Back when the AppleTV first came out one of the things I really liked about it was that it passed 16/44.1 bit perfect which meant I could rip my DTS CDs and play them back through the AppleTV (as long as I made sure that the AppleTV wasn't doing any volume adjustment) and I could play DTS on my AppleTV along with the rest of my CD rips and iTunes library.
Then the AppleTV 2 came out and it converts everything to 16/48. Therefore DTS CD rips no longer worked. This has continued through the current AppleTV 3 models.
But, I realized a while back that all the DTS and DTS 24/96 tracks on DVD-Audio and other DVD formats with audio are in fact a 16/48 bitstream. And guess what! The new AppleTV's pass 16/48 bit perfect. (Sound Check off, and volume at max level).
So, how do you get DTS or DTS 24/96 (or AC3 for that matter) into a bistream that the AppleTV will pass through and can be decoded by your processor? Probably a few ways but here is how I do it on a Mac with a PC emulator.
1) Rip the DTS/AC3 tracks with "DVD Audio Extractor". This software (which works on Mac and PC) has a "direct stream demux" option which will rip the tracks into individual ".dts" files. It can work directly from a DVD or from a decrypted Blu-ray image (you'll need other software for that).
2) The next requires a PC or Parallels/Fusion. The software required is "AudioMuxer". Under it's Tools menu is an option to "Convert AC3/DTS to SPIDF WAV or FLAC". Use that to convert the ".dts" files to ".wav" files.
3) The wav files can be imported into iTunes. I then convert them with iTunes to Apple Lossless so they can be fully tagged and artwork added.
If all goes well and soundcheck is off and your AppleTV is not doing any volume adjustment, these will now play properly through any processor/receiver that handles DTS and Dolby Digital.
Note this will NOT work for the HD format (DTS Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD) as they are encoded at higher bitrates but if the lossy core is extracted from those that should work too.
If you have tried this yourself or have any other tricks for playing surround on the AppleTV, discuss....
Then the AppleTV 2 came out and it converts everything to 16/48. Therefore DTS CD rips no longer worked. This has continued through the current AppleTV 3 models.
But, I realized a while back that all the DTS and DTS 24/96 tracks on DVD-Audio and other DVD formats with audio are in fact a 16/48 bitstream. And guess what! The new AppleTV's pass 16/48 bit perfect. (Sound Check off, and volume at max level).
So, how do you get DTS or DTS 24/96 (or AC3 for that matter) into a bistream that the AppleTV will pass through and can be decoded by your processor? Probably a few ways but here is how I do it on a Mac with a PC emulator.
1) Rip the DTS/AC3 tracks with "DVD Audio Extractor". This software (which works on Mac and PC) has a "direct stream demux" option which will rip the tracks into individual ".dts" files. It can work directly from a DVD or from a decrypted Blu-ray image (you'll need other software for that).
2) The next requires a PC or Parallels/Fusion. The software required is "AudioMuxer". Under it's Tools menu is an option to "Convert AC3/DTS to SPIDF WAV or FLAC". Use that to convert the ".dts" files to ".wav" files.
3) The wav files can be imported into iTunes. I then convert them with iTunes to Apple Lossless so they can be fully tagged and artwork added.
If all goes well and soundcheck is off and your AppleTV is not doing any volume adjustment, these will now play properly through any processor/receiver that handles DTS and Dolby Digital.
Note this will NOT work for the HD format (DTS Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD) as they are encoded at higher bitrates but if the lossy core is extracted from those that should work too.
If you have tried this yourself or have any other tricks for playing surround on the AppleTV, discuss....