TrueHD and HD Master audio advice

[animal]

I started my makemkv project this week. During my 3 days of testing with VLC player I have figured out some issues with trueHD and HD Master audio. True HD only plays in 2 channel stereo and master HD seems to play ok with 5.1. I have read that VLC does not have HD audio codecs so I am thinking at this point to just take the 3/2 +1 Dolby 5.1 tracks and skip the HD streams. Am I on the right path with this strategy given the vlc limitations?

[PaulCB]

Not sure about the limitation though you could validate it on VLC or avsforum. I'd be suprised if it couldn't play 5.1 as it should be able to fall back to the DTS 5.1 core which is part of the HD soundtrack.
As for the solution, I wouldn't do that as there may be other solutions (like installing shark 007 pack perhaps), updates to VLC, other players, playing through connected devices that play it fine to your other screens, etc. I personally don't want to ever have to rip any of my discs again as, even with MakeMKV, it is an involved process. For the few titles that have DTS HD instead of DTS MA (which are a tiny tiny percentage from what I've seen), if the issues is indeed there in VLC without a work around, I'd recommend just adding both tracks, the DTS HD and the Dolby Digital and selecting the DD track via VLC audio menu when you are playing them.

[Romansh]

VLC can decode TrueHD, except maybe Mono (due to a libavcodec bug).

True HD only plays in 2 channel stereo

What's your audio setup? How is it connected to your playback device (HDMI, optical)?

[animal]

I have a tripped out custom PC with a dedicated sound blaster recon 5.1 card and 5.1 speakers. I also have a Samsung 40" hdtv connected via hdmi. I tested the trueHD audio through the sound blaster card and then I used digital audio out the hdmi to my Samsung and same issue of only detecting 2 channels in both scenarios for the trueHD streams.
I gues my plan will be to default to Dolby digital 5.1 for truehd streams. In addition, I will take the advise above and rip both streams so I don't have to redo this project. Thanks everyone!

[Romansh]

Is the sound playing through your TV, or through external speakers? If so, how are the speakers connected (to the TV, or to the sound card, and with what kind of cable)?

[animal]

I installed the trial of powerdvd ultra 13 and all the HD audio streams play fine. I am going to switch gears and look at powerdvd because of the native HD audio support. There is an annoying bug right now in powerdvd 13 where clicking on an mkv with HD Master audio 5.1 will open powerdvd with no audio. If the mkv is opened within the powerdvd software it works fine.

[PCTools]

First of all, I really enjoy the software.

It is a pleasure to find a simple solution to provide an MKV file with DTS Master Audio. However, my question is actually for a device which will allow this playback on my television.

The Western Digital Products (WD TV Live & WD TV Live Hub) does not support HD Master Audio as a playback feature, just DTS 5.1.

So, what are people using to playback these MKV files to their receiver to capture the lossless audio?

[animal]

I just purchased the latest version of PowerDVD Ultra 13. (You can find people just selling the FULLY legal license keys on Ebay for cheap). It includes native support for Dolby HD audio streams and seems to work well. It has a little bigger footprint than VLC, but the native HD audio decoding in PowerDVD Ultra 13 is worth it to me.
When using MakeMKV, I am actually taking the HD Audio stream AND the Dolby Digital 5.1 stream on all my rips and have the HD audio stream "weighted" as the first track so it comes up by default in the player. This way if I use VLC (or any other player that does not support native Dolby HD audio decoding), I will just select the Dolby Digital 5.1 stream during playback and I don't have to re-do the entire MKV. The MKV's are a little bigger with both streams (About 1 GB or so), but the added ability for Dolby Digital 5.1 built into the .MKV is worth it.

[Romansh]

Again, VLC has a working decoder for Dolby TrueHD. Not sure why it decodes to Stereo for you, but it's a configuration issue, not a limitation of VLC.

[NodNarb012]

First of all, I really enjoy the software.
So, what are people using to playback these MKV files to their receiver to capture the lossless audio?

I'm using a Popcorn Hour C-200. I also have a WD TV Live SMP, but it's connected to a small TV in my workout room, so I don't mind that it only plays the DTS-core of my DTS-HD tracks.

[nateo200]

I read your posts and I'm a bit confused on your audio output set up, just so your aware DTS-HD Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD and Linear PCM over 2 channels will NOT go over optical/coaxial connections...generally speaking if the software supports DTS-MA or TrueHD it will either play the lossy core track included in every DTS-MA track and most TrueHD tracks or downmix to stereo (in linear PCM so it will be lossless but only stereo, proper downmix to stereo from a lossless source with software that officially supports it should do this) if it does NOT support the codec then with DTS-MA it will play the core track, DTS have designed their HD codec to be 100% backwards compatible and software that only supports standard DTS will not "see" the lossless extension. Very good design. Dolby TrueHD is a fully lossless variable bit rate codec and on Blu-ray its required to have a AC-3 (Dolby Digital) track inside of it, some players struggle with TrueHD but VLC will internally decode Dolby TrueHD up to 7.1 channels and output up to 7.1 channels as linear PCM at up to 96khz/24bit if your computers audio card supports it (if you have HDMI out its gonna support 96/24 7.1 LPCM). Another note, standard DTS and Dolby Digital only support 5.1 physical channels so if the movie is 7.1 the core can only be 5.1 (rear channels are properly folded into the side surrounds). Additionally VLC supports DTS-ES which allows for 7 discrete channels for 6.1 discrete surround sound. If a DTS-MA 6.1 track is played back it may or may not have a discrete channel in the core but will have a matrixed rear center channel, If DTS-MA 7.1 is played back the core will only be 5.1. Whether the audio is bitstreamed (sent to the AV Receiver over HDMI to be decoded in the AVR, will light up as DTS-HD or TrueHD) or decoded internally by VLC and your audio card (AVR won't give you the sexy TrueHD and DTS-HD lights but it works) your pretty much getting the same thing some playback software will limit the sample rate of the audio to 48khz if your HDMI is funky and some audio cards won't go above certain sample/bit depths but for the most part you won't encounter this issue and if you did its not really an audible difference. Either way all the audio is present and properly presented 99% of the time. I own the DTS-HD Master Audio Encoding Suite and frequently play with it and VLC as well as other software so if ANYONE has any questions I can answer them or find an excuse to make a test file So broken down this is what VLC will handle audio wise from the audio codecs listed in my message:

Dolby Digital (Bitstream/LPCM)
Dolby TrueHD (Bitstream/LPCM)
DTS (Bitstream/LPCM)
DTS-ES (Bitstream)
DTS-HD-MA (DTS core only so really only supports DTS/DTS-ES)
LPCM

Whether to bitstream or decode to LPCM in the player/computer is up to whether the software supports it and personal preference, personally I love seeing the sexy DTS-HD MASTER AUDIO 7.1 or DOLBY TRUEHD 7.1 light up as It feels like I'm sipping on unicorn blood and Cristal but my MacBook Pro doesn't play nice with its HDMI's full support so I am stuck with decoding internally for TrueHD in VLC and other apps.