New firmware DTS HD-MA issue

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
1

Hi,

I have a problem with some mkv files with DTS HD-MA audio track after installing newest firmware.

Some of them are playing well through my receiver (Pioneer VSX 922), and receiver is displaying DTS HD MA, while with others WD TV tags them as DTS HRA (High Resolution Audio) and my receiver either doesn’t receive any sound at all or plays it as DTS-ES.

Before that, obviously all those mkv files were played on my receiver as core DTS.

Any suggestions please? Anyone noticed similar issues?

2

sorry, haven’t noticed any issues here, but then maily using m2ts files

you might want to run media info to compare the codecs from a working file to a non-working file

3

Well, this is tricky.

I’d say the problem is not the SMP but your receiver for not decoding the DTS-core of the HRA-stream instead of refusing to play it in general.

Well, does HRA even have a Core-DTS-stream? How many bloody DTS-*-formats are there? Jeez.

As you said, previously the SMP would only stream the Core, which your receiver obviously supports.

But with 2.01, the SMP is streaming the whole DTS-MA/HRA/XYZ-stream, so now this exposes a problem with your receiver.

Maybe WDTV could add an option to only stream the Core stream. But I’d first try to get the receiver to play at least the Core streams (if available).

4

well I did actaully and didn’t see much difference but maybe I didn’t know where to watch :wink:

Here’s media info of perfectly fine working file, recognized both by wdtv and receiver as DTS HD-MA:

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Mode                                     : 16
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 1h 30mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : Unknown / 1 509 Kbps
Channel count                            : 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 96.0 KHz / 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

Here’s one detected by WDTV as DTS HRA and no sound at all on my receiver.

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Mode                                     : 16
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Muxing mode                              : Header stripping
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2h 16mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : Unknown / 1 509 Kbps
Channel count                            : 7 channels / 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, Back: C, LFE / Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Title                                    : English DTS-HD
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

5

Well, it might be, but them problem is that my receiver, according to its specification and manual, should encode any HD audio format, including DTS High Resolution Audio.

6

Quote: Muxing mode                              : Header stripping

I would try to add the headers back in

see if that fixes it

while MKV header problems are largely behind us, this could be a new one related to header compression

7

Thanks.

Will try that soon and let you know :slight_smile:

8

Well, it didn’t help. Tried with mkvmerge and then with a little tool mkclean (mkWDclean).

Headers compression has been removed but no change with the problem.

Any other ideas?

Here’s media info of “repaired” mkv audio:

Audio
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Mode                                     : 16
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2h 4mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : Unknown / 1 509 Kbps
Channel count                            : 7 channels / 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, Back: C, LFE / Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Title                                    : English DTS-HD
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

9

Channel count                            : 7 channels / 6 channels

there are 2 options, either 7 channel or 6 channel

the working file only has one option

maybe that’s what’s causing issues,

really just guessing here

10

Thanks KAD

I’ll look into it.

11

It won’t be it.

I’ve got another mkv which works great and here’s its media info:

Audio #1
ID                                       : 2
Format                                   : DTS
Format/Info                              : Digital Theater Systems
Format profile                           : MA / Core
Mode                                     : 16
Format settings, Endianness              : Big
Codec ID                                 : A_DTS
Duration                                 : 2h 18mn
Bit rate mode                            : Variable
Bit rate                                 : Unknown / 1 509 Kbps
Channel count                            : 8 channels / 6 channels
Channel positions                        : Front: L C R, Side: L R, Back: L R, LFE / Front: L C R, Side: L R, LFE
Sampling rate                            : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                                : 24 bits
Compression mode                         : Lossless / Lossy
Title                                    : English DTS-HD
Language                                 : English
Default                                  : Yes
Forced                                   : No

12

Is it possible the WDTV has problems with 6.1 audio?  It’s refusing to play my 6.1 Blade flac rips, yet 7.1 works fine.  Maybe it has similar problems with DTS-MA…  I’ll look into it, but I’ll need to rerip some of my blu rays to check.

