AVR chops off beginning of ATMOS Tracks (SEE MY WORKAROUND IN POST #41)

[ar surround]

Here is a workaround that I came up with for my particular equipment configuration which consists of:

- Oppo 205
- Marantz SR7013

Although I have the capability and have done so, I'm not interested in using my laptop in my audio chain.

I had already split the songs into separate MKV files using MKVToolNix. Subsequently, I used MKVToolNix to re-code each file into MKA and eliminate all of the drive-space-hogging video and chapter data:

I play back the files as audio only via the Oppo. They look like this on the screen, which is good enough for me. (Do I miss the boiling goat head? No.)

Except for the very first song in an Atmos listening session, there is no longer any "chop-off" of the first couple of seconds each time I play a new Atmos file. The Marantz AVR locks onto the first Atmos song and stays locked on until I switch to material coded otherwise, such as Flac. So I am now able to to jump around within an album, or to songs in other albums without experience any "chop-off"

Note that for albums such as Abbey Road where there are several songs strung together requiring gapless play, I'll probably keep them as whole MKV files.

 

[minimumtumbleweed]

For sure, I've been at this since the early 70s and there's always been a hiccup or two.
All in all we're doing pretty good today, we'll work things out in time.
Until the next hiccup comes along. LOL

For spinner drives mostly yes. I prefer the quietness of SSD drives so it gets a little more expensive that way. I've got 12tb of SSD now and will be looking at another $230 for a 2.5' 4tb drive from the egg very soon.
Thank goodness prices have fallen on SSD, I paid almost $300 for my first 60gb SSD back in 2008.
I do have a 14tb spinner for backups, and I'm about to run out of space on it too..

Was able to get a couple of Samsung QVO 2.5" 4TB for just under $150 last week on Newegg. Not sure if that deal is still up.

Presumably the problem could have been avoided with longer lead-in times for each track. However, there are some songs on Skylarking that segue and therefore could not have any lead-in time; yet the Skylarking Blu-ray plays without any issues.

But Skylarking doesn't have Dolby encoding? It's really the Dolby here. I have the same issue with my AVR when playing back any DD+ or Atmos material.

 

[privateuniverse]

So my copy of Larks' Tongues in Aspic arrived today. (Amazing work again, Mr. Wilson!). I was noticing the same problem with the blu-ray. So I started to do a little sleuthing. This problem has popped up for me on Larks', The Big Express and The Harmony Codex. With each of these discs, as it moves on to a new track, I see my receiver briefly falling out of its surround mode, only to go back immediately after each song begins. This, I assume, is what is causing it to sound as if the beginning of the song has been chopped off.

Next I decided to check the previous release from each artist (Court of the Crimson King, Psurroundabout Ride and The Future Bites). I also checked two other recent Wilson mixes, Who's Next and Broadsword and the Beast. No problems on any of these. They all play fine. My receiver doesn't fall out of surround mode when tracks switch.

So I dug into the liner notes on all of these titles. The three problem discs (Larks', Express and Codex) all say "Blu-ray authoring by Richard Ayres at Visual Data Media". All the discs that play fine are authored elsewhere (several by Ray Shulman). So is the problem the folks at Visual Data Media?

All the technical stuff is a foreign language to me, so if I am way off base, feel free to tell me so.

My experiments are all based on playing the 5.1 tracks as I have yet to take the Atmos plunge.

One other interesting note, with Larks' Tongues, the problem did not occur on the entire disc. Tracks 4, 5 & 6 all segue into each other and there is no problem during those segues, even though the track markers are changing.


EDIT: And now I just noticed that @fredblue mentioned Visual Data Media in post #12. I should always check with Fred first!

 

[Mr. Afternoon]

I don't know what changed but I no longer have dropouts after the latest VLC update, and albums which never used to play properly on my non-Atmos AVR because the bitrate was too high now does.

Maybe something changed with my PC setup that I didn't notice as well.

Oh well.

 

[privateuniverse]

I just sent the email below to Visual Data. Let's see if they respond....

