Atmos Experiences, Frustrations and a Plea for Help

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quoddiophile

Well-known Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2014
Messages
100
Location
Saskatoon, SK Canada
Recently I made substantial upgrades to my system so that I could enjoy the Atmos experience (see my profile for details). To that end, I had already ripped my 30+ Atmos discs to MKV files using MakeMKV and then I tagged them using the excellent Music Media Helper 7 program.

Once everything was in place, I decided to give it a go as follows:

1. Playing Atmos files via an 8TB drive attached to my OPPO BDP-205

Initially, I had extracted everything to MKA files. For the most part, these played just fine on my OPPO but there were a few disadvantages

-The metadata was crude but workable.

-Although there is a gapless option, it does not work as well as it should (Dark Side of the Moon).

-The artwork does not appear. It is there because you can see it when you go into the Photos folder. Strangely, the artwork appears for my Riverside album. That one is strange because for some reason I can only tag it using MMH when I retrieve the jpg file from my artwork folder as opposed to my usual practice of copying the file from my artwork folder to the MKV container.

-The sound does not come on for roughly 20 seconds so you have go back to the beginning of the track and start it up again.

I tried using M4A files but they will not play on the OPPO. Hitting play simply causes it to cycle through all the tracks without emitting any sound. The metadata is a bit better, however.

2. Apple TV 4K

I ended up checking this out as it was obvious that a number of my favourite albums were only available as Spatial Audio.

The installation was a bit clunky, but Audioholics has an excellent video on how to set it up properly. The remote takes a bit of getting used to as does the app. Currently there is no way that I know of to search by Spatial audio only which is a bit of a bummer. However, I have still managed to find over 100 albums that might be of interest.

An odd quirk is that when playing an Atmos file there is a stutter at the beginning and so you need to then start over and then it works perfectly.

I did end up making the purchase. Spatial Audio, Apple’s version of Atmos of course is only a lossy version of a proper Atmos file. Nevertheless, Apple’s version is often the best version of a particular album.

3. Nvidia Shield Pro and Kodi

The installation of the shield was much clunkier than it should have been but I managed to get there.

I am not very impressed with the Kodi app. You seem to need about five extra clicks to get anywhere and there is basically no help.

Unfortunately, the Kodi app (the latest version 20.2) does not work very well. If you use MKA files, then the track titles are not displayed properly. They appear as something like Air – 7.1 Surround for each track with the only difference being the track number.

I tried using M4A files and the track titles appeared properly but only the first track will play. If you try another track, you can see the remaining titles rapidly flash by until it reaches the end. I do have the current settings (Automatic Play “on” and Queue “off”). At one point it seemed to work but I have tried so many “experiments” that I can’t be sure. I find it quite incredible that in this day and age this sort of thing happens.

I have tried to edit the MKA files to get the track titles to display properly, but nothing seems to work. Most of the MMH tags are not displayed. MP3tag seems to edit the tracks but with no success. I have tried a number of other editors including MKVToolNix which I find totally incomprehensible and impossible to use.

I reinstalled the Kodi app several times but with no luck.

Hopefully, somebody can help me with one or both of these problems. Perhaps the Kodi problem is a bug with version 20.2; apparently this sort of thing has happened before.

4. As It Stands Now

Currently, the best solution for me is to use my OPPO player to play Atmos files is spite of its disadvantages. Of course, I can always revert to the physical disc but I am loath to do that considering the inconveniences that offers. I guess I am spoiled by Roon.

I have not yet purchased the Nvidia Shield Pro but have only about 7 days left of my trial period. Unless I can find a solution to the problems I am having with playing Atmos files with Kodi, I will have to return the Nvidia Shield Pro sometime this week.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

Jim
 
I can only comment on the part with using mka files with Kodi.
There is a number of questions that need clarification. Do your mka files use Matroska tags or ID3 tags, or even separate NFO files (MMH seems to do that judging from a short look on the documentation)? I think there is an issue with ffmpeg and thus Kodi properly parsing Matroska tags.

From what you are writing I guess you use one file per track? Because it is also possible to use one file for the whole album with tracks marked as chapters. This will not solve the metadata issue (in fact I think I remember that I had issues with the chapter names being displayed in Kodi), but it might solve problems with gapless playback.

I usually have no issues at all with Kodi, but I normally do not play play mka files. I use it with m4a stereo files mostly, without any hassle. But I can test it with mka in my setup (and did that in the past) for you to confirm if it should work or not. I cannot do it before Tuesday though.

