Peter Gabriel 'Play Video" and Dts problem on Denon Receivers

[peterzach]

I saw this posted at another website and was wondering if anyone else had this problem and if they know if there ever was a corrected copy that came out. I kept hearing how people were just saying how awesome the Dts was for this release and I would try it on my Denon 3805 receiver and Denon 3910 Dvd player and the sound was so quiet and I did accidently turn up the volume on Dts and then switch to DD and thought I was going to blow up my Speakers.. Here is the problem sorry if this has been explained here already before:

"DTS audio on PLAY DVD

Since the release of the PLAY DVD we have become aware of an issue with the DTS soundtrack on the latest generation of surround amplifiers.

PLAY is the first disc produced using a new DTS encoder and it seems that the version we used has set a flag within the DTS audio stream that can cause a 30db reduction in volume.

We have only experienced the issue on a Denon AVR-3805 amplifier (kindly lent to us by Denon UK), although it may be more widespread as new audio decoder chips reach the consumer market in other products. Reading through our DVD forum, our experience would tie in with the comments of people on the boards . A 30db volume reduction is very noticeable, so the DTS audio heard through these amplifiers is going to be both disappointing, and give a you big shock if you turn it up and then flip back to one of the other audio tracks, or navigate back to a menu.

Only the latest amplifiers are reading the 'Dialogue Normalization" setting in the DTS audio which is causing the volume reduction. Other amplifiers are simply ignoring this information, so during the product development and testing, and to most consumers the DTS was and still is the best sounding audio on the disc.

We are currently working with DTS, Warner Vision and Denon to find a solution, and will keep you posted.

Please let us know if you have experienced this problem on any other equipment."

 

[bobou2]

Did they ever fix this? I have the 1909 and it has the same issue with the DTS.

 

[peterzach]

I just got a Marantz sr6003 Receiver to go along with Oppo BR player and my marantz has same problem with this title.
I'm surprised that not more people have problems as I can't be the only foolish person buying new equipment.
When I get around to it will try to do some more digging or see if Rhino/Wea knows if a replacement is available.
If anyone else has some update on this that would be great.

peter

 

[alk3997]

I saw this posted at another website and was wondering if anyone else had this problem and if they know if there ever was a corrected copy that came out. I kept hearing how people were just saying how awesome the Dts was for this release and I would try it on my Denon 3805 receiver and Denon 3910 Dvd player and the sound was so quiet and I did accidently turn up the volume on Dts and then switch to DD and thought I was going to blow up my Speakers.. Here is the problem sorry if this has been explained here already before:

...

Please let us know if you have experienced this problem on any other equipment."

Interestingly this disc works fine with a DENON AVR-5803A hooked up with a DENON DVD-5910CI. So, it should be possible for DENON to come up with a solution to the problem.

Andy

 

[uffeolby]

Interestingly this disc works fine with a DENON AVR-5803A hooked up with a DENON DVD-5910CI. So, it should be possible for DENON to come up with a solution to the problem.

Andy

The problem is not equipment related, rather an error on the disc which the producer of the disc has admitted.

Still, interesting if there are any discs released without this error, and if so - how do I recognize them??

//Uffe

 

[The Bright Side]

Hey guys, I was wondering if anybody else has information on this? The exact same thing happens on my receiver (Samsung HW-C560S). As another poster above pointed out, we can't be the only ones foolish enough to buy recent receivers. It's truly odd. Make no mistake, the DD track sounds surprisingly good - clear, punchy and dynamic, I'm very impressed and it won't kill me to listen to it instead of the DTS. But hey, the DTS is there for a reason! And as it stands, it's unusable for me.

 

[The Bright Side]

In fact, does anybody out there have the corrected re-release of the DVD? If so, can you create and upload an ISO of it? Since I have the original DVD lying on the desk in front of me as I'm typing this, I don't think I'm asking for anything illegal here - if I am, please edit/delete this post. Hope you guys can help me

 

[Frantic]

I am still using mine as a coaster for my Makers Mark glass.

Let me know if a solution develops.

This would be one fine DTS demo.

 

[The Bright Side]

Great news! The corrected DVD's Video_TS folder is out there as a torrent. PM me if you want the link.

 

[kvsawilson]

I see that they are going to re-release this disc. http://prog.teamrock.com/news/2015-03-06/peter-gabriel-play-dvd-re-release

Hopefully it will have a corrected dts track.

K

 

[LizardKing]

FYI - It has been already re-issued as a bonus disc on the Live In Athens 1987 Blu-ray.