HELLO -

I RECENTLY PURCHASED THREE NEW BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS ("THE HARMONY CODEX" BY STEVEN WILSON, "THE BIG EXPRESS" BY XTC AND "LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC" BY KING CRIMSON). ALL THREE HAVE A SIMILAR PROBLEM. WHEN PLAYED ON MY BLU-RAY PLAYER, MY RECEIVER DROPS OUT OF SURROUND MODE BRIEFLY WHEN EACH NEW SONG BEGINS. THIS CAUSES THE EFFECT OF FEELING AS IF THE BEGINNING OF EACH SONG IS BEING CUT OFF. AS I HAD ALSO RECENTLY BOUGHT SEVERAL OTHER BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS THAT DID NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM, I TRIED TO SEE WHAT THE THREE AFFECTED DISCS HAD IN COMMON THAT THE OTHERS DIDN'T. I NOTICED THAT THEY WERE ALL AUTHORED BY VISUAL DATA. CAN YOU TELL ME IF THERE IS SOME WAY TO RECTIFY THE PROBLEM WHEN I PLAY THE DISCS BACK? I HAVE NOTICED COMMENTS ON SOME MUSIC FORUMS THAT MANY OTHER PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THESE TITLES. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR ANY HELP THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE.

Even if they don't do anything to rectify the problem on the existing discs, hopefully it lets them know that there's a problem and that it won't be repeated in the future. Especially since it looks like they are who SW is doing business with now.

(And no, I did not intentionally type in all-caps. Their "contact us" form is set up to render communication that way! )

 

[Blackwood]

(And no, I did not intentionally type in all-caps. Their "contact us" form is set up to render communication that way! )

I used to work in radio news in the days of teletype machines that were in all caps. It was kind of an adjustment for me when the internet world decided that all caps was yelling.

Fingers crossed you get a response of some kind.

 

[privateuniverse]

So I dug into the liner notes on all of these titles. The three problem discs (Larks', Express and Codex) all say "Blu-ray authoring by Richard Ayres at Visual Data Media". All the discs that play fine are authored elsewhere (several by Ray Shulman). So is the problem the folks at Visual Data Media?

I just sent the email below to Visual Data. Let's see if they respond....

HELLO -

I RECENTLY PURCHASED THREE NEW BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS ("THE HARMONY CODEX" BY STEVEN WILSON, "THE BIG EXPRESS" BY XTC AND "LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC" BY KING CRIMSON). ALL THREE HAVE A SIMILAR PROBLEM. WHEN PLAYED ON MY BLU-RAY PLAYER, MY RECEIVER DROPS OUT OF SURROUND MODE BRIEFLY WHEN EACH NEW SONG BEGINS. THIS CAUSES THE EFFECT OF FEELING AS IF THE BEGINNING OF EACH SONG IS BEING CUT OFF. AS I HAD ALSO RECENTLY BOUGHT SEVERAL OTHER BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS THAT DID NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM, I TRIED TO SEE WHAT THE THREE AFFECTED DISCS HAD IN COMMON THAT THE OTHERS DIDN'T. I NOTICED THAT THEY WERE ALL AUTHORED BY VISUAL DATA. CAN YOU TELL ME IF THERE IS SOME WAY TO RECTIFY THE PROBLEM WHEN I PLAY THE DISCS BACK? I HAVE NOTICED COMMENTS ON SOME MUSIC FORUMS THAT MANY OTHER PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THESE TITLES. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR ANY HELP THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE.

Even if they don't do anything to rectify the problem on the existing discs, hopefully it lets them know that there's a problem and that it won't be repeated in the future. Especially since it looks like they are who SW is doing business with now.

(And no, I did not intentionally type in all-caps. Their "contact us" form is set up to render communication that way! )

Well I never got a response from Visual Data. I sent an email to @PaulatSDE ..... Maybe he has some contacts that he can alert regarding this issue.

I did manage to find Richard Ayres' profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn will only let you message another member if you're connected to them or if you have a paid account, which I don't. Does anyone have a paid account? Maybe we could attempt to contact him there?

 

[AYanguas]

The issue would be avoided if the whole album tracks are authored as a single file, instead of a file for each song, as many other Blurays have. Of course, also with the silence seconds at the beginning, to give time for the different players to HDMI Sync.

There must be some authoring options in the authoring tool that will make a single file or separate files for a playlist.

What I do sometimes is to append all files with mkvtoolnix, if gapless is strongly needed.

 

[kap'n krunch]

plain ole SLOPPY authoring with zero quality control...
us folks who do QC for the great Neil Wilkes always zero in on having none of that shit happen and the great Guru does his magic...NONE of his authored BDs have this happen...

