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.
