I was told my 24 bit FLAC conversions of my lossless audio in my MKV Bly Ray rips were making weird crackling and screeching noises because the bitrate was too high. I’ve been scepical but the evidence seemed to suggest that was the case. Then I happened to watch my MKV rips of Iron Man: Armoured adventure, also with audio converted from DTS-MA to FLAC, BUT IT WAS 2.0 DTS-MA. 7.1 I can understand, 5.1, OK then. BUT 2.0??? So, I extracted the FLAC audio from the file and played ti on the WDTV SMP as a pure .flac file AND THERE WAS NO CRACKLING !OR! SCREECHING! Then I remuxed that FLAC file back into an MKA by itself and tried playing it again AND ALL THE CRACKLING AND SCREECHING RETURNED!!! Even if the audio processing was being shared with the de-muxing code, I doubt a single flac track in it’s own MKA would sound the same as a FLAC stream sharing an MKV with a massive Video stream and several other audio and subtitle streams.
Anyone who reads this please play these two files back on your WD TV SMP and report your findings, because at this point I believe it’s a firmware issue and I’ve wasted the last two days on bad advice.
I cut it with MKVMerge because that was the most convinient way. The clip is the theme song from “Iron Man: Armoured Adventures” an episode of which is 22 minutes long, MKVMerge failed to modify the FLAC header. I can’t post the entire episode for download and most of what you’re reporting is nothing more than the results of MKVMerge’s hackjob! However, one person has reported what I needed to hear: Distortion in the MKA. It’s not just my unit that’s defective, it’s definitely a firmware issue, which means it can be fixed. Thank you very much!
It may be that the player is not happy with a 24bit flac in a mka container. I don’t know if it should be or not. All has been proved is that its not just your player but I certainly would not say for certain that its a firmware issue.
I have just downloaded a 48KHz 24 bit sample flac from the internet and made it into a mka with mkvmerge and it seems to play OK on the WD player without distortion.
General
Unique ID : 246775690700729206171033981411010256639 (0xB9A744EC0B21AE17BF0F866419C79EFF)
Complete name : MendelssohnVC24.mka
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4 / Version 2
File size : 64.7 MiB
Duration : 10mn 45s
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 841 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2013-12-23 21:52:09
Writing application : mkvmerge v6.0.0 (‘Coming Up For Air’) built on Jan 20 2013 09:52:00
Writing library : libebml v1.3.0 + libmatroska v1.4.0
Audio
ID : 1
Format : FLAC
Format/Info : Free Lossless Audio Codec
Codec ID : A_FLAC
Duration : 10mn 45s
Bit rate mode : Variable
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth : 24 bits
Writing library : libFLAC 1.1.0 (UTC 2003-01-26)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
So the WD player can play 24bit flac files within a mka container without distortion. Note this a professionally made flac which may point to a problem with your flac files and the interaction with the mka / mkv spec.
