Playing an LPCM quad track on a 5.1 system

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ayushn21

New member
Joined
Mar 6, 2021
Messages
3
Location
London
Hey everyone!

It's my first post on this forum. Glad to be here! I've got a tech issue and have no idea where to start so I'd really appreciate some help from you awesome folks :)

I'm trying to play the Quadrophonic mix of Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd from the Blu Ray that comes in the Immersion Box Set. It's in LPCM on the disc. No matter what I do, the track plays in stereo through my 5.1 system. I think I've played with literally every setting there is on both my blu ray player and receiver!

My player is a Sony BDP-6700 and my receiver is a Denon AVR-X250BT. I've tried changing pretty much every setting in the audio menus on both the player and receiver. Any ideas as to what might be the problem? Do I need another blu ray player or something?

Thanks!!
 
It is a 4.0 mix as far as I know and not all AVRs decode that, what you can do if you’re a Windows user is to rip the blu ray to MKV (using MakeMKV for example) then use Music Media Helper to first extract the tracks and then manually add silent LFE and center channels.
 
It is a 4.0 mix as far as I know and not all AVRs decode that

Yeah it's 4.0. Bugger, didn't realise it could be the receiver. I thought LPCM was LPCM regardless of number of channels! I'm a mac user, not Windows unfortunately.

For the Dark Side of the Moon 4.0 mix, I ripped the DVD using HandBrake and then streamed the 4.0 track to my AppleTV using AirPlay which is also connected to my 5.1 system. That's quite a pain though so was hoping to find a way to play the Blu Ray directly. Also the Blu Ray is LPCM and DVD was compressed so there's that too ...
 
It is a 4.0 mix as far as I know and not all AVRs decode that

Yeah it's 4.0. Bugger, didn't realise it could be the receiver. I thought LPCM was LPCM regardless of number of channels! I'm a mac user, not Windows unfortunately.

For the Dark Side of the Moon 4.0 mix, I ripped the DVD using HandBrake and then streamed the 4.0 track to my AppleTV using AirPlay which is also connected to my 5.1 system. That's quite a pain though so was hoping to find a way to play the Blu Ray directly. Also the Blu Ray is LPCM and DVD was compressed so there's that too ...
Welcome in @ayushn21; I believe you can load up a mac version of the free DAW "Audacity" and add those silent Center and LFE channels. Real easy. For ripping try these must read threads :

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/converting-mch-discs-101-overview.22384/
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/sony-blu-ray-players-used-for-sacd-ripping.26078/
 
Welcome in @ayushn21; I believe you can load up a mac version of the free DAW "Audacity" and add those silent Center and LFE channels. Real easy. For ripping try these must read threads :

https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/converting-mch-discs-101-overview.22384/
https://www.quadraphonicquad.com/forums/threads/sony-blu-ray-players-used-for-sacd-ripping.26078/

Thanks @J. PUPSTER! I've already got Audacity so will read those articles on ripping the disc and add those channels. Cheers :)
 
Some players and some receivers have problems with 4-channel PCM. I believe there are both some Sony players and some Denon receivers that are plagued by this issue. Regardless, adding silent C and LFE channels in software will solve the problem, but it might be helpful to know where the problem lies. Check the playback info on both devices. If the player says "4.0," but the receiver says "2.0," then the problem is the receiver. If both say "2.0," then the problem could be either just the player or both the player and the receiver.
 
I try to avoid adding empty center and LFE channels to any of my saved audio files.
Someday someone will inherit my collection or try to play one of those files, and complain that the center and LFE are missing, and blame me for being stupid and messing up with the ripping. But if I keep the files as quad the way they should be, then they can only blame themselves if they could not play the file properly. ;)
 
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I try to avoid adding empty center and LFE channels to any of my saved audio files.
Someday someone will inherit my collection or try to play one of those files, and complain that the center and LFE are missing, and blame me for being stupid and messing up with the ripping. But if I keep the files as quad the way they should be, then they can only blame themselves if they could not play the file properly. ;)

They will probably blame you for even more stuff when they try to play some of your quad titles only to have it be processed as stereo by the AVRs of the future.

I convert all MC files to 6 channel and then just signify the true channel number in the album title. So the PF quad Dark Side becomes "Dark Side of the Moon (4.0)"
 
I hate all modern DSP based AVR type systems! Long live Analogue! Wow I feel better after that brief rant! You would think that equipment manufactures as big as Sony and Denon would have the brains to make their equipment compatible with any possible channel arrangement, they only seem to care about what is most commonly used currently. So much equipment is IMHO obsolete as soon as it is released!
I've long been bothered that 5.1 channel files won't play through my 4.0 sound card, the centre and Lfe channels play rather than the surrounds, so I had the opposite problem. To fix my issue I had to convert all my six channel files to four to be able to properly play them on my computer.
 
