Hey guys. First time poster here. I've exhausted all my other resources, so I'm throwing myself at the mercy of these forums. Here's the setup:
* Ubuntu 11.10 with XBMC 10.1
* ASUS AT3N7A-I motherboard
* HDMI a/v to TV, Toslink to a Yamaha HTR-5540 (DTS/DD capable receiver)
* 5.1 speaker arrangement
I've got a lot of media, in a lot of different formats. My Dolby Digital stuff plays fantastically -- outputs on all 5.1 channels. My mp3 stuff works great -- outputs stereo. My aac and ac3 work great. However, when it comes to my DTS, I'm having a problem. It outputs 5.1 audio, but there appears to be a missing audio channel. That is, it outputs to all channels, but the channel that contains voice isn't playing.
I have verified that these files work, on many occasions.
I'm quite stumped at this point, and could use any sort of advice in the matter. I'm very comfortable in linux, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty here.
You say you have it connected as such:
XBMC---HDMI--->TV---Optical--->Receiver
This is correct?
Try connecting XBMC directly to the receiver via HDMI and see if the problem persists. If you get all 6 channels, then it's not XBMC, it's the TOSLink out of your TV to the receiver. If you're still missing your center channel, then start investigating XBMC and/or your cabling.
My samsung tv does the hdmi passthrough to my receiver via toslink. The receiver doesn't have hdmi.
Are you sure your TOSlink passthrough is fully DTS compliant? I know my LG is a bit fussy with DTS passthrough, i.e. sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, because it's not a supported feature whereas AC3 passthrough is.
Also, can you go TOSlink from XBMC straight to your receiver?
Perhaps your TV is pulling out the center channel to play back on its speakers.
pumkinut Wrote:Are you sure your TOSlink passthrough is fully DTS compliant? I know my LG is a bit fussy with DTS passthrough, i.e. sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't, because it's not a supported feature whereas AC3 passthrough is.
Also, can you go TOSlink from XBMC straight to your receiver?
Well. No. Not exactly... but it's passthrough, so the source shouldn't matter. It works flawlessly for every other audio source, and the center channel plays... just not the language track. The strangest part is that it was playing in the past (albeit it was software rendered, and not passthrough, I do believe.)
There is no language track in DTS. It's possible the center channel is being cut out somehow and then your receiver is creating a center channel from the left and right speakers.
KeithLM Wrote:There is no language track in DTS. It's possible the center channel is being cut out somehow and then your receiver is creating a center channel from the left and right speakers.
I did research in to DTS, and that's the same conclusion I came to. Now, it varies from movie to movie (or tv show to tv show) on what's actually cut out. I was specifically testing against Avatar and Battlestar Galatica. Avatar had center channel audio, but no speech. BSG was missing significantly more than speech. They are both DTS.
According to wikipedia, DTS has several variations that can contain more than 5.1 tracks of audio. It's possible that DTS can contain a language track (think... changing the language on a DVD. Many dvds use DTS... you can fit more data on a DVD if you reuse 75% of the audio, and only change the language track.)
I think you're misinterpreting what you were reading on the codec. Typically what you see on DVDs with multiple languages and DTS is that there are DTS and DD English tracks, and other languages are all in DD. It's possible that there is master DD track combined with a language track, but in all my time messing with this stuff I've never once seen it represented that way.
One thing you could do is find a test disc that contains DTS and try that out. That will likely have a voice moving from channel to channel. See what happens then. I suspect that somewhere along the line the center channel track is being removed and that your receiver is making up for it by taking any common audio from L/R and putting out the center channel. It sounds like an odd thing to be occurring, but it seems more likely than a language track existing.
Quote:Well. No. Not exactly... but it's passthrough, so the source shouldn't matter.
Yes and no. You need to check your owner's manual to see what's officially supported via optical out. With my LG, the officially supported codecs over optical are Dolby Digital (AC3) and LPCM. This is why DTS is flakey with my TV. Licensing fees have to be paid to transport the codecs from one port and out another, especially if there's a conversion in the mix e.g. electrical to optical. Your TV may officially support one but not the other. This is why I suggested moving the optical cable from your TV directly to your receiver. Your problem may not be with XBMC. Until you prove it out, you can't state definitively that the issue lies with XBMC and not with your TV.
Also, there's no "language" track, unless you're speaking of alternate languages from the main language track, e.g. Spanish, French, etc. With multi-channel encoding there are channels that typically carry dialog, usually the center channel, but they don't have to. It's all how the soundtrack is mixed.
I verified with a DTS test dvd that I get center channel. I used my 360, which is also hooked in to the tv via hdmi. I can also test the files in VLC on my htpc to see if the audio works, if it helps.
Okay, does that DVD sound the same with XBMC as it does from the 360? If not, then further investigation is needed. If you have VLC to test with as well, I'd give that a shot, simply for comparison's sake.
XBMC isn't identifying the DVD. I don't see an option to open the disc in it, either. I'll have to manually fix it.
Just tried the test disc on the htpc. It definitely plays center channel. Let me see if I can get center channel working with VLC.
Something about ubuntu being a piece of crap prevents me from actually using anything other than xbmc to play audio...vlc included. When I try to use the sound control panel to switch my audio to hdmi, it switches it back to analog. This prevents me from doing passthrough with vlc... I can't test it on vlc. However, I did test it on xbmc on another machine (win7x64) in xbmc, and it plays center channel. Perplexing.
--edit
It may be worth noting (although, I somewhat doubt it) that my other machine has its own 5.1 setup, which is analog. Since we've already proven that the TV is passing DTS properly by using the test disc, I doubt this point matters.