2018-04-18, 11:52
@Warner306
You helped me out with my issues related to bitstreaming Dolby and delay, so here's what I found out, hoping I can help someone else with this information.
- I enabled bitstreaming for DTS, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus. Apparently, the B&W Panorama 2 only supports Dolby Digital, not the Plus variety. DSPlayer + Sanear probably recognised this and added the Microsoft filter to decode DD+ into LPCM. This, however, broke the audio delay setting.
- Because the test file for Dolby TrueHD (decoded into LPCM) played through all channels I naturally assumed multichannel LPCM was supported by the soundbar. This is not the case. The Sanear audio renderer actually downmixes into stereo PCM, even though I select "exclusive mode" and "ignore system channel mixer", and disable the LAV Audio mixer. The first hint of this was that, even though I could here all regular channels, the LFE channel was silent. This is because this is the normal behaviour of downmixing multichannel into stereo.
- If I use Reclock audio renderer and output multichannel LPCM, it will give an error saying the device does not support 6-channel LPCM. This means the Panorama really does not support multichannel LPCM.
- I went through the process of trying AC3Filter to get live encoding LPCM into AC3, so that I at least get 6 discrete channels of audio to my receiver, albeit lossy/compressed. Then I found out that Reclock also has this feature, so I removed AC3Filter and used the AC3 Encoding feature of Reclock.
- Finally, I found out about these "Realtek HD unlocked drivers" that will enable both Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive/Connect on a system-wide level (not just Kodi). This means I could even get surround sound from games. The downside is that I have to use an optical SPDIF cable to the soundbar instead of HDMI.
So now I have bitstreaming of DTS and Dolby Digital, and everything else is decoded to LPCM by LAV and then encoded to DTS by the Realtek driver. While I would have preferred bitstreaming everything, or at least multichannel LPCM, I doubt that I would hear the difference with this setup. It's just a matter of convenience.
Thank you for your help, hope this can help anyone else.
You helped me out with my issues related to bitstreaming Dolby and delay, so here's what I found out, hoping I can help someone else with this information.
- I enabled bitstreaming for DTS, Dolby Digital and Dolby Digital Plus. Apparently, the B&W Panorama 2 only supports Dolby Digital, not the Plus variety. DSPlayer + Sanear probably recognised this and added the Microsoft filter to decode DD+ into LPCM. This, however, broke the audio delay setting.
- Because the test file for Dolby TrueHD (decoded into LPCM) played through all channels I naturally assumed multichannel LPCM was supported by the soundbar. This is not the case. The Sanear audio renderer actually downmixes into stereo PCM, even though I select "exclusive mode" and "ignore system channel mixer", and disable the LAV Audio mixer. The first hint of this was that, even though I could here all regular channels, the LFE channel was silent. This is because this is the normal behaviour of downmixing multichannel into stereo.
- If I use Reclock audio renderer and output multichannel LPCM, it will give an error saying the device does not support 6-channel LPCM. This means the Panorama really does not support multichannel LPCM.
- I went through the process of trying AC3Filter to get live encoding LPCM into AC3, so that I at least get 6 discrete channels of audio to my receiver, albeit lossy/compressed. Then I found out that Reclock also has this feature, so I removed AC3Filter and used the AC3 Encoding feature of Reclock.
- Finally, I found out about these "Realtek HD unlocked drivers" that will enable both Dolby Digital Live and DTS Interactive/Connect on a system-wide level (not just Kodi). This means I could even get surround sound from games. The downside is that I have to use an optical SPDIF cable to the soundbar instead of HDMI.
So now I have bitstreaming of DTS and Dolby Digital, and everything else is decoded to LPCM by LAV and then encoded to DTS by the Realtek driver. While I would have preferred bitstreaming everything, or at least multichannel LPCM, I doubt that I would hear the difference with this setup. It's just a matter of convenience.
Thank you for your help, hope this can help anyone else.
