Kodi Community Forum

Hi all.

I have some .dts and dts in wav container files. I use ac3filter to reencode them to ac3 in realtime to output them to my surround system (damn LG TVs that don't accept dts signal to forward it from HDMI). I simply set it to change nothing (speakers, sample conversion and depth set as 16bit) and enable spdif and ac3encode - it works with all my dts files. Please don't school me about reencoding sound and loss in quality or that I could buy a cheap box to play those files outside my PC. That is beside point.
Some files play fine, ac3 files mostly work (but not all) and few .dts files work when played using dvdplayer, none of my .wav (dts in wav) works.
I am guessing it has something to do with sample rate conversion, but why is a question as my reciever accepts all 44, 48, 96 (but not 196 - is that a optical interface problem? because coaxial works with 196 too) in both 16 and 24 bit quality. I would give it up as a lost case if those few files did not correctly encode to ac3. I can't find any other option to change (where is this advanced menu that I keep reading about - is it some file somewhere?)
My setup is as follows:
audio output - optical/coax (setting to hdmi does not change anything and I read on forum somewhere that it enables ac3 encoding for movies)
speaker: 5.1
ac3 receiver: enabled
dts receiver: disabled
audio output device: wasapi:nvidia hdmi

You don't mention what version of XBMC you're using.

The AudioEngine support thread, in this very forum, in the very first post, states that there is no support for .dts wav files yet.

Maybe you're referring to the advancedsettings.xml?

XBMC 11.0 (Mar 21, 2012)
Yes, I read that thread in the whole, i know that dts wav files are unsupported but mine are streams ripped from DVD-Audio and DVD-Video and placed in file with .dts extension. They are "native" DTS files not spdif-ied into wav container. Do you mean that if I created "empty" DVD-Video with static picture and those same audio streams that it would work?
Thank you for a reference to advancedsettings.xml
Maybe it was some plugin that would let a user access and set settings in that file from within XBMC. That would be useful, I think.

Why not just extract the audio streams and convert to multichannel .flac? It's lossless, can be tagged, and then can be accessed through the music library like the rest of your music. This is exactly what I (and many others) have done for their dvd-a and dvd-v 5.1 mixes.

Also, .dts files really are wave files. The dts part is just an encode, and if you didn't have a DTS decoder, you'd only hear static.

Ok, so my questions are:
1. How much of the original quality of DTS stream will I loose? Meaning does MC flac allow for 24bit 96kHz streams?
2. Will XBMC encode the .flac stream live to DD to send over HDMI?

1. You'll lose nothing. Are you familiar with .flac? It's a lossless compression algorithm. All the quality - smaller files (somewhat). MC flac does indeed allow for 24/96. I believe it would even do 24/192 (not positive). I've got many 24/96 tracks.
2. XBMC will recognize the .flac as multichannel LPCM and will send it along as such. So you're AVR won't display DD or DTS, more along the lines of "Multi Channel In".

Try it out on an album or two. I don't think you'll be disappointed. The tagging alone is practically worth the price of admission!

Yes, I forgot flac is lossless. Tried that on few songs (converted to 6 channel flac level 5) but it seems my TV is a problem here - it only accepts AC3 or PCM sources - LPCM comes out as stereo (tv is connected to receiver using optical spdif so multichannel pcm is not possible - spdif specification allows only for 2 pcm channels, am I right?). If I understand correctly XBMC does not do 24 to 16 bit conversion and since AC3 does not allow for 24 bit... no luck. Most of my sources are 24bit 48kHz so no use without external recompression. I think I will just create a separate AC3 file just for playback and wait for good fortune (or cash influx) to buy some intermediate gadget to bypass my damn tv.
So unless XBMC can be forced to convert to AC3 flac is not the way for me (beside almost 2x bigger files than DTS), I am not an audiophile, if I were I would buy some proper equipment

Yeah, that spdif is the weak link in the chain.

Well, at least you can't say you didn't try, and you probably learned something for the future!

Perhaps an intermediate step is to just rip the dvd-v as .isos or .mkvs (with the 5.1 ac3/dts stream) and playback through the video library. As far as the dvd-a, you won't be able to use the MLP streams (or the LPCM), but most dvd-a have a 5.1 "downmix" that you can rip. Good luck to you, and save those pennies for a proper AVR!