 

[0tto]

FYI - It has been already re-issued as a bonus disc on the Live In Athens 1987 Blu-ray.

i would prefer re-issue of "Play The Video" on BD with lossless 5.1 audio

 

[J. PUPSTER]

I saw this posted at another website and was wondering if anyone else had this problem and if they know if there ever was a corrected copy that came out. I kept hearing how people were just saying how awesome the Dts was for this release and I would try it on my Denon 3805 receiver and Denon 3910 Dvd player and the sound was so quiet and I did accidently turn up the volume on Dts and then switch to DD and thought I was going to blow up my Speakers.. Here is the problem sorry if this has been explained here already before:

"DTS audio on PLAY DVD

Since the release of the PLAY DVD we have become aware of an issue with the DTS soundtrack on the latest generation of surround amplifiers.

PLAY is the first disc produced using a new DTS encoder and it seems that the version we used has set a flag within the DTS audio stream that can cause a 30db reduction in volume.

We have only experienced the issue on a Denon AVR-3805 amplifier (kindly lent to us by Denon UK), although it may be more widespread as new audio decoder chips reach the consumer market in other products. Reading through our DVD forum, our experience would tie in with the comments of people on the boards . A 30db volume reduction is very noticeable, so the DTS audio heard through these amplifiers is going to be both disappointing, and give a you big shock if you turn it up and then flip back to one of the other audio tracks, or navigate back to a menu.

Only the latest amplifiers are reading the 'Dialogue Normalization" setting in the DTS audio which is causing the volume reduction. Other amplifiers are simply ignoring this information, so during the product development and testing, and to most consumers the DTS was and still is the best sounding audio on the disc.

We are currently working with DTS, Warner Vision and Denon to find a solution, and will keep you posted.

Please let us know if you have experienced this problem on any other equipment."

Head bobbin' along to BIG TIME, and what's up with the "Pl>y THE VIDEOS" DVD.

Since there has been some more recent discussion of this subject; and I have one of the original U.S./Canada DVDs of this(UPC# 6 0349 70396 23):
https://www.discogs.com/Peter-Gabriel-Play-The-Videos/master/66358
And, I also have the BD of "PETER GABRIEL LIVE IN ATHENS 1987" with the Bonus "PLAY THE VIDEOS" DVD (UPS# 8 01213 34649 3);
https://www.discogs.com/Peter-Gabriel-Live-In-Athens-1987/release/5187117
Yes, while I was listening to BIG TIME, couldn't help but start head bobbin' to the music.

After some careful review and reading the post above by peterzach, it's becoming clearer what the issue is. It's not that there is a -30db in the original music, but some kind of coding that the DVD puts out that certain AVRs can't respond to correctly.
With much trouble I ripped the so called corrected version from the "PETER GABRIEL LIVE IN ATHENS 1987" (had to use the latest MakeMKV vs. 8.0.0 in order to rip it in MKV then on to convert to wav/flac via AudioMuxer.) The MakeMKV even said it was only 48/24 res. but was actually 96/24 dts; and it had to convert with individual songs *all 21* within separate VOBs. Yes, a real PITA!!! Not to mention tagging. But I got it done and ran both BIG TIMES through Audacity for the wave forms.

Here's the original dts of BIG TIME:

and here is the newer 2013 "corrected" version:

Well, they look identical for me, and playing both through my Marantz AVR -8500, they sounded exactly the same also, with no difference in the volume level. So I believe, just because you have one of the original releases, does not mean you won't hear it correctly, depending on the receiver you have.

Two key things to keep in mind from peterzach's post are:

PLAY is the first disc produced using a new DTS encoder and it seems that the version we used has set a flag within the DTS audio stream that can cause a 30db reduction in volume.
AND:
Only the latest amplifiers are reading the 'Dialogue Normalization" setting in the DTS audio which is causing the volume reduction. Other amplifiers are simply ignoring this information, so during the product development and testing, and to most consumers the DTS was and still is the best sounding audio on the disc.

Finally, some here have also said that the song is missing some instruments like keyboards and synths in the original; well I don't know, I'll leave that up to others to figure that one out.

 

[tghewett]

It is possible to correct the DTS 96/24 authoring problem if you extract the stream of each track to a raw DTS file. I wrote a short C program which does this. It should work on any Unix-type OS on an Intel platform (Linux, MacOS...), possibly on Windows as well, perhaps in a "DOS" window. You need to know how to rip the DVD and demux the DTS stream into its raw form, the two possibly being part of the same process.

It doesn't appear to be absolutely perfect but more or less does the job. Note that the actual audio stream remains the original one, it is not re-encoded, all that happens is that the faulty dialogue normalisation settling mentioned by petergabriel.com is reverted back to a sensible default setting.

