Music Server Newbie Experiences and Questions

[LuvMyQuad]

Just a quick update.... through the day I successfully converted 8 or so Genesis DTS disks without issue. I scanned the first disk with makeMKV and left it running in the background while I converted the other 7 titles. I love it when things go smoothly. :banana:

Unfortunately, I think AnyDVD runs constantly in the background from startup. So I'm going to test more without running makeMVK to see it it all continues to work.

Update: It is in fact AnyDVD running in the background that is taking care of the copy protection issue, not makeMKV. Ill have to see if makeMKV will do the same thing however. I still have 21 days use on AnyDVD, and I'm certain all my existing DVDV conversions will be done by then. But there are more Tull releases on the way....

 

[0tto]

Wow Otto, that's a lot faster than I can convert with AudioMuxer. AudioMuxer takes about 25 mins per disk. You're sure you ended up with 24/96 flac files, yes?

View attachment 25633

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as you can see from both, foobar during playback and MediaInfo shows 96/24
i just do not understand sense of this manipulation - converting lossy stream into lossless.
original DTS has 471Mb when same stream but in flac has become four time bigger.

 

[ssully]

Why not either 1) keep the rip as a 'direct demux' .dts file ("96/24") and stream it to the AVR for decoding (optical or HDMI works), or, 2) with audiomuxer, stick it in a 'SPDIF/wav' wrapper and then 'compress' it to flac, so it can be tagged (this makes the lossy file *slightly* larger to accommodate the metadata, but the audiodata are still compressed), and then stream it to the AVR for decoding. Decoding to .wav for *storage * is hopefully not necessary.

 

[HomerJAU]

Why not either 1) keep the rip as a 'direct demux' .dts file ("96/24") and stream it to the AVR for decoding (optical or HDMI works), or, 2) with audiomuxer, stick it in a 'SPDIF/wav' wrapper and then 'compress' it to flac, so it can be tagged (this makes the lossy file *slightly* larger to accommodate the metadata, but the audiodata are still compressed), and then stream it to the AVR for decoding. Decoding to .wav for *storage * is hopefully not necessary.

Or: 'direct demux' .dts 96/24 files using DVDAE then convert those with Foobar to 96/24 FLAC.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

i just do not understand sense of this manipulation - converting lossy stream into lossless.
original DTS has 471Mb when same stream but in flac has become four time bigger.

I thought the manipulation logic was to decode the DTS to the best possible audio quality and then preserve that quality by converting it to a lossless format. What is the alternative? To convert the original lossy stream with another lossy codec? If the DTS stream is converted to another lossy stream, aren't you taking a second hit on the sound quality by loosing even more information with the lossy conversion process? Perhaps I'm thinking of this incorrectly?

The vast majority of my music collection are DVDA's which were all ripped from the MLP stream to 24/96 flac using DVDAExtractor. I only have a couple of dozen DVDV disks that I need to convert. The Tull series and the Genesis series represent the bulk of it, with a few other oddball releases sprinkled in. Because of this, the file size really isn't an issue for me.

By the way, if any of you gentlemen have a workable solution for how to make a usable conversion of the 10 or so DTS entertainment disks I have, please chime in. To be clear, these are not the same thing as the DTS streams found on DVDV's. The best I can tell is the data is a DTS stream wrapped in a CD like wav container. I haven't tried them using AudioMuxer for this purpose yet.

 

[JanBakker]

I thought the manipulation logic was to decode the DTS to the best possible audio quality and then preserve that quality by converting it to a lossless format. What is the alternative? To convert the original lossy stream with another lossy codec? If the DTS stream is converted to another lossy stream, aren't you taking a second hit on the sound quality by loosing even more information with the lossy conversion process? Perhaps I'm thinking of this incorrectly?

The vast majority of my music collection are DVDA's which were all ripped from the MLP stream to 24/96 flac using DVDAExtractor. I only have a couple of dozen DVDV disks that I need to convert. The Tull series and the Genesis series represent the bulk of it, with a few other oddball releases sprinkled in. Because of this, the file size really isn't an issue for me.

By the way, if any of you gentlemen have a workable solution for how to make a usable conversion of the 10 or so DTS entertainment disks I have, please chime in. To be clear, these are not the same thing as the DTS streams found on DVDV's. The best I can tell is the data is a DTS stream wrapped in a CD like wav container. I haven't tried them using AudioMuxer for this purpose yet.

You can rip those with EAC and leave them as-is (Foobar with dts plugin will see the dts in the wav files) or, if you want to tag the files, convert to flac with Foobar, which leaves you with tagable mch flac files. I think it's best to also create a cue file with eac and load that cue (with tag info from the online database) in Foobar for conversion to flac, then you should end up with tagged flacs.

 

[0tto]

Or: 'direct demux' .dts 96/24 files using DVDAE then convert those with Foobar to 96/24 FLAC.

that's what i did above, ripped raw audio stream and has converted it into flac.
seems like to get it, in first step DTS was converted into PCM, which then been packed inside of flac container.
at least before proceed, foobar was wondering as well and asked if i really wanna do such things like doing from
lossy, lossless audio, because there are no any benefit in this at all.

I thought the manipulation logic was to decode the DTS to the best possible audio quality and then preserve that quality by converting it to a lossless format. What is the alternative? To convert the original lossy stream with another lossy codec? If the DTS stream is converted to another lossy stream, aren't you taking a second hit on the sound quality by loosing even more information with the lossy conversion process?

honestly i'm not much know what can be done with DTS better than DTS itself. as was mentioned above, seems best would be to leave it as is.
i guess you're using software player, thus most likely it familiar with DTS format. most likely even renderer on the end of chain wouldn't have
problem to recognise DTS stream.

