Playing DTS, DTS 24/96, and Dolby Digital on AppleTV

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Cheezmo

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Back when the AppleTV first came out one of the things I really liked about it was that it passed 16/44.1 bit perfect which meant I could rip my DTS CDs and play them back through the AppleTV (as long as I made sure that the AppleTV wasn't doing any volume adjustment) and I could play DTS on my AppleTV along with the rest of my CD rips and iTunes library.

Then the AppleTV 2 came out and it converts everything to 16/48. Therefore DTS CD rips no longer worked. This has continued through the current AppleTV 3 models.

But, I realized a while back that all the DTS and DTS 24/96 tracks on DVD-Audio and other DVD formats with audio are in fact a 16/48 bitstream. And guess what! The new AppleTV's pass 16/48 bit perfect. (Sound Check off, and volume at max level).

So, how do you get DTS or DTS 24/96 (or AC3 for that matter) into a bistream that the AppleTV will pass through and can be decoded by your processor? Probably a few ways but here is how I do it on a Mac with a PC emulator.

1) Rip the DTS/AC3 tracks with "DVD Audio Extractor". This software (which works on Mac and PC) has a "direct stream demux" option which will rip the tracks into individual ".dts" files. It can work directly from a DVD or from a decrypted Blu-ray image (you'll need other software for that).

2) The next requires a PC or Parallels/Fusion. The software required is "AudioMuxer". Under it's Tools menu is an option to "Convert AC3/DTS to SPIDF WAV or FLAC". Use that to convert the ".dts" files to ".wav" files.

3) The wav files can be imported into iTunes. I then convert them with iTunes to Apple Lossless so they can be fully tagged and artwork added.

If all goes well and soundcheck is off and your AppleTV is not doing any volume adjustment, these will now play properly through any processor/receiver that handles DTS and Dolby Digital.

Note this will NOT work for the HD format (DTS Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD) as they are encoded at higher bitrates but if the lossy core is extracted from those that should work too.

If you have tried this yourself or have any other tricks for playing surround on the AppleTV, discuss....
 
Back when the AppleTV first came out one of the things I really liked about it was that it passed 16/44.1 bit perfect which meant I could rip my DTS CDs and play them back through the AppleTV (as long as I made sure that the AppleTV wasn't doing any volume adjustment) and I could play DTS on my AppleTV along with the rest of my CD rips and iTunes library.

Then the AppleTV 2 came out and it converts everything to 16/48. Therefore DTS CD rips no longer worked. This has continued through the current AppleTV 3 models.

But, I realized a while back that all the DTS and DTS 24/96 tracks on DVD-Audio and other DVD formats with audio are in fact a 16/48 bitstream. And guess what! The new AppleTV's pass 16/48 bit perfect. (Sound Check off, and volume at max level).

So, how do you get DTS or DTS 24/96 (or AC3 for that matter) into a bistream that the AppleTV will pass through and can be decoded by your processor? Probably a few ways but here is how I do it on a Mac with a PC emulator.

1) Rip the DTS/AC3 tracks with "DVD Audio Extractor". This software (which works on Mac and PC) has a "direct stream demux" option which will rip the tracks into individual ".dts" files. It can work directly from a DVD or from a decrypted Blu-ray image (you'll need other software for that).

2) The next requires a PC or Parallels/Fusion. The software required is "AudioMuxer". Under it's Tools menu is an option to "Convert AC3/DTS to SPIDF WAV or FLAC". Use that to convert the ".dts" files to ".wav" files.

3) The wav files can be imported into iTunes. I then convert them with iTunes to Apple Lossless so they can be fully tagged and artwork added.

If all goes well and soundcheck is off and your AppleTV is not doing any volume adjustment, these will now play properly through any processor/receiver that handles DTS and Dolby Digital.

Note this will NOT work for the HD format (DTS Master Audio, Dolby TrueHD) as they are encoded at higher bitrates but if the lossy core is extracted from those that should work too.

If you have tried this yourself or have any other tricks for playing surround on the AppleTV, discuss....

I need help getting this working, if in fact this method is still valid...

My iTunes is running on a Win7 laptop while the ATV3 is optically connected to my HT reciever (DTS decoder). I've dropped some DTS encoded WAVs into itunes and converted to ALAC. I'm getting static when I try playing these files via the ATV3/receiver combo. Ughhh

Anyone have ideas as to what I've done incorrectly???

Thanks!
 
It is still valid. What is the source of your DTS WAV's? They can't be DTS CD's at 16/44.1, they have to be of the DVD variety (16/48). Also make sure sound check is not turned on on the AppleTV and that the AppleTV Volume is at max (if that is even adjustable).

Oh, and you have to play them using the AppleTV interface, you can't select the AppleTV as the speakers and play from iTunes as that converts to 16/44.1 for Airplay (which the AppleTV would convert back to 16/48, but both steps not bit perfect obviously).
 
It is still valid. What is the source of your DTS WAV's? They can't be DTS CD's at 16/44.1, they have to be of the DVD variety (16/48). Also make sure sound check is not turned on on the AppleTV and that the AppleTV Volume is at max (if that is even adjustable).

Oh, and you have to play them using the AppleTV interface, you can't select the AppleTV as the speakers and play from iTunes as that converts to 16/44.1 for Airplay (which the AppleTV would convert back to 16/48, but both steps not bit perfect obviously).

Ahhh, that's it then. The source was a DTS CD.

Thanks for the clarification!
 
Only option then is to decode to a 6-channel aiff or flac with foobar or something then get a dts encoder that can encode to a 16/48 stream. It can be done, just need to track down the tools and of course you go through a lossy encoding process on an already low bitrate source so the quality may not be up to your standards.
 
Only option then is to decode to a 6-channel aiff or flac with foobar or something then get a dts encoder that can encode to a 16/48 stream. It can be done, just need to track down the tools and of course you go through a lossy encoding process on an already low bitrate source so the quality may not be up to your standards.

Got it. I understand. I was hoping to get some multi-channel audio into iTunes for those times when not wanting to play a physical disc.

Thanks again...Cheers!
 
Just an update for the new AppleTV 4.

Nothing has changed. All stereo is converted to 16/48kHz. So 16/48 DTS-WAV's still play just fine.
 
The latest update for the AppleTV changes some things!

The latest AppleTV can now play Apple Lossless 5.1 files. So, it is possible to take 5.1 flac, convert to Apple Lossless and play it back in 5.1 through the AppleTV without having to do a lossy encode to dts 16/48.

While this is great news on the surface, it isn't as easy as dropping a 5.1 flac onto XLD and converting to Apple Lossless. This produces the wrong channel order. FLAC uses L, R, C, LFR, LR, RR whereas AAC/Apple Lossless uses C, L, R, LR, RR, LFE. You therefore have to use another tool to switch the channel order around in this process. I've contacted the author of XLD so see if they are aware of the issue and may be able to offer a fix. In the mean time, I could run a sox script to switch the channel order around before the conversion.

The other catch is that iTunes will not import a multichannel Apple Lossless file with the default extension of .m4a. You need to change it to .m4v or .mp4 to get it into iTunes (it still shows up as music, not a movie so not a big deal).

So, maybe some progress on maintaining a 5.1 lossless iTunes library and playing it back on an AppleTV.
 
Just heard from the author of xACT, and the next release will map channels properly when converting from 5.1 flac to 5.1 Apple Lossless. So that is a step...
 
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