rhino quadio not playing correctly with denon avr-x1000

[gordy mac]

hi
i recently bought black sabbath paranoid in by rhino in quadio.
it sounds like crap.
at the shop where i bought i was told to put it in the b/r player and it would play in quad.
it does not. i can't hear "I am iron man" and the whole disc sounds more like mono.
as for the b/r player all the channels seems to be there. if i adjust the receiver denon avr-x1000 i can hear "i am iron man" but then it knocks off the rear channels.
what am i doing wrong?

 

[par4ken]

Compatibility issues! This should never happen but not all AVR's can handle 4.0. It can be fixed if you want to rip the disc to files (wav/flac) then you can add empty C and Lfe channels. Music Media Helper can do this for you. Others who use AVR's please chime in and try to help this poor lad.

Other considerations are that the rear surround channels are usually (or used to be) coded as back channels, now and with these discs they are coded as side. Both usually work OK but I do have trouble with my PC if not coded as back.

 

[Doug G.]

Digital, thy name is incompatibility.

Doug

 

[par4ken]

At least with SQ, QS and CD-4, you always got sound out regardless of the decoder used!

 

[sjcorne]

Digital thy name is incompatibility.

The analog multichannel experience wasn't exactly faultless. You can't play a quad reel or 8-track through a stereo machine without losing half the information...

 

[Doug G.]

That was easily understood and resolved compared to the BS nowadays.

Doug

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Surely there are many in the industry who are aware of this problem by now. I don't understand why the software providers can't manufacture all quad blurays with the 2 silent channels. It would cost them nothing and make them compatible on pretty much all systems. I only play ripped files, and I always add the silent channels to the rips. There is no good reason not to. My current equipment has no problem with 4.0. But who knows with whatever comes next.

I'd hate to call in @ForagingRhino again, but he does seem to be able get us answers.

 

[par4ken]

Surely there are many in the industry who are aware of this problem by now. I don't understand why the software providers can't manufacture all quad blurays with the 2 silent channels. It would cost them nothing and make them compatible on pretty much all systems. I only play ripped files, and I always add the silent channels to the rips. There is no good reason not to. My current equipment has no problem with 4.0. But who knows with whatever comes next.

I'd hate to call in @ForagingRhino again, but he does seem to be able get us answers.

That does not excuse the the laziness/short-sightedness of the designers of those offending AVR's. I'm so glad that I don't use one and never will! Adding unnecessary channel's can make the rips incompatible with playback via my computer. One size does not always fit all.

On the bright side, digitally silent channels as added by Music Media Helper do seem to work OK. They (the added channels) are treated as if they aren't there at all. You can even run the DR meter in Foobar without getting an abnormally low reading. They seem to be ignored and just used as place holders.

I would recommend removing the C and Lfe channels when not required, as for a quad release but then replace them with digitally silent channels for compatibility. Music Media Helper rocks!

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Adding unnecessary channel's can make the rips incompatible with playback via my computer. One size does not always fit all.

How so? It's the same as playing back 5.1. Your computer can't do that?

 

[kfbkfb]

Please provide the make and model of your Blu-ray player.

Also, do movies with DTS soundtracks sound OK (proper surround sound effect)?


Kirk Bayne

 

[par4ken]

How so? It's the same as playing back 5.1. Your computer can't do that?

My old computers only had a four channel sound card the Delta 44 and Delta 66. I never use the onboard sound card. Currently I have an eight channel sound card but still only use four channels. It would be more trouble than it is worth to run more output channels from the commuter and then have to convert back to quad for playback. Or to swap around the card outputs. I have always down mixed 5.1 to quad for playback via my computer. Additionally running too many channels at too high of a sample frequency will make the machine sputter.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

My old computers only had a four channel sound card the Delta 44 and Delta 66. I never use the onboard sound card. Currently I have an eight channel sound card but still only use four channels. It would be more trouble than it is worth to run more output channels from the commuter and then have to convert back to quad for playback. Or to swap around the card outputs. I have always down mixed 5.1 to quad for playback via my computer. Additionally running too many channels at too high of a sample frequency will make the machine sputter.

You would be the rare exception to the compatibility issue.

 

[par4ken]

The analog multichannel experience wasn't exactly faultless. You can't play a quad reel or 8-track through a stereo machine without losing half the information...

Why would you even want to do that?

 

[par4ken]

Surely there are many in the industry who are aware of this problem by now. I don't understand why the software providers can't manufacture all quad blurays with the 2 silent channels. It would cost them nothing and make them compatible on pretty much all systems. I only play ripped files, and I always add the silent channels to the rips. There is no good reason not to. My current equipment has no problem with 4.0. But who knows with whatever comes next.

I'd hate to call in @ForagingRhino again, but he does seem to be able get us answers.

I would argue that there is no reason that silent channels should be necessary the fault lies with the AVR manufactures! With the Oppo using the analogue output I have never faced a compatibility problem.

 

[steelydave]

There's absolutely zero reason not to author quad files as 5.1 with silent center and LFE for maximum compatibility.