BTW., mkvtoolnix is more of a muxing tool (combining video, audio, subtitle streams to one file etc.) and not primarily a tag editor, so no wonder you felt overwhelmed by it :) Not sure how many good Matroska tag editors are out there, but mp3tag does not seem to support it (it probably adds ID3 tags to the mka files - and possibly the Matroska tags remain in the files then, which is why you see no change).
 
With the Shield / Kodi setup, sounds like you may not have enabled pass-through audio in Kodi's settings. I believe it's in System>System>Audio. Both M4A and MKA files will play just fine in Kodi. M4A is preferred, as the tagging support is much better. You can use MMH to "convert" MKA to M4A. "Convert" is quotes because it's not actually converting anything, just putting the data in a different "container".
 
Last edited:
pat bateman said:
t's not actually converting anything, just putting the data in a different "container".
Click to expand...
The container is not even different. mkv only indicates that there's a video stream present in the Matroska file, while mka is expected to only have audio streams. The file extension is just convenience for users and players.
 
splinter said:
Why do you think that? He only said the metadata is not displayed properly, there was no playback issue, right?
Click to expand...
Yes there is a playback issue. Only the first track of an M4A album will play. All tracks will play for an MKA Album but in that case the track titles are useless. They display for example Pink Floyd - 7.1 Surround for each track with the only difference being the track number. I will double-check the pass-through audio setting when I get up. With all the experimentation and reinstallation of the Kodi app I might have forgotten to enable that setting.
 
quoddiophile said:
Yes there is a playback issue. Only the first track of an M4A album will play. All tracks will play for an MKA Album but in that case the track titles are useless. They display for example Pink Floyd - 7.1 Surround for each track with the only difference being the track number. I will double-check the pass-through audio setting when I get up. With all the experimentation and reinstallation of the Kodi app I might have forgotten to enable that setting.
Click to expand...

I was able to replicate the issue, and I am almost certain its because you dont have pass-through enabled in Kodi. I disabled pass-through on Kodi and experienced the same bug. The first track plays, however not in pass-through, it played an Atmos M4A in 7.1, and then rapidly skips the remains tracks on the album after track 1 finishes.

For good measure as well, I make sure to disable Dolby processing completely on the Shield settings. Settings > Device Preferences > Display & Sound > Advanced Sound Settings > Surround Sound. Disable Dolby Audio Processing, Available formats set to "Auto".
 
Last edited:
quoddiophile said:
1. Playing Atmos files via an 8TB drive attached to my OPPO BDP-205

Initially, I had extracted everything to MKA files. For the most part, these played just fine on my OPPO but there were a few disadvantages

-The metadata was crude but workable.

-Although there is a gapless option, it does not work as well as it should (Dark Side of the Moon).

-The artwork does not appear. It is there because you can see it when you go into the Photos folder. Strangely, the artwork appears for my Riverside album. That one is strange because for some reason I can only tag it using MMH when I retrieve the jpg file from my artwork folder as opposed to my usual practice of copying the file from my artwork folder to the MKV container.

-The sound does not come on for roughly 20 seconds so you have go back to the beginning of the track and start it up again.

I tried using M4A files but they will not play on the OPPO. Hitting play simply causes it to cycle through all the tracks without emitting any sound. The metadata is a bit better, however.
Click to expand...
The Oppo 203 is the preferred player for me, followed by a Dune.
Regarding gapless and sound lost the first seconds, I decided that the best ripping method should be to get an ISO image of the BD, to be able to play it exactly the same as with the physical disc. Oppo could need jailbreaking but Dune plays natively the ISO image, with all menus and the like.

I then do not have individual tracks collection, but albums collection. I don't need 'jukebox' fancy apps with covers and the like, as I'm listener of full albums.

With respect to individual files to be played by the Oppo I have found the following:

- The artwork jpg file does not display when it is big size. I do not know the limit, but I use to keep the size below 1MB. If the JPG is bigger than that, just open it with a picture editor and take an screen capture and save it to JPG. This result in a lower than 1MB file. And remember to delete old big artwork files in metadata if they are there. I cannot confirm now if this apply to all sort of files MP4, MKV, FLAC, stereo, etc. or only to Oppo or Dune.

- Oppo does not play M4A files. But just rename the file to MP4 and Oppo will play it.
 
I also play all my HFPA Blu-ray audio disc back-ups using an OPPO UDP-203.

Like others I use MakeMKV to back-up the disc but unlike others I keep the single continuous audio stream and navigate each individual song/track using a separate .cue navigation file.