I hate all modern DSP based AVR type systems! Long live Analogue! Wow I feel better after that brief rant! You would think that equipment manufactures as big as Sony and Denon would have the brains to make their equipment compatible with any possible channel arrangement, they only seem to care about what is most commonly used currently. So much equipment is IMHO obsolete as soon as it is released!
I've long been bothered that 5.1 channel files won't play through my 4.0 sound card, the centre and Lfe channels play rather than the surrounds, so I had the opposite problem. To fix my issue I had to convert all my six channel files to four to be able to properly play them on my computer.

Denon's older AVRs actually did 4.0 fine. At some point the newer ones stopped supporting it.
 
I've long been bothered that 5.1 channel files won't play through my 4.0 sound card, the centre and Lfe channels play rather than the surrounds, so I had the opposite problem. To fix my issue I had to convert all my six channel files to four to be able to properly play them on my computer.

I use JRiver which solves both issues for me.

(1) If I want to play a 4.0 file to HDMI/Receiver, then I set the output to 5.1, but turn off the upmix/downmix function in JRIver so the center and LFE remain empty. I do the same for classical 5-channel SACDs.

Note: The above applies to 4.0 PCM/FLAC/WAV files. Some quad blu ray discs (Chicago,The Doors ,Doobie Brothers, etc) use a DTS-HD 4.0 format, which can be sent to HDMI/Receiver as a DTS bitsream with no issues, and the receiver will decode the bitstream.

JRiver_Output_51.png



(2) If I want to play a 5.1 file to my desktop speakers (4 speakers), then I set the output to 4 channels, and turn on the upmix/downmix function in JRiver. And it will send the center and LFE channels to the L,R speakers.
JRiver_Output4.png


So in both cases, I do not need the unnecessary step of messing up my files.
Quad stays as Quad, 5.1 stays as 5.1, etc.
 
They will probably blame you for even more stuff when they try to play some of your quad titles only to have it be processed as stereo by the AVRs of the future.

That's OK, as long as I'm not the stupid one messing up the files.:)

I convert all MC files to 6 channel and then just signify the true channel number in the album title. So the PF quad Dark Side becomes "Dark Side of the Moon (4.0)"
I also put put a description in my albums to differentiate the format. But the conversion is a totally unnecessary step for me as I mentioned in my previous post.

Furthermore, there may be cases when I really want to keep the original number of channels. For example I use Penteo to do upmixing. Penteo uses a setting based on the number of input channels and the output/upmixed channels. Let's say I want to upmix to 5.1.4, it will behave differently when upmixing a 4.0 source and a 5.1 source. If I feed Penteo a quad song but in a 5.1 file as input, it might now work the same way as feeding it a true Quad file.
Also JRiver allows me to categorize my music library based on the number of channels. So I can for example create a Quad category, and I can instruct JRiver to automatically put all the files with 4 channels in that category.
 
My Marantz SR6014 from 2020 handles 4.0 just fine. It's essentially a Denon at heart.

Good to know. I certainly haven't verified that all 'newer' Denon's fail at 4.0 . Just the two I own (X-series), plus models I see reported on in places like here. My first Denon AVR played 4.0 files with no problem. That was the AVR-4311ci, which dates back to ~2010.
 
My Sony X800 drops the rear channels of 4.0 sources. My OPPO BDP-103 does not.
Tried with an older Pioneer Elite AVR and a newish Denon 6400H. In my case, pretty sure it's the X800 causing the issue.
I'm not sure your Sony is the culprit. I have two of them, and neither of them drops the rear channels of 4.0 sources. One is connected to a Denon 4400 ("old"), and the other is connected to a Denon 4520 (older).
 
I'm having the same problem, trying to play the WYWH blu ray through a sony 800M2 onto a sony AV 790, the player shows 4.0 output but the receiver is playing through all speakers, if i put it to direct it plays through 2 speakers, no way to get 4.0 apparently!!!
 
I'm having the same problem, trying to play the WYWH blu ray through a sony 800M2 onto a sony AV 790, the player shows 4.0 output but the receiver is playing through all speakers, if i put it to direct it plays through 2 speakers, no way to get 4.0 apparently!!!


Its the Sony . . my X800 wont play the Quad...i have to use my Oppo
 
Its the Sony . . my X800 wont play the Quad...i have to use my Oppo

Just my luck, my old yamaha receiver played the quad, I upgraded for atmos and never thought it would be any different. I only have 2 quad mixes, both pink floyd from the immersion boxes
 
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