It's not like analog media where silent channels have low-level hiss - digitally silent channels have absolutely nothing in them, aside from some metadata at the beginning of the file letting the playback device know that they exist.

Silent C & LFE doesn't affect playback in any speaker configuration, fold-downs or downmixing. Conversely, the absence of silent channels does affect a certain percentage of receivers and/or Blu-Ray players, many of which are old enough that they're not getting new firmware updates so it's an issue that will never be remedied for them.

It's a nice rhetorical position to defend that hardware "should" support 4.0 PCM, but the simple fact is that it isn't reality. Discs should always be authored for maximum compatibility, especially when one of two options offers no detrimental impact. Not everyone has the capability, inclination or desire (and I say this as someone with all my digital quad ripped to 4.0 FLAC) to rip Quadio discs and add extra channels. If you want physical media to continue to succeed in this era then you need to make sure that 100% of the people who purchase it can play it back without compatibility issues - 100% of quad SACDs are either 5.0 (Audio Fidelity) or 5.1 (Dutton-Vocalion, Analogue Productions) and the vast majority of PCM releases of quat material have been authored the same way.

If the disc authoring of quad as 4.0 on their Blu-Rays stems from a concern about representing the purity of the quad recordings they're reissuing, I think a simple notation in the booklet or on the playback screen that says something like "These four-channel quadraphonic recordings have been authored as 5.1 with silent center and LFE channels for maximum compatibility with modern equipment. The integrity of the quadraphonic soundfield has been in no way compromised by this change."

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I would argue that there is no reason that silent channels should be necessary the fault lies with the AVR manufactures! With the Oppo using the analogue output I have never faced a compatibility problem.

And there isn't any compatibility problems using that same Oppo with the analog outs or the HDMI out with silent channels included. The silent channel incompatibility issue with your system is due to using PC sound cards in an effort to bypass any digital processing outside of the Oppo itself.

I know it works for you, and I respect your methodology, But you are likely 1 in 5000 or so who process music this way. For every hobbyist like you who have an issue, there is likely 100 or more that have the OPs issue.

The AVR folks apparently don't feel they should need to support technology that is 50 years old. Much like they seldom include phono inputs or tape monitors any more. I wouldn't bet on them changing anything going forward.

The easiest fix to benefit the vast majority of people is to simply add silent channels to the software. I have some quad discs that do that, but it isn't universal by any means.

It boggles my mind that the equipment suppliers and the software suppliers can't get on the same page with this. The owner of a modern AVR should expect correct playback from a Rhino disc released in 2024.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

- 100% of quad SACDs are either 5.0 (Audio Fidelity) or 5.1 (Dutton-Vocalion, Analogue Productions) and the vast majority of PCM releases of quat material have been authored the same way.

That raises an interesting point @par4ken . How do you handle 5.0/5.1 SACD? Does the SACD format itself take care of it but with PCM it fails. Maybe I don't understand the details.

 

[par4ken]

And there isn't any compatibility problems using that same Oppo with the analog outs or the HDMI out with silent channels included. The silent channel incompatibility issue with your system is due to using PC sound cards in an effort to bypass any digital processing outside of the Oppo itself.

True, but still I (and always will) condemn the manufactures'' of those AVR's that can't play properly without the need for this type of workaround!

Some of us have and will never have a need for an AVR either! I don't blame Rhino at all! Yes they could fix this but the fix should not have been necessary, had the AVR's been designed properly in the first place!

 

[par4ken]

That raises an interesting point @par4ken . How do you handle 5.0/5.1 SACD? Does the SACD format itself take care of it but with PCM it fails. Maybe I don't understand the details.

Just checking, the DV SACD discs must have digitally silent channels. They play properly via the computer. The Sonys have the faked centre and Lfe channel added, sadly there is no way that I know to edit out the extra channels or to replace them with silent ones, without conversion to PCM.

DSD playback via the Oppo analogue outputs carries those added channels but I just don't use them. Output as DSD the signals are kept pure, the downmix functions do not work as that involves conversion to PCM. In the case of a "real" 5.0/5.1 disc I have to change playback to PCM and then the machine will downmix. With my basement system, I use an analogue mixer and can downmix that way, keeping as DSD.

When ripping I used to convert DSD to PCM, downmixing to 4.0 from 5.1 if necessary. Now I would rather just keep as .dsf files. The computer via Foobar can convert (to PCM) on the fly. They play perfectly (DSD) via the Oppo BDP-103. For the BDP-95 I would have to convert to PCM to be able to play off a flash drive.

With computer playback, I still have the same problem with 5.0/5.1 discs, the C and Lfe channels play instead of the surround channels. It has to do with the way the tracks are ordered IMHO the surround channels should have gone before the C and Lfe! No way to downmix DSD without conversion to PCM

 

[LuvMyQuad]

So if I understand this correctly, you could configure the Oppo for 4.0 playback and properly play PCM 4.0 with silent channels and everything gets assigned properly. The Oppo will also downmix true 5.1 PCM to 4.0 with no issue.

The problem comes with MCH SACD. It can't downmix 5.1/5.0 DSD to 4.0 without converting to PCM, and that is not acceptable for you. Correct?