What settings to choose on an A/V receiver for LPCM 4.0? Blu-ray-Audio

[alk3997]

My impression on the QQ forum is that most people definitely like discrete surround mixes as long as it doesn't sound like an overdub jumped out of nowhere, Blended discrete is good. I also try to keep low bass in the front channels since those are usually better speakers and low bass is omnidirectional.

Now to answer your question, it the DTS-HD MA metadata. DTS-HD MA contains mixdown coefficients. LPCM does not. A single DTS-HD MA stream would solve your problems. The encoder is available from DTS and its distributors. It is much more expensive than Cirlinca products.

Andy

 

[Surroundjediguitarlord]

My gosh. Is there anything you don't know? Lol You are really good.
Yes, I am aware that the DTS-HD MA encoder costs some serious dough (approximately $1500), so I certainly can't afford that.
I'll simply go the route I described above, which should work out alright. I'll report back when I have conducted the test on a 5.1 system.

Thanks a million. You are a life-saver.

PS: That's good to hear, as the owners of the high-end shops I frequent tell me that nearly no one is intersted in music in surround sound, which baffles me, as I think it's the most amazing experience, evne better than going to concerts.

What kind of music do you produce/compose?

 

[ssully]

So, weird-ass configuration sounds weird and doesn't always work right.

Go figure.

Testimonial: all of my problems like this went away when I learned how to rip audio from discs to hard drive, and send it bit-perfectly to the an AVR via foobar2k + HDMI.

Look into it.

 

[bgf1973]

Hi:

I have a problem with the LPCM 4.0 mixes includes in the blu ray discs of the WYWH and DSOTM Immersion box sets of Pink Floyd.

I have an OPPO UDP-203 connected to a Marantz SR6010 by HDMI and 7.1 analogue connection.

If I select HDMI connection in the receiver I only can hear the L & R front channels. If I select 7.1 analogue connection I can hear all the channels.

 

[sukothai]

If I select HDMI connection in the receiver I only can hear the L & R front channels. If I select 7.1 analogue connection I can hear all the channels.

When you use analogue, the Oppo is decoding the surround channels and telling the AV receiver what to play on which channel. When you use HDMI, the AV receiver is decoding the surround channels and getting it wrong. You will have to dig into your AV receiver manual and figure out why it isn't decoding the HDMI surround channels properly. Perhaps the surrounds aren't enabled on the HDMI connection. Perhaps they go to the side surrounds and the receiver is looking at the rear surrounds only. It is hard to say without more info about your receiver.

 

[bgf1973]

The strange thing is that I have about 100 Blu ray audio, sacd and DVD audio disc and only have problema with the LPCM 4.0 mixes in these two blu ray.

 

[sukothai]

The strange thing is that I have about 100 Blu ray audio, sacd and DVD audio disc and only have problema with the LPCM 4.0 mixes in these two blu ray.

It is not strange to me. If you were to have a problem with channel assignments on anything, it would be with 4.0 on a 7.1 AV receiver. A 7.1 receiver has two sets of surround channels: a side pair and a rear pair. It sounds to me like your 4.0 disk rears are not going to the enabled set of receiver surrounds. If you can get to the rear of your receiver easily, try swapping the speaker wires between the rear surrounds and the side surrounds. If it works after the swap, you know something isn't configured properly in the receiver. Either that or your receiver just doesn't know what to do with 4.0 and is down-mixing to stereo. If it is this latter case, you may have to let the Oppo do the decoding.

 

[HomerJAU]

...

Since this site is called Quadraphonic, I hope you can answer how to get a 4.0 LPCM audio track to play back perfecly on an A/V receiver.

Change your 4.0 LPCM audio track to 5.0 (add a silent centre channel): L, R, C, SL, SR

I have a recent Denon AVR that does not like quad FLAC so I add a silent centre and all ok. (It seems some decoders don't like quad - I'm pretty sure my previous Arcam AVR had same issue)

BTW: 4.0 does not get downmixed to stereo. 4.0 plays back with front info only. Rear info is lost. Also, my Denon shows 4.0 input at stereo only. It does not 'see' the rears/sides.

 

[bgf1973]

With the new OPPO UHD-203 firmware update the problem is gone. Now I can hear the LPCM 4.0 mixes correctly by HDMI connection

 

[mutant_matt]

To continue this thread, if that's ok? - I have a similar but not quite the same problem. I can playback the Pink Floyd Quad/4.0 mixes off the Immersion discs (and the Echos 4.0 track off the big box set) fine from my Bluray player (bitstream via HDMI to my Pre-Pro), but when I rip those to FLAC, and playback via Kodi (again passthrough of the bitstream over HDMI to my Pre-Pro), the Pre-Pro decodes that as either PCM 2.0 (if it's in a FLAC container) or PCM 5.1 (but mixed up, if it's in an MKV or WAV container). My ripping method is the same as for all other 2.0 and 5.1 content which works fine via this same playback method, and according to Kodi logs, I think it is interpreting it correctly (it's being passed to the decoder unchanged (or should be) as Kodi is set for passthrough, over HDMI, to the same Pro-Pro as the Bluray is connected to (also via bitstream over HDMI).

It seems to me that channel order is a grey and complex area to dive into (I've been doing research in that area). Homer, what is your advice/method for "adding a silent centre channel) to the file? (I'm using Linux tools, and do all the steps manually - what does your tool do under the covers when you tick the "add silent track for Quad" check box)?

I did try this with Audacity but I suspect I didn't do it correctly, as it didn't help (though perhaps I should look to see if I can do this via ffmpeg?). Whatever I do, I don't want to touch the existing bitstream, I never transcode or anything like that - the aim is just to move playback from the disc to files without messing with the music itself...

Any help greatly appreciated,

Cheers,

Matt.

 

[jimfisheye]

Some media player apps (on the computer) and some hardware disc players turn out to only be programmed to deal with 2.0 or 5.1. The other channel formats (eg. 4.0) can be screwed up on such systems. On the computer, you have the option of simply installing a different media player free of such bugs. With a hardware disc player or receiver, you might be stuck. If this is the worst case and a hardware device does not have the ability to handle other than 2.0 or 5.1, the ultimate solution would be to rip the disc to the computer, add digitally blank C and Lfe channels with a DAW app, and author a new disc with the program now in a 5.1 container. Not trivial work if you've never seen any of the nuts and bolts of this stuff or used a DAW app before. Easy peasy if you have but still a PITA. What you'll discover walking that path is that it's easier to just hook your computer up to your sound system and cut out the middleman as it were.

They should know this! Why would they make a disc like this?
A. To save space on the disc.

It turns out that the electronic format (FLAC file) turns digitally zero channels into almost zero file space, so there's no penalty to pay with FLAC files if you put anything above 2.0 into a 5.1 container.