Hear partial dts sound when play mkv file on WD TV HD (gen 1)

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1

Hi,

It’s a well-known problem that WD TV HD (gen 1) doesn’t support DTS, therefore I connect the media player with the Pioneer receiver ( VSX-820) using an optical connection.

When I play a mkv file with dts sound, I can only hear some background sound, but no the main sound, such as people’s conversation. And the receiver does show “DTS” in the front panel, so I assume the connection is fine.

Not sure it is a problem of the file I downloaded, or the receiver ?

Any suggestions.

Thanks.

2

MG_toronto wrote:

 

Any suggestions.

Well, the first thing I’d ask is if the file will play fine on a PC with VLC or any other DTS-capable media player.

I know sound levels can sound “off” when a 5.1 AC3 is downmixed to stereo (which is why many/most DVDs have a 2.0 track along with the 5.1 track, with their own custom approved mixdown), but that should have nothing to do with your issue, unless the receiver itself is mixing down the 5.1 DTS audio into a 2.0 stream for output, and doing it badly.

It sounds to me as if the levels of all tracks in the file in question are just at insanely low levels.

Without trying the file elsewhere, and without trying other DTS files on the receiver, who knows what the issue could be.

For what it’s worth, it appears as if audio levels do vary wildly amongst files… some are “too loud” with my TV set to “16” and others are “not loud enough” with the TV’s volume cranked to “38” – I’m just too lazy to re-encode everything, and am content to just deal with adjusting the TV’s volume.

Personally, I don’t have a DTS receiver, so I automatically re-encode any DTS files to 5.1 AC3, so that they will play on my WDTV Gen1, so obviously I’ve never run into the issue you describe.