No Blu-Ray Audio

[gacevich]

Something has gone wrong with my HTPC setup and now blu-ray video plays fine but not the audio. This setup used to work but i tweaked something (maybe an upgrade?) and now i'm having problems. Here are some specifics:
Ops sys: XP
Blu-ray player: Arcsoft TMT (latest Version: 2.2.6.129)
AnydvdHD (latest version 6.6.0.3)
ATI spdif embedded in mobo
realtek audio (latest version 5.10.0.5983)

when the blu-ray in the dvd starts up i get all the audio i should...trailers and soundtrack while it waits for me to select play. once i move into the actual movie, the video works fine. however, there is no english audio. i can select the english director's comments and they come thru fine. some of the foreign languages come thru also.

the above leads me to believe that my audio works. that is, all the cable connections are fine, all the windows settings are fine and my drivers are working. rationale is that if these facts were not true i would not get any sound.

so i'm wondering if this some sort of hdmi drm issue which is blocking the english signal. but i would think that if anydvdhd were not working the video would not work.

any ideas on what i am missing or if this is a drm issue what else i might try?

thanks.

 

[electron]

I don't have Blu-Ray, but I have seen this exact issue happen with DVD movies. Basically the trailers, director comments and other non main movie components are just stereo, not Dolby (on most DVD movies). This makes me believe you have an issue with the Dolby passthrough. I'm far from an expert tho.

 

[gacevich]

I don't have Blu-Ray, but I have seen this exact issue happen with DVD movies. Basically the trailers, director comments and other non main movie components are just stereo, not Dolby (on most DVD movies). This makes me believe you have an issue with the Dolby passthrough. I'm far from an expert tho.

so, based on dan's comment, i was able to get TMT to display the audio signal for each language & director's cut. for all the languages that i cannot hear, the audio is Dolby TrueHD. for all the ones that i can hear, the singal is Dolby Digital xxxkbs. looks like my issue is being able to play Dolby TrueHD. double checked and the Realtek is for HD audio. i'm using a pioneer elite vsx-54tx to play my audio. any thoughts on how to determine if the problem is my pc (drivers, etc) or my pioneer receiver?

 

[pete_c]

I have lost the DD out of the Media PC optical into my receiver a few times by playing with the configuration in MCE and or base OS (Vista). I have used the audio config in MCE to test output. Does a DVD do the same? I can send you a short video clip with DD to test if you would like?

 

[gacevich]

I have lost the DD out of the Media PC optical into my receiver a few times by playing with the configuration in MCE and or base OS (Vista). I have used the audio config in MCE to test output. Does a DVD do the same? I can send you a short video clip with DD to test if you would like?

petec, i'm open to all help. u have pm with my email address.

did some more research and it appears that using s/pdif out of my ati mobo is not sufficient to carry TrueHD audio and hence i hear silence. now i'm trying to figure out how to get TrueHD downgraded to something i can hear (DD?) or figure out what needs upgrading.

 

[electron]

I was not aware that SPDIF didn't support TrueHD, glad I found out about that before I invested myself into a Blu-Ray setup. If you do get this working, post an update please, it's not looking too promising right now.

 

[gacevich]

I was not aware that SPDIF didn't support TrueHD, glad I found out about that before I invested myself into a Blu-Ray setup. If you do get this working, post an update please, it's not looking too promising right now.

dan, the spdif limitation was pointed out on slysoft forum where i was checking for drm issue. if i can get everything worked out i'll probably put a visio drawing together like i do on most of my setups. that way i can remember what i did.

 

[pete_c]

Just looked up what sound codecs are supported by BR and still working on updating my system.

What audio codecs will Blu-ray support?
Linear PCM (LPCM) - up to 8 channels of uncompressed audio. (mandatory)
Dolby Digital (DD) - format used for DVDs, 5.1-channel surround sound. (mandatory)
Dolby Digital Plus (DD+) - extension of Dolby Digital, 7.1-channel surround sound. (optional)
Dolby TrueHD - lossless encoding of up to 8 channels of audio. (optional)
DTS Digital Surround - format used for DVDs, 5.1-channel surround sound. (mandatory)
DTS-HD High Resolution Audio - extension of DTS, 7.1-channel surround sound. (optional)
DTS-HD Master Audio - lossless encoding of up to 8 channels of audio. (optional)

Here are the audio specs for a MKV container file:

Audio
A_MPEG/L3 MPEG Audio 1, 2, 2.5 Layer III The private data is void. The data contain everything needed for playback in the MPEG Audio header of each frame.

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x0055

A_MPEG/L2 MPEG Audio 1, 2 Layer II The private data is void. The data contain everything needed for playback in the MPEG Audio header of each frame.

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x0050

A_MPEG/L1 MPEG Audio 1, 2 Layer I The private data is void. The data contain everything needed for playback in the MPEG Audio header of each frame.

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x0050

A_PCM/INT/BIG PCM Integer Big Endian The private data is void. The bitdepth has to be read and set from KaxAudioBitDepth element

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : ???

A_PCM/INT/LIT PCM Integer Little Endian The private data is void. The bitdepth has to be read and set from KaxAudioBitDepth element

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x0001

A_PCM/FLOAT/IEEE Floating Point, IEEE compatible The private data is void. The bitdepth has to be read and set from KaxAudioBitDepth element (32 bit in most cases). The float are stored in little endian order (most common float format).

Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x0003

A_MPC MPC (musepack) SV8 The main developer for musepack has requested that we wait until the SV8 framing has been fully defined for musepack before defining how to store it in Matroska.
A_AC3


A_AC3/BSID9

A_AC3/BSID10
(Dolbyâ„¢) AC3 BSID <= 8 !! The private data is void ??? Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x2000 ; channel number have to be read from the corresponding audio element

AC3/BSID9 and AC3/BSID10 (DolbyNet) :
The ac3 frame header has, similar to the mpeg-audio header a version field. Normal ac3 is defiened as bitstream id 8 (5 Bits, numbers are 0-15). Everything below 8 is still compatible with all decoders that handle 8 correctly. Everything higher are additions that break decoder compatibility.
For the samplerates 24kHz (00); 22,05kHz (01) and 16kHz (10) the BSID is 9
For the samplerates 12kHz (00); 11,025kHz (01) and 8kHz (10) the BSID is 10

A_DTS Digital Theatre System The private data is void. Corresponding ACM wFormatTag : 0x2001
A_VORBIS Vorbis The private data contains the first three Vorbis packet in order. The lengths of the packets precedes them. The actual layout is:
Byte 1: number of distinct packets '#p' minus one inside the CodecPrivate block. This should be '2' for current Vorbis headers.
Bytes 2..n: lengths of the first '#p' packets, coded in Xiph-style lacing. The length of the last packet is the length of the CodecPrivate block minus the lengths coded in these bytes minus one.
Bytes n+1..: The Vorbis identification header, followed by the Vorbis comment header followed by the codec setup header.



A_FLAC FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) The private data contains all the header/metadata packets before the first data packet. These include the first header packet containing only the word fLaC as well as all metadata packets.
A_REAL/???? Realmedia Audio codecs The stream contains one of the following audio codecs:
A_REAL/14_4 Real Audio 1
A_REAL/28_8 Real Audio 2
A_REAL/COOK Real Audio Cook Codec (codename: Gecko)
A_REAL/SIPR Sipro Voice Codec
A_REAL/RALF Real Audio Lossless Format
A_REAL/ATRC Sony Atrac3 Codec

A_MS/ACM Microsoft(tm) Audio Codec Manager (ACM) The private data contains the ACM structure WAVEFORMATEX including the extra private bytes, as defined by Microsoft. The data are stored in little endian format (like on IA32 machines).
A_AAC/?????/??? AAC Profile Audio The stream complies with, and uses the CodecID for, one of the AAC profiles listed below. AAC audio always uses wFormatTag 0xFF
A_AAC/MPEG2/MAIN MPEG2 Main Profile The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG2/LC Low Complexity The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG2/LC/SBR Low Complexity with Spectral Band Replication The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG2/SSR Scalable Sampling Rate The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG4/MAIN MPEG4 Main Profile The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG4/LC Low Complexity The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG4/LC/SBR Low Complexity with Spectral Band Replication The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG4/SSR Scalable Sampling Rate The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.
A_AAC/MPEG4/LTP Long Term Prediction The private data is void. Channel number and sample rate have to be read from the corresponding audio element. Audio stream is stripped from ADTS headers and normal matroska frame based muxing scheme is applied.

A_QUICKTIME/???? QuickTime audio codecs The stream contains one of the following audio codecs. The CodecPrivate contains all additional data that is stored in the 'stsd' (sample description) atom in the QuickTime file after the mandatory sound descriptor structure. For an explanation of the QuickTime file format read Apple's PDF on QuickTime.
A_QUICKTIME/QDMC QDesign Music
A_QUICKTIME/QDM2 QDesign Music v2
A_TTA1 The True Audio lossles audio compressor TTA format description
Each frame is kept intact, including the CRC32.
The header and seektable are dropped.
The private data is void. SamplingFrequency, Channels and BitDepth are used in the TrackEntry.
wFormatTag = 0x77A1
A_WAVPACK4 WavPack lossles audio compressor The Wavpack packets consist of a stripped header followed by the frame data. For multi-track (> 2 tracks) a frame consists of many packets. For hybrid files (lossy part + correction part), the correction part is stored in an additional block (level 1). For more details, check the WavPack muxing description.

So far have "updated" my family room with two more speakers mounted in the ceiling - IE 7.1. My Aopen mini-pc optical audio output is downconverting along with my Mediagate media player via its optical outputs. BUT I don't really have a MM reciever that can decode True HD yet....

The file clip I sent you only had DD on it. I too would be interested in what you end up doing for BR HD sound.

 

[mterry63]

Both next gen audio formats (Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio) must be carried on HDMI and aren't supported on optical outputs. Some Bluray have DD 5.1 as a secondary option.

So your receiver must support HDMI audio decoding in order to hear these 2 formats. They DON'T have to be able to decode them however, they can be decoded by the player (PS3 will do this, for example) and output as raw PCM to the receiver over HDMI.

Be careful, as some receivers have HDMI video switching, and audio passthru but don't decode HDMI audio.

The channel bitrates of these formats are too high for SPDIF.