After backing up the disc with MakeMKV I then use gMKVExtractGUI to extract the native audio bitstream(s) and create a .cue navigation file. Then I manually add track names to the .cue file and amend various other information. Much like this: -

Code: 
PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
TITLE "Danse Macabre"
REM GENRE New Wave
REM DATE 2023

FILE "Danse Macabre.mka" WAVE

    TRACK 01 AUDIO
        TITLE "Nightboat"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 00:00:00
    TRACK 02 AUDIO
        TITLE "Black Moonlight"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 04:25:21
    TRACK 03 AUDIO
        TITLE "Love Voudou"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 07:31:46
    TRACK 04 AUDIO
        TITLE "Bury A Friend"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 12:01:12
    TRACK 05 AUDIO
        TITLE "Supernature"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 15:06:00
    TRACK 06 AUDIO
        TITLE "Danse Macabre"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 18:50:53
    TRACK 07 AUDIO
        TITLE "Secret Oktober 31st"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 23:12:71
    TRACK 08 AUDIO
        TITLE "Ghost Town"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 27:36:24
    TRACK 09 AUDIO
        TITLE "Paint It Black"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 30:36:37
    TRACK 10 AUDIO
        TITLE "Super Lonely Freak"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 33:14:62
    TRACK 11 AUDIO
        TITLE "Spellbound"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 37:42:56
    TRACK 12 AUDIO
        TITLE "Psycho Killer"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 41:10:37
    TRACK 13 AUDIO
        TITLE "Confession in the Afterlife"
        PERFORMER "Duran Duran"
        INDEX 01 45:38:28

Then I use MKVToolNIX GUI to mux the native audio stream into the .mka container.

The file layout on my NAS looks like this: -

Capture.PNG


The resulting 'audio only' muxes play great in my OPPO via USB connected HDD or NAS via SMB networking protocol (not UPnP/DLNA). Many software players understand .cue navigation files too.

Admittedly it's a fair bit of work but it suits me fine ;)
 
Last edited:
quoddiophile said:
Recently I made substantial upgrades to my system so that I could enjoy the Atmos experience (see my profile for details). To that end, I had already ripped my 30+ Atmos discs to MKV files using MakeMKV and then I tagged them using the excellent Music Media Helper 7 program.

Once everything was in place, I decided to give it a go as follows:

1. Playing Atmos files via an 8TB drive attached to my OPPO BDP-205

Initially, I had extracted everything to MKA files. For the most part, these played just fine on my OPPO but there were a few disadvantages

-The metadata was crude but workable.

-Although there is a gapless option, it does not work as well as it should (Dark Side of the Moon).

-The artwork does not appear. It is there because you can see it when you go into the Photos folder. Strangely, the artwork appears for my Riverside album. That one is strange because for some reason I can only tag it using MMH when I retrieve the jpg file from my artwork folder as opposed to my usual practice of copying the file from my artwork folder to the MKV container.

-The sound does not come on for roughly 20 seconds so you have go back to the beginning of the track and start it up again.

I tried using M4A files but they will not play on the OPPO. Hitting play simply causes it to cycle through all the tracks without emitting any sound. The metadata is a bit better, however.

2. Apple TV 4K

I ended up checking this out as it was obvious that a number of my favourite albums were only available as Spatial Audio.

The installation was a bit clunky, but Audioholics has an excellent video on how to set it up properly. The remote takes a bit of getting used to as does the app. Currently there is no way that I know of to search by Spatial audio only which is a bit of a bummer. However, I have still managed to find over 100 albums that might be of interest.

An odd quirk is that when playing an Atmos file there is a stutter at the beginning and so you need to then start over and then it works perfectly.

I did end up making the purchase. Spatial Audio, Apple’s version of Atmos of course is only a lossy version of a proper Atmos file. Nevertheless, Apple’s version is often the best version of a particular album.

3. Nvidia Shield Pro and Kodi

The installation of the shield was much clunkier than it should have been but I managed to get there.

I am not very impressed with the Kodi app. You seem to need about five extra clicks to get anywhere and there is basically no help.

Unfortunately, the Kodi app (the latest version 20.2) does not work very well. If you use MKA files, then the track titles are not displayed properly. They appear as something like Air – 7.1 Surround for each track with the only difference being the track number.

I tried using M4A files and the track titles appeared properly but only the first track will play. If you try another track, you can see the remaining titles rapidly flash by until it reaches the end. I do have the current settings (Automatic Play “on” and Queue “off”). At one point it seemed to work but I have tried so many “experiments” that I can’t be sure. I find it quite incredible that in this day and age this sort of thing happens.

I have tried to edit the MKA files to get the track titles to display properly, but nothing seems to work. Most of the MMH tags are not displayed. MP3tag seems to edit the tracks but with no success. I have tried a number of other editors including MKVToolNix which I find totally incomprehensible and impossible to use.

I reinstalled the Kodi app several times but with no luck.

