Ripping DTS-HD and True-HD to LPCM

[pacemaker1000]

hi i am new so please be gentle
i have a new player that will not output DTS-HD. I ripped a file and only selected the HD track but my amp shows only DTS 5.1 so i assume its downmixing it. instruction say it does not support this in mkv.
however they do say it will output LPCM from an mkv file so I was wondering if ther is a way to do this and get around the problem?

EDIT : also noticed that if a switch the player to output pcm it sounds better so am wonderingnow if it will not output DTS-HD as such but will via LPCM.
Is there a test that will determine if hd audio is coming over pcm?

thanks

[SamuriHL]

No. For many reasons. First there's no open source dts-hd ma decoder available. Second makemkv doesn't modify the streams. TrueHD could probably be done but not by makemkv.

[mike admin]

This functionality is coming to MakeMKV soon - it will be able to do transcoding for certain streams, and these two conversions (DTS-HD/TrueHD)->(LPCM/FLAC) should be implemented as one of the first. For now you can use eac3to to transcode these streams in MKV file, but it works only on windows and will require "hacked" DLLs to do dts-hd decoding.

[SamuriHL]

Oh sure make a liar of me. Lol! That's really sweet!!!

[ryanjk333]

Mike,

Can we please get an ETA on the LPCM to FLAC conversion in MakeMKV? I won't hold you to it, but I'm wondering if we're talking weeks or months? Any idea would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks for all your hard work!!

[dpstjp]

EDIT : also noticed that if a switch the player to output pcm it sounds better so am wonderingnow if it will not output DTS-HD as such but will via LPCM.
Is there a test that will determine if hd audio is coming over pcm?

What player is it? Some will convert DTS-HD to LPCM. My Dune does, for example. I presume that you are using the HDMI output of your player for audio. I'm fairly sure that full DTS-HD cannot be sent over S/PDIF due to bandwidth issues.

[pacemaker1000]

EDIT : also noticed that if a switch the player to output pcm it sounds better so am wonderingnow if it will not output DTS-HD as such but will via LPCM.
Is there a test that will determine if hd audio is coming over pcm?

What player is it? Some will convert DTS-HD to LPCM. My Dune does, for example. I presume that you are using the HDMI output of your player for audio. I'm fairly sure that full DTS-HD cannot be sent over S/PDIF due to bandwidth issues.

yes using HDMI
Player is Samsung D8500

[holunder2]

First there's no open source dts-hd ma decoder available.

Oh, that's interesting. Does that mean that VLC, mplayer, and Totem (with GStreamer) actually don't pass out the full lossless HD Audio stream which is in my MKVs? I'm confused.

[SamuriHL]

First there's no open source dts-hd ma decoder available.

Oh, that's interesting. Does that mean that VLC, mplayer, and Totem (with GStreamer) actually don't pass out the full lossless HD Audio stream which is in my MKVs? I'm confused.

VLC does not have a DTS-HD MA decoder. It can decode DTS, but, not the HD extensions. I don't know what a "Totem" is but I would expect it to be the same. The exception is if they can use the DTS-HD MA decoder from a commercial software package like TMT. LAV Filters, for example, can decode full DTS-HD MA to PCM by utilizing their decoder. But the decoder itself is not free or open source.

[holunder2]

Thank you for this info... Totem is the standard media player on the GNOME Desktop on Linux and GStreamer its multimedia (codec) framework.
But VLC shows me lossless DTS-HD MA as "lossless" sources and i get audio (same with Totem and mplayer) - and it differentiates between "lossless" and "XXCH". So, maybe there is real DTS-HD MA decoding in open source decoders? But I can't prove that the players don't just pick out the DTS core, hm. Audio bitrate is 1536 kb/s.
Edit: Sad, it looks like 1536 kb/s really is just the DTS core (DTS core = lossy 1.5 MBit/s, DTS HD = up to 6.0 MBit/s, DTS-HD MA = up to 24.5 MBit/s). This means I have to look for a commercial converter for FLAC or wait for full Linux support, hm.

[SamuriHL]

Given that bitrate, it seems likely that it's just using the core DTS.

P.S. The quickest way to tell is to decode something that's 7.1 and see if you get data for all channels.

[jmonier]

This functionality is coming to MakeMKV soon - it will be able to do transcoding for certain streams, and these two conversions (DTS-HD/TrueHD)->(LPCM/FLAC) should be implemented as one of the first. For now you can use eac3to to transcode these streams in MKV file, but it works only on windows and will require "hacked" DLLs to do dts-hd decoding.

"hacked" DLL's are NOT required. It certainly works fine with the unmodified DLL. Such use might be outside the terms of the license, however.

[Claudio]

Now that the DTS-HD algorithm is available in version 1.8 is it possible to go from DTS-HD MA to LPCM using MakeMKV?

[mike admin]

Now that the DTS-HD algorithm is available in version 1.8 is it possible to go from DTS-HD MA to LPCM using MakeMKV?

Yes, for a long time. You need to use a proper conversion profile. Please see Advanced subforum for details.