DTS Master HD

WD Legacy Products WD TV Live Streaming
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I have been searching for a way to play this audio through my AVR, as reported many times just the standard DTS is played not the lossless 96/24 HD audio.

I decided that if the mountain is too high to climb then go around it, I assume this has been posted many times but as I can not find it, here is my solution.

Use MakeMKV (a free program) to convert the DTSMA HD audio into FLAC 96/24 (select the FLAC option, no need to strip the audio file out just convert the .mkv), this takes a surprisingly short time and the resultant audio is as good as DTSMA HD, and is shown as Multi Channel In, 7.1, fs 96Khz  3/4/1 on my Denon AVR.

You just need the latest MakeMKV and need to put an extra .dll into the MakeMKV folder (details on the website)

I have been finding that most of the latest films are now AVC with DTS-HDMA, MakeMKV will not handle these so first remux using MkvMerge then process as above.

2 Likes
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Hello,

Thanks for sharing your knowledge on this Community.

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That’s a nice trick, I haven’t heard that one before, and it makes me wonder if I should start using MakeMKV more often

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I have done much study on this issue, and have found that there are no “off the shelf” products that will decode DTSHD-MA.  However, I have found 2 players that claim to decode this, and also have faster and more robust processing, including gigabit ethernet.  I purchased one of these units through Amazon, and I am happy to report that it works, very well!!  My WDTV Live will now go in my bedroom to stream basic content to my TV, there.  I won’t mention the names of the units, due to professional courtesy to WD, however, you guys need only to input your criteria in Google to get the information on the 2 units I found.  I’m very disappointed with the WD folks, but still believe they produce a good unit for an “average” customer.  Good luck, everyone!

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…And yes, it DOES decode DTSHD-MA 7.1 beautifully!

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Yes you could transcode DTS-HD MA into FLAC.  The problem with that is that the WDTV Live does not decode mutlichannel FLAC, so you need a receiver that can.  So what you’re actually getting is that 24/96 FLAC file as 2-channel instead of 7.1, 6.1 or 5.1.

 

Will FLAC even passthrough on S/PDIF or optical? 

 

 

Why the WDTV Live does not decode mutlichannel FLAC?  I don’t know.  Your guess is as good as mine.  I would have paid some more money for this unit if it would have had this feature.

 

But for what it is, it works well.

 

 

 

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The WD Live TV Streaming does decode 7.1 96/24 FLAC and my Denon in Direct mode displays 8  channel (96/24) input and output as you would expect, check your audio settings you have not enabled 8 channel output through HDMI, unless you are trying to pass it through optical/coax, no way that will work!