Hopefully, somebody can help me with one or both of these problems. Perhaps the Kodi problem is a bug with version 20.2; apparently this sort of thing has happened before.

4. As It Stands Now

Currently, the best solution for me is to use my OPPO player to play Atmos files is spite of its disadvantages. Of course, I can always revert to the physical disc but I am loath to do that considering the inconveniences that offers. I guess I am spoiled by Roon.

I have not yet purchased the Nvidia Shield Pro but have only about 7 days left of my trial period. Unless I can find a solution to the problems I am having with playing Atmos files with Kodi, I will have to return the Nvidia Shield Pro sometime this week.

Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions.

Jim
Click to expand...
I’ve been using Kodi for more than three years now, and it works beautifully with M4a and MKA Atmos files. It’s a matter of getting used to the tagging required by Kodi to playback the files correctly. Once you get to that point, I think it’s the only solution at the moment that will play Atmos, as well as 5.1, quad and stereo without issues.
 
albertop said:
I’ve been using Kodi for more than three years now, and it works beautifully with M4a and MKA Atmos files. It’s a matter of getting used to the tagging required by Kodi to playback the files correctly. Once you get to that point, I think it’s the only solution at the moment that will play Atmos, as well as 5.1, quad and stereo without issues.
Click to expand...
I wouldn't want to raise any controversy, but I can play Atmos, 5.1, 6.1, Quad, Stereo, DTS-CD, DVD-A (MLP), SACD and more formats without issues, without using Kodi, with a single network player via SMB from my NAS/PC server. ;)
 
AYanguas said:
I wouldn't want to raise any controversy, but I can play Atmos, 5.1, 6.1, Quad, Stereo, DTS-CD, DVD-A (MLP), SACD and more formats without issues, without using Kodi, with a single network player via SMB from my NAS/PC server. ;)
Click to expand...
If you are talking about the Dune, the concept is very similar, but Kodi is free and can be installed on your existing laptop/computer.
 
albertop said:
If you are talking about the Dune, the concept is very similar, but Kodi is free and can be installed on your existing laptop/computer.
Click to expand...
Yes, I know about the popularity of Kodi, and also that Kodi has evolved in the last years.

My search for solutions began several years ago (maybe many years ago :rolleyes:), building an HTPC, first with Linux (complicated when you are 'native' Windows) and then switched to Windows.
I had a lot of problems at that time, you know, drivers, not very stable applications, Kodi output was sending multichannel to the wrong channels... Kodi support forums telling that you could change the cables of the speakers and problem solved ... WTF! Well, really it was XBMC at that time, before they changed its name to Kodi. So I abandoned that route.

I then started with Media Players (Popcorn Hour) and everything was working so fine, out of the box, that I continued that route.

YMMV, but I think the cost of such media players is not high, compared to the quite high expense of our beloved Surround/Immersive Home Theaters.
 
AYanguas said:
Yes, I know about the popularity of Kodi, and also that Kodi has evolved in the last years.

My search for solutions began several years ago (maybe many years ago :rolleyes:), building an HTPC, first with Linux (complicated when you are 'native' Windows) and then switched to Windows.
I had a lot of problems at that time, you know, drivers, not very stable applications, Kodi output was sending multichannel to the wrong channels... Kodi support forums telling that you could change the cables of the speakers and problem solved ... WTF! Well, really it was XBMC at that time, before they changed its name to Kodi. So I abandoned that route.

I then started with Media Players (Popcorn Hour) and everything was working so fine, out of the box, that I continued that route.

YMMV, but I think the cost of such media players is not high, compared to the quite high expense of our beloved Surround/Immersive Home Theaters.
Click to expand...
Yup can't beat my Popcorn A-500 for simplicity and just playing any damn file I throw at it...though the app I use to control it from my phone is getting flaky(older Android app that hasn't been updated since 2016)
which worries me a bit.
Briefly tried my Nvidia Shield Pro w/Kodi but the naming and way you have to tag files is a huge PITA compared to my PCH and there's no app that is as thorough and easy as my PCH app
As I keep all my music audio and concert vids and docs in one directory and Kodi doesn't make that possible.
Also Kodi can't pass DTS-HD files for some reason they get down converted to regular DTS
 
omnipotent1 said:
I keep all my music audio and concert vids and docs in one directory and Kodi doesn't make that possible.
Click to expand...
That is true, Kodi needs to know on a directory level if the contents should be treated as music, movies or TV shows, because the Kodi library is organized that way.
omnipotent1 said:
Also Kodi can't pass DTS-HD files
Click to expand...
That depends on the hardware and OS Kodi is running on. E.g. on my RPi 4 it works without problems.
 
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