The Guide to HD Audio with a HTPC - How to Get TrueHD and DTS HD Master

[GlocksRock]

I guess I may have to search for an older version of TMT if this ends up working for me.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Dont have The Rock, but I just tried Spider-man 3 with TMT2.
Its has PCM 16/48 and TrueHD 24/48. Both came out fine.

Though, why they put in PCM 16 with TrueHD 24-bit is beyond me.

Thank you!

Man, it worked and sounded FANTASTIC!!!

PowerDVD9 did not work, but TMT3 worked great.

I don't really care if it is 16/48 vs 24/48.

I compared it with my BD player and they sounded the same.

I am excited.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

I've watched a few blu-ray movies w/ TMT3 decoding TrueHD & DTS-HD.

So far I noticed that TrueHD sounded better than the DTS-HD on TMT3.

I wonder if TMT3 spent more time working with Dolby TrueHD than DTS-HD?

Anyway, I had a very interesting experience.

I've watched Transformers HD DVD & Blu-ray quite a few times because I've always been disappointed with the sound quality - particulary the lack of bass.

I've watched it on my Toshiba HD-XA1 + Denon 5308 & on my Denon 3800BD + Denon 5308, letting the players do the decoding and also letting the receiver do the decoding. I was very disappointed with the lack of bass.

Last night I watched Transformers BD using TMT3 decoding TrueHD. It sounded AMAZING!!!

I heard BASS that I did not hear before! And lots of bass!

I will give TMT3 another chance with DTS-HD. If it sounds better, than I will just let TMT3 do both TrueHD & DTS-HD. Otherwise, I will just let TMT3 do the TrueHD (PCM) and just let my receiver do the DTS-core of the DTS-HD (bitstream).

 

[s162216]

Its a pity theres no hardware version of something like this that I could use with my reciever as technically there should be enough bandwidth to pass it through s/pdif if its PCM 5.1 and and 16/48.
That would be really good as then I could get a bluray player or PS3 and use my current reciever with better quality sound than with just DD or DTS along with plugging the player into my PC screen with a VGA adaptor to get rid of any HDCP problems.

It would be good if all the stuff like using TMT could be edited into my original article as well because that would be a good improvement and expand the range of usable options thats in it.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Well, here is my verdict:

For Dolby TrueHD soundtracks, I'm going to let TMT3 do the decoding.

For DD, DTS, & DTS-HD MA, I'm going to let TMT3 Bitstream to my receiver and let my receiver do the decoding for the DD & DTS-core.

Rationale: I thought the TMT-decoded TrueHD sounded awesome, but the TMT-decoded DTS-HD MA did not sound as good as the Denon-decoded DTS-core of the DTS-HD MA.

 

[GlocksRock]

I got it to output PCM from both TMT 3, and PowerDVD 9, both sounded excellent with dolby and dts of various flavors. This just made my day... now if they could only bitstream instead of outputting PCM, but I guess it's still better than standard DD or dts. I'm hoping the new 5000 series Radeon cards are able to bitstream lossless audio via HDMI, and I would think they should be coming out pretty soon.

 

[GlocksRock]

Hello Everyone,

As I have understood and experienced. it is possible to get HD Audio without these fancy cards like Xonar.
...as long as your happy with PCM at the same rate as the original being pushed out to your reciever and don't care about the fancy TrueHD/HD MA lights.

If you use TMT3, without Xonar, it will decode and downsample TrueHD/HD MA to PCM 16/48 over HDMI. So if you have DTS HD MA in 24/48 (e.g. Day After Tomorrow), it goes out as PCM 16/48. Some loss.

However, if you use older versions of TMT (2.x.125 or lesser), they did not downsample. They decode and output at the same rate e.g. 24/48 above.

I have tried such a version and can confirm that output was 24/48 (using ReClock).

regards

Is there any way you can test PowerDVD9 to see if it's PCM output is 16/48 or 24/48?

 

[yrk1959]

Is there any way you can test PowerDVD9 to see if it's PCM output is 16/48 or 24/48?

I had tested PowerDVD 9. It was giving 24/48, but the channels were messed up. I could hear dialog from left/right (one particular scene I used for reference).
I installed some later updates of it, hoping this would have been fixed, but they started to down-sample to 16/48.

 

[GlocksRock]

I wonder what the reason is for the downsampling, and how much of a difference it makes. I'm guessing the overall effect of the tracks that do get downsampled isn't that noticeable.

 

[yrk1959]

I wonder what the reason is for the downsampling, and how much of a difference it makes. I'm guessing the overall effect of the tracks that do get downsampled isn't that noticeable.

I read that it would have been due to AACS (or whatever) requirements. They are required to downsample HD Audio to 16/48 if there is no secure path (something called PAP) is not available. (which is'nt available without Xonar HDAV e.g.)
Initially they probably did'nt bother to conform, but later on must have been convinced otherwise.

Most people say 16 vs 24 can't be noticed by most people.

 

[GlocksRock]

PAP is protected audio path. I found an older copy of TMT that should allow 24/48 to be passed, so hopefully both TMT 2 and TMT3 can be installed at the same time, but if not I hope TMT 2 will be compatible with some of the newer titles. I guess I'll be finding out soon enough. I'm just excited to now have lossless audio from the PC instead of bitstreaming the standard dd/dts track.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

PAP is protected audio path. I found an older copy of TMT that should allow 24/48 to be passed, so hopefully both TMT 2 and TMT3 can be installed at the same time, but if not I hope TMT 2 will be compatible with some of the newer titles. I guess I'll be finding out soon enough. I'm just excited to now have lossless audio from the PC instead of bitstreaming the standard dd/dts track.

That Asus Xonar card comes with TMT2.