13

sorry, I’m out of idea’s then

14

Here’s my guess —  the addition of DTS HD-MA is problematic in a way that the testers (alpha & beta) didn’t catch. 

It may not be parsing the EDID data from the DTS decoder enough to know which subformats are supported…

And if it is seeing DTS in the EDID Supported Audio Formats section may mean that it just sends ALL forms of DTS whether the device can decode it or not.

My decoder, though, supports ALL forms of DTS as far as I know, so I don’t think I would have seen the issue.

If you’re willing to upload me the 20-30mb “cut” of that file, I’d be happy to test it to see if I can decode it.

It may be a while for WD to tweak all of these differences.

15

@TonyPh12345,

here’s what I’ve seen with DTS-MA

my receiver is able to decode all forms of DTS

when I run SMP audio set up, it does not list DTS MA

it just shows DTS

but my receiver receives and plays the DTS-MA just fine

my dad, has a really old receiver, it plays DTS, but not DTS-MA

audio set up shows the same, but then the SMP send the full DTS-MA, which the receiver can not decode

a temp fix, is to set SMP to sterio

but the above posters issue is different

some DTS-MA files play and some don’t

and some files show DTS-HRA , eventhough they are DTS-MA

so the question is what is different about the files that don’t play

based on media info output above, I’m out of idea’s about what they don’t play

16

I just re-ripped Blade, with 6.1 DTS-MA and I’m getting no sound out of it at all…

Is that conclusive evidence enough?

17

KAD79-  Yes, the detail under audio detection doesn’t list anything new.  As far as I’m concerned, it SHOULD list the specifics.

Previously, the WD would check for DTS, and if it saw it, it would pass through DTS CORE only.  It didn’t matter if the downstream device could decode the higher formats – it never sent them anyway.   (this is not strictly true; I remember it passing/supporting DTS ES as well.)

But now, it just passes through ALL forms of DTS whether the device downstream supports it or not – it’s no longer stripping the CORE.

Gotta be specific with codec types.

DTS-MA is a form of DTS-HD; more properly called DTS HD Master Audio.

DTS HRA is another form of DTS HD, more properly referred to as DTS HD High-Resolution Audio.

DTS HD-MA is a higher standard than DTS HD-HRA.

I would think that anything that supports MA would also support HRA; that’s one confusing thing about it – the Media Info report does NOT appear to distingish MA from HRA … it just calls them all MA/Core.  (BTW, that’s why you see two different sets of numbers; one applies to the DTS + MA extensions, the other set [after the slash] is referring to just the core.)

@ ndjamena:  What container are you ripping to?  Have you tried just the native M2TS as it exists on the disc?  Or are you ripping to MKV or something else?

2 Likes
18

kudoes, you just taught me something new about DTS codecs

so I guess the closest guess at this point is regarding the difference between DTS-MA and DTS-HRA formats

if media info, is not distiguishing the 2 any thoughts, on other programs that can, so these users, can test if it’s HRA that does not play for them

actually, wait, the one user posted an 8 channel / 6 channels output that works, I guess from your above statement this is likely HRA, but it would be nice, was some way to verify that

19

MKV.  Should that matter?  2.0, 5.1, and 7.1 all play fine.  It’s just 6.1 that’s the problem and they’re the files the OP is talking about too.  MediaInfo and MKVMerge can tell how many channels there are and the tracks can be bitstreamed to my receiver from my Blu ray player.  If there’s a problem of 2 different speaker setups listed I could check a 7.1 disc but, as I said, 6.1 FLACs won’t play either.  Maybe the SMP doesn’t have a 6.1 flag…

20

MKV could easily be the issue

6.1, I think the jury is still out, but it’s a possibility

there’s enough data above to warrent looking into it more

but not enough for me to say definetely