 

[Mackspower]

I didn't see it mentioned here but one possible solution might be to use a hardware solution like an EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) black box to minimise the HDMI handshaking (between the player and the receiver).
It would require some experimentation to discover if the receiver is simply a bit slow to swap decoding methods or if it is a more fundamental HDMI issue where the receiver is falling all the way back to a low capability level (audio and visual wise). Don't rule out a dodgy HDMI cable either

 

[AYanguas]

I didn't see it mentioned here but one possible solution might be to use a hardware solution like an EDID (Extended Display Identification Data) black box to minimise the HDMI handshaking (between the player and the receiver).
It would require some experimentation to discover if the receiver is simply a bit slow to swap decoding methods or if it is a more fundamental HDMI issue where the receiver is falling all the way back to a low capability level (audio and visual wise). Don't rule out a dodgy HDMI cable either

I have a HDFury Vertex2 between the Player and the AVR/Display.

The HDMI handshake is taking it's time the same way than without Vertex2. When changing file format from BD menu, Player menú to the next media file, either HDMI handshake occurs, or the AVR take his time to switch and mute the sound some seconds.

 

[Mackspower]

I have a HDFury Vertex2 between the Player and the AVR/Display.

The HDMI handshake is taking it's time the same way than without Vertex2. When changing file format from BD menu, Player menú to the next media file, either HDMI handshake occurs, or the AVR take his time to switch and mute the sound some seconds.

That's a nice device (the Vertex). One additional thought, the HDMI link between your AVR and display may also be a factor.
Some AVRs allow you to preset the monitor spec but you could also experiment by shifting the Vertex between the AVR and Display. It may be the weak link that is delaying the end-to-end handshake?

 

[AYanguas]

That's a nice device (the Vertex). One additional thought, the HDMI link between your AVR and display may also be a factor.
Some AVRs allow you to preset the monitor spec but you could also experiment by shifting the Vertex between the AVR and Display. It may be the weak link that is delaying the end-to-end handshake?

Not possible now

Vertex between AVR and Display was the usual connection. But The HDMI outs of the DENON have Broken. Now I'm using the Vertex that way, with it's two outputs, main for the display and audio for a single HDMI input of AVR still not Broken. While I decide whether to send AVR for repair.

I remember same problems with first seconds drop of the songs with my previous connection, but I cannot test now, apart from reconfiguring EDIDs and scaling on the Vertex.

 

[kap'n krunch]

I just sent the email below to Visual Data. Let's see if they respond....

HELLO -

I RECENTLY PURCHASED THREE NEW BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS ("THE HARMONY CODEX" BY STEVEN WILSON, "THE BIG EXPRESS" BY XTC AND "LARKS' TONGUES IN ASPIC" BY KING CRIMSON). ALL THREE HAVE A SIMILAR PROBLEM. WHEN PLAYED ON MY BLU-RAY PLAYER, MY RECEIVER DROPS OUT OF SURROUND MODE BRIEFLY WHEN EACH NEW SONG BEGINS. THIS CAUSES THE EFFECT OF FEELING AS IF THE BEGINNING OF EACH SONG IS BEING CUT OFF. AS I HAD ALSO RECENTLY BOUGHT SEVERAL OTHER BLU-RAY AUDIO DISCS THAT DID NOT HAVE THIS PROBLEM, I TRIED TO SEE WHAT THE THREE AFFECTED DISCS HAD IN COMMON THAT THE OTHERS DIDN'T. I NOTICED THAT THEY WERE ALL AUTHORED BY VISUAL DATA. CAN YOU TELL ME IF THERE IS SOME WAY TO RECTIFY THE PROBLEM WHEN I PLAY THE DISCS BACK? I HAVE NOTICED COMMENTS ON SOME MUSIC FORUMS THAT MANY OTHER PEOPLE ARE EXPERIENCING THE SAME PROBLEM WITH THESE TITLES. THANK YOU IN ADVANCE FOR ANY HELP THAT YOU CAN PROVIDE.

Even if they don't do anything to rectify the problem on the existing discs, hopefully it lets them know that there's a problem and that it won't be repeated in the future. Especially since it looks like they are who SW is doing business with now.

(And no, I did not intentionally type in all-caps. Their "contact us" form is set up to render communication that way! )

I just sent this message along with a personalized extra pointing out that his renders the products as unacceptable and that the clients should press corrected replacement discs and replace the ones we have bought...

 

[AYanguas]

I think that there will always be a small time, either for hdmi handshake or for AVR change format, or both, for which the sound will be muted at the beginning of a file.

The Solution, valid for all cases, would be to make files that have enough silence time at the beginning to deal with this ‘sync’ process.

The files from CDs or Blu-rays or whatever mastering should be adapted in this way by ‘adding’ some amount of silence at the beginning, around 5 to 10 seconds.