So if you have the license key, just download the latest version of TMT2 from the Asus website for the Xonar HDAV1.3 card and enter the liscense key.

I had the license key to TMT2, but I thought I did not need it (since I automatically thought TMT3 was better than TMT2), so I threw it somewhere. Now I can't find it.

 

[s162216]

Does anyone here actually know the maximum bandwidth of S/PDIF? It seems to be undefined, as it is possible to pass 2 channels of 24/192 over it apparently, but no reciever supports it. My Sony one automatically outputs as stereo only if you try to pass 96Khz or above over it.
What I'm trying to say is that it could be possible to output 5.1 PCM of 24/48 over S/PDIF as 48000 x 24 x 6 (channels) = 6912000 bits = 6.9Mbs. I think thats in the bandwidth range of S/PDIF as 192000 x 24 x 2 = 9.1Mbs.
All that I would then need is the TrueHD or DTS MA to be decoded to PCM by my PC or PS3 and put it out through S/PDIF optical or coax to my reciever. The only problem I could see is that if I get a bluray with a higher sample rate as my reciever will not support it then. I would need a digital lowpass filter to downsample it.
Are most blurays 24/48?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

TMT DTS-HD Dynamic Range Compression

Why is it that on TMT, you can configure the Dolby TrueHD settings, but there is NOT even a setting available for DTS-HD?

For Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus, what should you set the Dynamic Range Compression to? Line-Out?

The reason I ask is because when I play back TrueHD, the sound is AWESOME.

But when I let TMT decode DD or DTS-HD, I get this "compressed-like" audio?

Are DTS/DTS-HD & DD/DD+ all compressed (dynamic range)?

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Why is it that on TMT, you can configure the Dolby TrueHD settings, but there is NOT even a setting available for DTS-HD?

For Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus, what should you set the Dynamic Range Compression to? Line-Out?

The reason I ask is because when I play back TrueHD, the sound is AWESOME.

But when I let TMT decode DD or DTS-HD, I get this "compressed-like" audio?

Are DTS/DTS-HD & DD/DD+ all compressed (dynamic range)?

I also wanted to add that along with Dolby TrueHD, 5.1 LPCM sounds awesome (no dynamic range compression).

But the TMT-decoded DD, DD+, DTS, DTS-HD MA sounds dynamically compressed.

Oh, and the PowerDVD-decoded DD/TrueHD & DTS/DTS-HD MA sounded dynamically compressed also.

 

[krzywica]

Does anyone here actually know the maximum bandwidth of S/PDIF? It seems to be undefined, as it is possible to pass 2 channels of 24/192 over it apparently, but no reciever supports it. My Sony one automatically outputs as stereo only if you try to pass 96Khz or above over it.
What I'm trying to say is that it could be possible to output 5.1 PCM of 24/48 over S/PDIF as 48000 x 24 x 6 (channels) = 6912000 bits = 6.9Mbs. I think thats in the bandwidth range of S/PDIF as 192000 x 24 x 2 = 9.1Mbs.
All that I would then need is the TrueHD or DTS MA to be decoded to PCM by my PC or PS3 and put it out through S/PDIF optical or coax to my reciever. The only problem I could see is that if I get a bluray with a higher sample rate as my reciever will not support it then. I would need a digital lowpass filter to downsample it.
Are most blurays 24/48?

Max bandwidth of S/PDIF is 1.5Mbps as far as I know. Thats why most if not all of the DTS mixes are 1.5Mbps bitrate as this is the most that the interface/cabling will support.

 

[s162216]

Thats the max bandwidth when compressed - with 5.1 PCM with a 48Khz sample rate (48000 x 16 * 6) = 4.6 mb. One channel is therefore 0.7 mb.
You can certainly pass 96Khz stereo audio over it, which comes to 3mb.
Apparently the actual max bandwidth is not able to be used as most recievers only allow up to 96Khz stereo PCM.

If I could downsample the 8 channel 96Khz TrueHD or DTS-MA to 48Khz then as with the calculation above, I could pass it over SPDIf and as the codec is lossless, it should sound better than DD or DTS. The only problem I could see is if the audio is 24 bit although my reciever will likely ignore the extra bits.

EDIT: Slight problem, just found out that HDMI carries audio and video on the same pins so I can't extraxt the audio too easily and just send it over coax or optical. I will have to get something to do that.

 

[GlocksRock]

Why is it that on TMT, you can configure the Dolby TrueHD settings, but there is NOT even a setting available for DTS-HD?

For Dolby Digital/Dolby Digital Plus, what should you set the Dynamic Range Compression to? Line-Out?

The reason I ask is because when I play back TrueHD, the sound is AWESOME.

But when I let TMT decode DD or DTS-HD, I get this "compressed-like" audio?

Are DTS/DTS-HD & DD/DD+ all compressed (dynamic range)?

Where do you find the settings for TrueHD? I don't see them anyhwere.

 

[AcuDefTechGuy]

Where do you find the settings for TrueHD? I don't see them anyhwere.

Under ADVANCED Audio setting.

There you will see settings for DD/DD+ & Dolby TrueHD.

I don't understand the setting for DD/DD+. For Dynamic Range Compression, the default is LINE-OUT. I have no idea what that means. There is not a choice for just OFF for the Dynamic Range Compression.

For TrueHD, it's easy. For Dynamic Range Compression, I just set it ot OFF.

But there are no settings for DTS/DTS-HD MA at all.

Compare the DTS-HD on TMT/PDVD vs your PS3. I believe it has Dynamic Range Compression activated for some reasons because it sounds "compressed" compared to the DTS-bitstream.

 

[GlocksRock]

I found it... I'll give it a listen and see what I can tell.