MediaPortal Audio renderer - better video playback quality (2 Viewers)

[red5goahead]

A good choice could be the Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System . On ebay you can buy it with 250€.

This only accepts SPDIF though doesn't it? (so no HD audio or LPCM via HDMI)

Yes only Spd/If through coaxial or optical digital input.
(by example I have a Marantz SR4400 with no hdmi input)

 

[wonkyd]

A good choice could be the Logitech Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System . On ebay you can buy it with 250€.

This only accepts SPDIF though doesn't it? (so no HD audio or LPCM via HDMI)

There is an Onkyo setup which is similar but has HDMI input ONKYO HTX22HDX
but I would be tempted to test on a real amp (as you are never sure how these integrated things actually work)

ONKYO TXSR308 is £220 and is probably the cheapest amp that supports HD audio and LPCM (as well as SPDIF) and would be enough for testing as you can see what inputs are being received etc. In real world use though you would need some speakers which obviously add to the cost

There is an Onkyo set Onkyo HTS3305 Black | 5.1 Package System with HDMI inc. Speakers exc. DVD player | Richer Sounds which has that same amp but includes the speakers. Only £299... was thinking about it for myself.

 

[chefkoch]

AW: MediaPortal Audio renderer - better video playback quality

I am having problems to register the renderer

On my laptop everything was fine, but the registration on my pc aborts after some time and wants to report an error to Microsoft.


I attached some files, the filenames are different because these were created the try before the screenshot.
WERB5B4.tmp.mdmp.zip needs to be renamed back to WERB5B4.tmp.mdmp, I only did it because mdmp attachments are not allowed.

I already reinstalled the VcRedist, which we currently install with DeployTool.

 

[Henkie Flits]

I'm using the latest V5 of your mod Tourettes and while playing my 720p Topgear episodes I don't have sound anymore. Nothing gets send to my receiver anymore. Using MPC-HC I do get this file played with audio.
Here are the details, I hope I provide you with enough information. THanks in advance!

General
Complete name                    : D:\TV-Series\Top Gear\Season 15\Top Gear - S15E05 - 720p HDTV x264-FoV.mkv
Format                           : Matroska
File size                        : 1.46 GiB
Duration                         : 1h 2mn
Overall bit rate                 : 3 343 Kbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2010-07-25 20:44:59
Writing application              : mkvmerge v2.9.8 ('C'est le bon') built on Aug 13 2009 16:16:13
Writing library                  : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 4 frames
Muxing mode                      : Container profile=Unknown@3.1
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 1h 2mn
Bit rate                         : 3 152 Kbps
Width                            : 1 280 pixels
Height                           : 720 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.137
Stream size                      : 1.34 GiB (92%)
Writing library                  : x264 core 84 r1416 fcf70c2
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=6 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc=2pass / mbtree=0 / bitrate=3152 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=1:1.00

Audio
ID                               : 2
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Codec ID                         : A_AC3
Duration                         : 1h 2mn
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 192 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Stream size                      : 85.6 MiB (6%)

 

[jameson_uk]

There is an Onkyo set Onkyo HTS3305 Black | 5.1 Package System with HDMI inc. Speakers exc. DVD player | Richer Sounds which has that same amp but includes the speakers. Only £299... was thinking about it for myself.

Plus travel and/or shipping to Finland

Perhaps if you pay for my Holiday to come to Finland for a week or two I will bring you the amp

On a serious note do we have an ETA on multi-channel audio? This would make a fairly big difference to how useful this is, bitstreaming I guess is a long way off (indeed will this be any better than any other renderer? surely as this is a bitstream then we can't adjust the speed of audio playback so this will just be passing a bitstream through without making any adjustments )

 

[arion_p]

I have the core processing code ready and did some limited testing on a very specific setup (i.e. XP, DirectSound, single background thread). I am now doing the merge with the latest SVN and implementing multiple threads per instance.

Sadly my free time is quite limited and unpredictable so I cannot give an ETA.

 

[wonkyd]

There is an Onkyo set Onkyo HTS3305 Black | 5.1 Package System with HDMI inc. Speakers exc. DVD player | Richer Sounds which has that same amp but includes the speakers. Only £299... was thinking about it for myself.

Plus travel and/or shipping to Finland )

The Onkyo AVX-380 is the same equivalent 350€

 

[Owlsroost]

I have the core processing code ready and did some limited testing on a very specific setup (i.e. XP, DirectSound, single background thread). I am now doing the merge with the latest SVN and implementing multiple threads per instance.

Sadly my free time is quite limited and unpredictable so I cannot give an ETA.

Hi Arion,

Thanks for your work on this

Can I ask how you are using the SoundTouch library for multiple channels - are you using multiple mono/stereo instances, or modifying the SoundTouch code to handle multiple channels natively ?

The reason for the question is explained quite well here - Tourist In Paradise: Phase-Coherent Pitch Shifter for ReClock (ReClock uses SoundTouch for pitch-shifting/time-stretching only, and a different, multi-channel capable resampling library for the basic resampling).

Tony

 

[arion_p]

Can I ask how you are using the SoundTouch library for multiple channels - are you using multiple mono/stereo instances, or modifying the SoundTouch code to handle multiple channels natively ?

The reason for the question is explained quite well here - Tourist In Paradise: Phase-Coherent Pitch Shifter for ReClock (ReClock uses SoundTouch for pitch-shifting/time-stretching only, and a different, multi-channel capable resampling library for the basic resampling).

First of all, currently we are only time-stretching, not resampling the audio. I do not know if we will need to resample, but so far I see no need.

Regarding the phase coherency, I am quite aware of the problem and have examined the code of the above solution (in fact at first I was wondering why ReClock did such "weird" tricks with SoundTouch). Adapting SoundTouch for multichannel is pretty much out of the question for two reasons:

1. It would take a lot of time/work to do it right, as it would have to be done using MMX/SSEx/3Now to be usable
2. It would be too slow for most systems. The way soundtouch works is by calculating the auto-correlation of the samples. If we increase the number of channels we also increase the time it takes to calculate the auto-correlation and the increase is exponential.

The solution I have used is similar to the above proposed, only it is a bit more flexible:

1. the code will try to process related channels in pairs (i.e. a left/right pair for each Front, Side, Rear, Top, Bottom)
2. the channels that are not related to each other, will be processed by pairing each of them with a composite channel
3. the composite channel will be calculated based on the average of the dominant channel pair (in order of priority: Front left/right or Side left/right or Rear left/right etc). I have not yet decided what are the correct priorities for selecting dominant channel pair, but these will be easy to change within the code

This solution will ensure that each left/right channel pair retains phase coherency, single channels will be coherent to the dominant channel pair (where most of the audio comes from), BUT channel pairs may be incoherent to each other. Fortunately our architecture allows us to switch to a different scheme, that processes each channel paired to the composite channel, so that each channel is coherent to the dominant channel pair or to the average of all channels and in essence coherent to each other. Unfortunately this will also increase CPU usage (by how much it remains to be seen).

 

[red5goahead]

First of all, currently we are only time-stretching, not resampling the audio. I do not know if we will need to resample, but so far I see no need.

Imho the time-stretching is better than resampling. I prefer a pitch coherent sound even with worst quality.

note : I switch my system with a C-media CMI8768+ to the Open Source WDM Drivers for C-Media 8738/8768 based soundcards and now I'm back to using the Reclock's ac3 encoder feature. I'm prepare myself to the tests with next mp audio renderer betas