Handling DTS / AC3 Music Files (1 Viewer)

trevor

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phunqe
I am at home now and checked with SVN 15285, had not played anything for a couple of weeks, all is still fine so I know MP can play DTS tracks...can also look at my system setup here if needed.

Trevor
 

phunqe

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April 28, 2007
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I'll try ASIO4ALL. Although I managed to screw up my movie/music storage raid, so my first priority is that at the moment.

Thanks for the help.
 

orencha

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Sorry to bring up this old thread...
But after a few years of leaving alone my DTS collection, I got some new musical DTS content.
I've read some of your suggested solutions in this thread, and haven't tried them yet.

Two questions bother me at the moment:

1) Since not all of my music is DTS (most if it is actually stereo - FLAC, MP4, MP3), is there a way to enjoy both stereo and multichannel (DTS/AC3) music in a single-setup of MediaPortal? I currently use the BASS engine and enjoy the "crossfade" feature very much, and would like to keep using it for stereo files... Is there a way to make some kind of "conditional rendering" for the music player? i.e. use ASIO/Passthrough for AC3/DTS and BASS for other formats?

2) Since I haven't played with it for a few years, what's the best way to add tags to AC3/DTS files? Can MPTagThat do it?
 

Sinbe

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December 12, 2007
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I'd also like to see an option to output AC3/DTS untouched via spdif and still be able to use BASS player to play stereo audio. BASS gives you far more options than spdif, like visualizations and crossfading, but I can then only get two channel audio to my receiver. Would it be possible to have an option like "Use directshow for following formats:"?
 

hwahrmann

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    I'd also like to see an option to output AC3/DTS untouched via spdif and still be able to use BASS player to play stereo audio. BASS gives you far more options than spdif, like visualizations and crossfading, but I can then only get two channel audio to my receiver. Would it be possible to have an option like "Use directshow for following formats:"?

    There is a new bass plugin, which uses directshow filters.
    Don't know how complicated it would be to implement it into current BASS player. Maybe too much changes needed.
     

    hwahrmann

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    1) Since not all of my music is DTS (most if it is actually stereo - FLAC, MP4, MP3), is there a way to enjoy both stereo and multichannel (DTS/AC3) music in a single-setup of MediaPortal? I currently use the BASS engine and enjoy the "crossfade" feature very much, and would like to keep using it for stereo files... Is there a way to make some kind of "conditional rendering" for the music player? i.e. use ASIO/Passthrough for AC3/DTS and BASS for other formats?

    As i mentioned in my reply to the previous entry, it would be possible to use a BASS plugin, which allows usage of DirectShow filters for playback.
    I need to figure out, how complicated it would be to implement and i need the ok from other team members to make those changes then into the product.

    2) Since I haven't played with it for a few years, what's the best way to add tags to AC3/DTS files? Can MPTagThat do it?

    In fact there is no Tagging support for AC3/DTS.
    I could relatively easily implement it into MPTagThat in form of a ID3 V1 or Ape Tag, which resides at the end of file, but it might cause problems.

    Therefore i went a different way and put support via CUE files into MP.
    Because of the feature freeze, i couldn't put the code into the 1.1.0 release, but it is already in SVN and will be part of the next release.
    Don#t have a sample of a CUE file with me currently, but can post one in the evening
     

    synthdood

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    I encode all my DTS music wavs to flac so that they can have ID tags and use the PureAudio plugin to pass the whole lot untouched to the soundcard through ASIO. My receiver does the rest. This setup worked perfectly in XP with MP 1.0.2. I had DTS music in 44.1KHz surround and in 24/96 and I had DTS video in 48KHz surround all automatically without the need to manually switch samplerates but since I reinstalled everything last week on Win7 and MP1.1 I can't get it working anymore. Very frustrating since the video part of MP will happily play DTS through the soundcard. If only the BASS engine could pass the stream directly to SPDIF. I know my soundcard can handle it. It will not resample but automatically switch between 44.1/48/96/192 samplerates (this can be a problem with many other soundcards) Unfortunately somewhere along the way stuff gets resampled and that breaks the DTS stream.
     

    chefkoch

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    AW: Re: Handling DTS / AC3 Music Files

    In fact there is no Tagging support for AC3/DTS.
    I could relatively easily implement it into MPTagThat in form of a ID3 V1 or Ape Tag, which resides at the end of file, but it might cause problems.
    How about embedding ac3 and dts in matroska? So instead of Audio+Video (mkv), it would be an audio-only-file (*.mka).

    I am not sure if bass is able to split/open the mka files (without the need of haali) or how this could work.
    Also there is question, does taglib# supports reading mka metadata? Could it be added? Same goes for writing.

    So even if this use case (using mka) is not very common atm, I think it would be a good way to handle those things.
     

    synthdood

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    Re: AW: Re: Handling DTS / AC3 Music Files

    How about embedding ac3 and dts in matroska? So instead of Audio+Video (mkv), it would be an audio-only-file (*.mka).

    I am not sure if bass is able to split/open the mka files (without the need of haali) or how this could work.
    Also there is question, does taglib# supports reading mka metadata? Could it be added? Same goes for writing.

    So even if this use case (using mka) is not very common atm, I think it would be a good way to handle those things.

    This is exactly why I encode DTS to flac. Flac allows for ID3 tags and you still end up with a lossless stream (after decoding of course). I bet I APE could be used in exactly the same way. All BASS would have to do is pass the stream unaltered to the soundcard. That means no respampling, no fade in/out no volume changes, no nothing.. How hard can that be? I do not understand why we still need ASIO or the pure audio plugin to achive this.
     

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