Issue playing individual surround files though optical output. AV receiver issue? Windows 10 issue?

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

Solved !!!

While experimenting with the optical sound card settings I realized that when using FB2K and VLC the output was defaulting to shared mode although I had the exclusive mode allowed. The shared mode defaults in these cards to stereo. The exclusive mode would allow an application to talk directly to the sound card. From there it was straightforward.
For FB2K there is a WASAPI component that should be able to force exclusive mode, but somehow I cannot get it to work.
However in VLC it works as I expected. In VLC you MUST enable HDMI / SPDIF audio passthrough if you choose the output module automatically. Alternatively, if you choose a specific module (Windows Media Interface for instance) make sure you check "S/PDIF when available".
It seems to me that VLC allows for a much better management of multichannel audio streams within the tools already available in the program (as opposed to FB2K relying heavily on external components) as it was designed with streaming in mind.
I like the simplicity and customability of FB2K, but it seems that if I would want to manage my library though an optical output there is no way around VLC.
Having said that, digital output through VLC also behaves "sluggishly" playing multichannel files, defeating the purpose...

Thanks for the many answers that with the sparring of ideas somehow put me on the right track!

 

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

But the updates are free

I updated it today, but still I get 24/48 rips. More on that later, I am really curious how you manage to rip extensions with DVDAE. In my experience only possible with eac3to.

 

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

I think I understand what you are saying. I can indeed rip a DTS stream in 24/96, but only as a PCM wav or flac file. It is not possible to extract a 24/96 through direct stream demux as a dts file. You just get the 24/48 core. I can provide screenshots as proof. I can understand the reasons for that, the extension being more like a workaround, a band aid approach to extend the bandwidth of an already established format. Actually eac3to will also fail to output a 24/96 direct stream demux, like dvdae only as wav or flac. Am I right?

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I think I understand what you are saying. I can indeed rip a DTS stream in 24/96, but only as a PCM wav or flac file. It is not possible to extract a 24/96 through direct stream demux as a dts file. You just get the 24/48 core. I can provide screenshots as proof. I can understand the reasons for that, the extension being more like a workaround, a band aid approach to extend the bandwidth of an already established format. Actually eac3to will also fail to output a 24/96 direct stream demux, like dvdae only as wav or flac. Am I right?

Yes, I was talking about ripping to FLAC, which is what I routinely do.

Im not sure about the sample rate of the direct stream, but I thought since the core contains the extension info, when played back as a DTS stream the decoder fully decodes the extension layer. The demuxed DTS stream may well appear as a 48 kHz stream for compatibility purposes, I'm not sure. I do know that prior to the point when DVDAE was capable of extracting the full DTS extension, the popular way to rip DTS with the extension was to use DVDAE to demux the DTS stream and then decode the ripped stream and convert to FLAC. I believe I used Foobar for that.

 

[Simplepast Presentperfect]

Yes, I was talking about ripping to FLAC, which is what I routinely do.

Im not sure about the sample rate of the direct stream, but I thought since the core contains the extension info, when played back as a DTS stream the decoder fully decodes the extension layer. The demuxed DTS stream may well appear as a 48 kHz stream for compatibility purposes, I'm not sure. I do know that prior to the point when DVDAE was capable of extracting the full DTS extension, the popular way to rip DTS with the extension was to use DVDAE to demux the DTS stream and then decode the ripped stream and convert to FLAC. I believe I used Foobar for that.

I tend to think of the core as "the file" and the extension as some related data (not in "the file") that is interlaced with it. That is maybe why it is difficult or maybe impossible to "rip" a 24/96 dts. Too little is publicly known about the format !
My test song was Songs from the Wood, 4:55. The 24/48 core was 54 MB. I don't think that with the DTS lossy compression the 24/96 extension would have added too much to it as the spectrum is quite empty above 27 kHz. So definitely not 2 x 54 MB. By the way, I wonder what psychoacoustic model they use for a lossy compression algorithm for frequencies above 24 kHz, but I digress...
Compressed in FLAC (with the worms out of the DTS can) it is a 216 MB 24/96 file.
I think that for my library for casual listening I will just rip the dts core and use 1/4 of the space of the flac.