Compile the program then run with (e.g.) "dtsconvert < in.dts > out.dts". What you do with the results is up to you, perhaps there is a way to re-author them into the original DVD files, e.g. with Roxio Toast if you are a Mac owner. I just have them in iTunes as SPDIF WAV files - at least the original DTS 96/24 audio can now be heard as was originally intended.

I have left some of my original debugging diagnostics commented out in the source file for the purposes of showing how the frame header is broken apart. Note that the code is hardwired just for this task and makes no effort to be more generally-applicable.

//
// This program was created to correct an authoring error on the DVD "Peter Gabriel - Play" where the DTS 96/24 audio track
// was very quiet. It was caused by the dialogue normalisation value being set to 30dB attenuation.
// See https://petergabriel.com/news/dts-audio-on-play-dvd/
//
// Send the raw DTS stream (i.e. raw vs. SPDIF / WAV format or VOB files) into stdin, the corrected stream is sent to stdout.
// Tested on an Intel Apple Mac.
//
// See http://www.ac3filter.net/wiki/DTS for DTS frame header information.
//

#include <stdio.h>

main() {

    unsigned int syncword;
    unsigned char buf[0x7de];

    while ( read( 0, buf, 0x7de ) > 0) {

        syncword = *(unsigned int *)&buf[0];

        if ( syncword == 0x0180fe7f ) {

//            fprintf( stderr, "found syncword\n" );

//            if ( !(buf[4] & 0x80) )
//                fprintf( stderr, "termination frame\n" );

//            if ( buf[4] & 0x02 )
//                fprintf( stderr, "CRC present\n" );

//            if ( !(buf[10] & 0x10) )
//                fprintf( stderr, "ext audio not present\n" );


            if ( (buf[12] & 0xff) == 0x8e )
                buf[12] &= 0xf0;        // this is where the dialogue normalisation field correction is done
        }

        write( 1, buf, 0x7de );
    }
}

 

[Beefalo]

It is possible to correct the DTS 96/24 authoring problem if you extract the stream of each track to a raw DTS file. I wrote a short C program which does this. It should work on any Unix-type OS on an Intel platform (Linux, MacOS...), possibly on Windows as well, perhaps in a "DOS" window. You need to know how to rip the DVD and demux the DTS stream into its raw form, the two possibly being part of the same process.

It doesn't appear to be absolutely perfect but more or less does the job. Note that the actual audio stream remains the original one, it is not re-encoded, all that happens is that the faulty dialogue normalisation settling mentioned by petergabriel.com is reverted back to a sensible default setting.

Compile the program then run with (e.g.) "dtsconvert < in.dts > out.dts". What you do with the results is up to you, perhaps there is a way to re-author them into the original DVD files, e.g. with Roxio Toast if you are a Mac owner. I just have them in iTunes as SPDIF WAV files - at least the original DTS 96/24 audio can now be heard as was originally intended.

I have left some of my original debugging diagnostics commented out in the source file for the purposes of showing how the frame header is broken apart. Note that the code is hardwired just for this task and makes no effort to be more generally-applicable.

//
// This program was created to correct an authoring error on the DVD "Peter Gabriel - Play" where the DTS 96/24 audio track
// was very quiet. It was caused by the dialogue normalisation value being set to 30dB attenuation.
// See https://petergabriel.com/news/dts-audio-on-play-dvd/
//
// Send the raw DTS stream (i.e. raw vs. SPDIF / WAV format or VOB files) into stdin, the corrected stream is sent to stdout.
// Tested on an Intel Apple Mac.
//
// See http://www.ac3filter.net/wiki/DTS for DTS frame header information.
//

#include <stdio.h>

main() {

    unsigned int syncword;
    unsigned char buf[0x7de];

    while ( read( 0, buf, 0x7de ) > 0) {

        syncword = *(unsigned int *)&buf[0];

        if ( syncword == 0x0180fe7f ) {

//            fprintf( stderr, "found syncword\n" );

//            if ( !(buf[4] & 0x80) )
//                fprintf( stderr, "termination frame\n" );

//            if ( buf[4] & 0x02 )
//                fprintf( stderr, "CRC present\n" );

//            if ( !(buf[10] & 0x10) )
//                fprintf( stderr, "ext audio not present\n" );


            if ( (buf[12] & 0xff) == 0x8e )
                buf[12] &= 0xf0;        // this is where the dialogue normalisation field correction is done
        }

        write( 1, buf, 0x7de );
    }
}

Welcome to the QQ forum tghewett