 

[JanBakker]

It's a while ago I ripped and converted a dts disc so I just practised a little with a dts disc image and found that you can also rip and convert it in one go with EAC. If I remember correctly you only have to locate the flac.exe file once for EAC to use it.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

honestly i'm not much know what can be done with DTS better than DTS itself. as was mentioned above, seems best would be to leave it as is.
i guess you're using software player, thus most likely it familiar with DTS format. most likely even renderer on the end of chain wouldn't have
problem to recognise DTS stream.

I've am using Kodi as my media player. I'm not sure if Kodi will even play raw DTS. I only got white noise the one time I tried, but it may just need a decoder plug in. A bigger issue for me is the inability of DTS to support tags, and to be recognized in the Kodi library, the files need to support tags. Flac supports tags. I have the same issue with .dff files. No tag support for .dff's. I can play the files with Kodi, but they wont load into the library because they don't support tags.

Why use Kodi, you might ask? My NAS is a QNAP TS-451+ which has a built in processor (quad core Celeron) and an HDMI port. It does not require a separate PC. The OS on the QNAP is Linux based and the apps I can load need to be supported by QNAP. There is no cross-platform Foobar option available. JRiver MC is an option. It can play basically anything... even SACD ISO files directly. But JRMC seems to require such a large amount of processing power, it wont play multichannel files without frequent pauses for buffering. Also, the 10 foot interface normally available for JRMC is not part of the QNAP version.

Kodi works great on this system, and I really like the interface. So for now, that's what i'm using.

 

[ssully]

I thought the manipulation logic was to decode the DTS to the best possible audio quality and then preserve that quality by converting it to a lossless format. What is the alternative? To convert the original lossy stream with another lossy codec? If the DTS stream is converted to another lossy stream, aren't you taking a second hit on the sound quality by loosing even more information with the lossy conversion process? Perhaps I'm thinking of this incorrectly?

FWIW here is my workflow for lossy, including the Tull disc:

1. rip audio (for DVD-V, I use DVD Audio Extractor in 'direct demux' mode, though I expect Audiomuxer works too) --> produces *.dts or *.ac3 files, one per track.
2. use Audiomuxer Tools-->Convert AC3/DTS to SPDIF Wav/FLAC --> load the .dts or .ac3 file and run. If FLAC is the final format, the files can be tagged . NB This process does NOT decode/convert the DTS or AC3 data -- it's still the original undecoded bitstream data, inside a .wav wrapper. I use foobar (with SPDIF plugin and WASAPI plugin, I do NOT use the dts or ac3 decoder plugins) to stream the files to AVR via HDMI. The AVR does the actual DTS/AC3 decoding. (As a bonus the fact that my AVR can do that is actually proof that my laptop foobar setup is outputting bit-perfect data.)




If source is DVD-Audio lossless, I just rip to .wav, the compress with flac. If the source is BluRay lossless, I usually have to 'backup' with MakeMKV first, then rip from the backed up version.

 

[Spock]

Are there any possible benefits to let the avr do the decoding?

 

[JanBakker]

Are there any possible benefits to let the avr do the decoding?

It looks like if you rip with eac to flac the dts info stays intact, it's just a dts stream in a flac container.

 

[0tto]

I've am using Kodi as my media player. I'm not sure if Kodi will even play raw DTS. I only got white noise the one time I tried, but it may just need a decoder plug in. A bigger issue for me is the inability of DTS to support tags, and to be recognized in the Kodi library, the files need to support tags. Flac supports tags. I have the same issue with .dff files. No tag support for .dff's. I can play the files with Kodi, but they wont load into the library because they don't support tags.

as far as i can see in foobar tagging of DTS is available. albeit i never used this,
it seems like it is possible to tag DTS as is, thus that's not main issue.
perhaps, as ssully says, you may try to use wave wrapper, tag the dts.wav file with foobar and try out.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Well you guys certainly have given me a few things to think about. I'm going to try some of these ideas. Thanks.

 

[JanBakker]

It looks like if you rip with eac to flac the dts info stays intact, it's just a dts stream in a flac container.

I just noticed that the files are also smaller in size than the wav and the flacs ripped with Foobar (wav 520mb, flac Foobar 730mb and flac eac 450mb)

 

[ubertrout]

I just noticed that the files are also smaller in size than the wav and the flacs ripped with Foobar (wav 520mb, flac Foobar 730mb and flac eac 450mb)

The flac shouldn't be larger than the wav - foobar must be converting the dts stream to pcm multichannel, and then outputting a standard multichannel flac. EAC isn't doing any conversion so you're just getting the raw dts stream. The FLAC container works (and it adds standard tagging ability), but the size difference won't be great compared to wav, since the dts stream is already compressed.

 

[JanBakker]

The flac shouldn't be larger than the wav - foobar must be converting the dts stream to pcm multichannel, and then outputting a standard multichannel flac. EAC isn't doing any conversion so you're just getting the raw dts stream. The FLAC container works (and it adds standard tagging ability), but the size difference won't be great compared to wav, since the dts stream is already compressed.

Got nothing to say to that, thanks. I just noticed the difference in size.

 

[0tto]

I just noticed that the files are also smaller in size than the wav and the flacs ripped with Foobar (wav 520mb, flac Foobar 730mb and flac eac 450mb)

if DTS was 96/24 you should check if it still the same after processing.
could be eac did just core 48/24

 

[JanBakker]

if DTS was 96/24 you should check if it still the same after processing.
could be eac did just core 48/24

It was a cd I processed, not sure if eac can rip 96/24.

 

[ubertrout]

if DTS was 96/24 you should check if it still the same after processing.
could be eac did just core 48/24

CD-based DTS produces a 20-bit/48 khz audio stream (once decoded) that uses a regular audio CD as a data carrier. Any higher resolution DTS versions like 24/96 require a DVD to use for data.