn Hour C-200 which will decode both Dolby True HD and DTS HD Master Audio natively. However, they are no match to decoding done by the receiver in terms of quality.

Usually people prefer to bitstream HD audio to the receiver and let the receiver do the job of decoding. These high-end lossless formats need equally good (read expen$ive ) hardware to experience their true potential. Media players are jack of all trades but master of none...

Decoding is not what is being discussed here. What is being discussed is bitstream HD passthrough. Only the media players mentioned above do HD audio pass through over HDMI. Decoding is done by the receiver.

All the realtek chipset based players downsample it to DD/DTS.

 

[chits007]

Their are rumors that Realtek chipset cant support HD Audio
check this : RealTek players unfit for HD Audio! - MPC Club Community Board

Xtreamer is based on Realtek while WDTV Live based on Sigma.
Woulod any Xtreamer user confirm this ?

 

[dolfin]

Reading digital data like DTS-HD etc does not need real high end components unlike a Video Upscaling.

Do not underestimate sound world. I owned DVD-Audio / SACD player when most expensive CPU & sound card that time could not play that format (24 bit). But the same CPU was able to do video post-processing in VLC on the fly. Even today, there are video cards that can upscale DVD movies to full HD but can not bitstream HD audio (except ATI 5 series).

Apart from this, the real task of audio processor is not to read digital data but to convert it from digital to analog form. If you have proper setup (like good quality speakers, interconnect cables etc), you can perceive the difference between sound produced by Sigma Designs DAC & Realktek DAC

 

[dolfin]

Decoding is not what is being discussed here. What is being discussed is bitstream HD passthrough. Only the media players mentioned above do HD audio pass through over HDMI. Decoding is done by the receiver.

All the realtek chipset based players downsample it to DD/DTS.

Dune, HDX and PCH C-200 all have SD-8642 processor that is capable of Decoding HD audio. It depends on the device manufacturer to support it in the firmware (there are license requirements). Also if Ravi's receiver (Onkyo 307) can not process HD audio, what's the use of passthrough? He needs a media player that can decode HD audio and not just downmix or bitstream audio data.