One very good example of this can be found in the track samples (snippets) that can be downloaded from the album “Silent Work – Sonic Leaks” from the GrobiTV site:

Pure Audio SONIC LEAKS von Silent Work in Dolby Atmos und Auro-3D

Those MKV files have 10 seconds silence at the beginning that is explicitly shown by the video animation displaying a countdown “Handshaking: xxs”.


Proposal to IAA

@sjcorne , I want to suggest that a site like IAA could implement this solution for its download files.

I have done a successful test with the track “Dear life.mkv” (Atmos TrueHD) from Bruce Soord’s Luminiscence album, downloaded from IAA. In my system I always lose the first wonderful three notes of the guitar, as they start just at the beginning of the file. I also lose those same notes when playing stereo CD ripped files and the DVD DTS, as well. Not in all cases I can restart the song by pressing ‘rewind’ button, which is something annoying for exquisite people like us.


How I did it:

The idea is to ‘append’ via MKVToolNix, a silence file first before the original MKV. As the characteristics of both files have to be similar, I had to elaborate ‘a little’ the silence track, but then, it can be used later for all tracks.

Make the silence track:

- Create a mono WAV with 10 seconds silence.
- Using Audacity, copy 12 times that mono silence file to get a 12 channel. Then Export to a 12 Channel WAV file.
- Using MMH, with that WAV source 7.1.4 encode an Atmos TrueHD file MKV

Make the compatible silence file:

I had errors when trying to append the original MKV to the silence file, that was a MKV without video track. So I prepare the silence file with ‘same’ tracks as the original MKV:

- MKVToolNix, merge original MKV and silence MKV, and select only the video track and the audio track from silence.
- MKVToolnix, Output tab, select “Split mode: After output duration / Duration: 10s”
(I tried first with 5s but it generated 10s files, that I guess is the minimum??)
- MKVToolNix, Start Multiplexing and then get only the first of the ‘splited’ files generated.

That will be the silence Atmos compatible file to append for all tracks. Of course it has the video part of the first track, but with a more generic video track, this file would be universal for all subsequents append for all kind of MKV (video+audio) Atmos TrueHD.

Make the final Customer file:

- MKVToolNix, append the compatible silence file MKV with the original MKV

Make Full Albums:

This can be done for each individual song, when needed, if there is important sound during about the first 5 to 10 seconds or so.

But when a complete gapeless is needed for the album, the solution is to append all tracks with MKVToolNix, and aply the silence Atmos track process only for the first song, as @ar surround explain in the post 41.


CONCLUSION:

This has corrected the problem for me for my players and the PC (with MPC-HC) and I guess with any players.

I can now fully enjoy the Atmos TrueHD from IAA of Bruce Soord's Luminiscence listening properly the good first guitar notes of the first song.

 

[kap'n krunch]

My take is that we should ALL ask to return our copies of all three titles to teach the labels to not give us sub par products.
I know I AM doing so, and so should you guys, cause if we let them piss on us they will KEEP DOING IT!

 

[HomerJAU]

How I did it:

The idea is to ‘append’ via MKVToolNix, a silence file first before the original MKV. As the characteristics of both files have to be similar, I had to elaborate ‘a little’ the silence track, but then, it can be used later for all tracks.

Make the silence track:

- Create a mono WAV with 10 seconds silence.
- Using Audacity, copy 12 times that mono silence file to get a 12 channel. Then Export to a 12 Channel WAV file.
- Using MMH, with that WAV source 7.1.4 encode an Atmos TrueHD file MKV

Hey Alberto,

I can add a new option to the MMH Atmos Helper tool's Encoder dialog to prepend silence of any given length to Atmos encodes. That would make your task simpler, yes?

THX
Garry

 

[AYanguas]

Hey Alberto,

I can add a new option to the MMH Atmos Helper tool's Encoder dialog to prepend silence of any given length to Atmos encodes. That would make your task simpler, yes?

THX
Garry

The problem arises in my systems with already existing Atmos or other format files including playing directly from ISO disc. One example beeing the First song on Luminiscence album from Bruce Soord. I have exactly the same problem either with the Atmos MKV from IAA or with the DTS DVD 5.1 ISO.

So, it is not 'encoding' an Atmos file, but appending the existing original file to the initial silence. Perhaps you would use the Atmos encoder for this, but would the original file will have to be 're-encoded'? I'm thinking about the eventual lose of Atmos objects, although the output channels content (7.1.4 or 9.1.4) would be the same.

That would only be valid for Atmos, but not for other file formats.

I'm trying to figure out what options and processes would be interesting to develop.

 

[privateuniverse]

As I have not heard back from either Visual Data or SDE, I just sent a message to the Steven Wilson Remixes Facebook page. Maybe I will get a response there....