Solved an MKV audio problem. But I don't understand why

I have an MKV with three AAC (Digital) soundtracks and one subtitles track.

On VLC on my Mac all plays well. VLC Media Information tells me the audio tracks are DD 5.1, MPEG AAC.

At first I could not get sound upon playing the file with my WD TV Live.

I solved the problem by changing the WD TV Live Audio/ Visual settings from “Digital” to “Stereo”.

Why did that fix the problem? Was it because the audio streams are 5.1 digital? Is this a limitation on the WD TV LIve or my choice of audio output device? Why have I not experienced this before (maybe this is the first 5.1 digital file I have tried to play)?

Can anyone enlighten me?

Well, it depends…   If you don’t have a downstream decoder that understands 5.1 tracks, then yes, that’s possibly the problem.

If you DO, then something else may be going on.

DIGITAL does PASSTHROUGH.   Your downstream device must understand and decode the format.

STEREO decodes it to 2Ch PCM, which everything will understand.

I had the same or similar problem when attempting to pass AAC audio, from ripped MKV files, to my AV Receiver. 

When ripping, I changed my endcoding from MKV with AAC to MKV with Audiocopy and now all my new rips play just fine in their native digital audio format (DTS, 5.1 DD, etc.), without the need to make any changes on the WDTV.  I did have to go back and re-rip those DVD I had already encoded with AAC audio.

Oops, I meant audiocopy not audiosource, and I’ve corrected my post above.

I wasted some time trying to re-rip the audio. Each time I ended up with something unwatchable.

I’m quite happy with the solution I found :slight_smile:

Are you getting 5.1 or is it decoding it to 2ch PCM?