No DTS thru optical on my Denon AV Reciever

[injunwarlord]

hi audiophiles…

 saw some previous threads but no help to my prob:-  i have connected my WD TV Live (firmware 1.04) via HDMI to my samsung series 5 HDTV; and to my DENON AVR 1705 via toslink optical cable. AV settings are digital o/p on WDTV. But for the .mkv files, im not getting the main sound in DTS mode on my AMP…! have to switch amp to stereo and then i get it… but no fun without the surround… pls Helllp…!  Thanx…

[carlrhxphn]

Is it DTS 2.0?  I had a similar problem where as the new surround formats like Dolby True HD was not being passed thrue optical and had to use HDMI for it to work.

[injunwarlord]

hi,

 My amp has Dolby Prologic IIx, DTS, DTS NEO6, DTS 96/24… pretty much it. Guess the problem is not with the amp as i get excellent audio (DTS) when i playback DVDs on the player…

 any ideas…  ?

[carlrhxphn]

I mean what type of dts do the video files have also how are you connecting it to the receiver?  Blu - ray rips  can have the original DTS HD Master Audio which cannot be sent through a toslink cable.

Are you connecting it directly to the receiver using the toslink cable or passing it through another device like your tv first.  Have you tried it with HDMI?  If your tv have HDMI but your receiver dont you can usually send the sound out from your tv to the receiver using the toslink cable.

[injunwarlord]

hi…

 the files i’v been tryin to play are .mkv files with DTS audio, but yes, they are blu ray rips. my set up is as follows: -

 1. The audio goes via toslink direct to the Amp.

 2. HDMI connects the WDTV to the Samsung series 5 tv.

 3. My amp does not have HDMI port as its 2004 vintage…

 What gets me is the fact that i do hear the background music in DTS format; cant hear the voices and lot of other sounds though. When i change the Amp setting to 5ch stereo, then i get everything…

[theawesome_1]

Hi, I have a similar setup in my system, and I am having the exact same problem. Please if anybody has found any solution let me know?

[carlrhxphn]

There is a free program that can convert the audio in mkv files to ac3. It is pretty fast too. I will post the name of it when I get the chance.

[PixelPower]

carlrhxphn wrote:
There is a free program that can convert the audio in mkv files to ac3. It is pretty fast too. I will post the name of it when I get the chance.

• • *Popcorn MKV Audio Converter. Great utility. Having said that, I have no issues getting DTS via Optical direct to my amp.

[injunwarlord]

hi… Thanks for the help… jus wanted to know, does ac3 deliver multi channel sound? 

[injunwarlord]

hi Pixelpower,

 can you tell me which amp ur using and the setup? a lot of ppl were having this prob so i was assuming it was universal. plus some contributers cited some copyright issues between WD and DTS labs as the reason for this… maybe i can do some tweaking with your input…

Thanks!

[PixelPower]

Hey injunwarlord,

My amp is a fairly recent Pioneer VSX-1020, which supports HDMI inputs (my normal config is HDMi direct to amp).

For testing, I still have my Optical cable in place and switch between inputs on the amp to test whether it’s working or not.

You’re not the first person I’ve seen complain that DTS isn’t working right in recent firmwares, so it could be a bug.  But I’m unable to replicate it on my setup…

The licensing issue WD has with DTS revolves around DTS-HD; WD claims that DTS will not provide a license for DTS-HD bitstreaming, stating no such license exists for non-BD equipped media players like the Live range.  It’s a ridiculous situation.  At least any files with DTS-HD will output the DTS core, so you (should) still get surround sound.

As for AC3 / DD 5.1 surround, that seems to work fine from MKV containers.  One of the safest choices but DTS sounds a bit better.  If you do re-convert using Popcorn MKV Audio Converter, remember to keep the DTS track, then you have the best of both worlds: working AC3 now and the choice of DTS when WD iron the bugs out.  ;)

-edit-

Because I constantly doubt myself, I decided to test DTS again.  :D

• I used my Live running 1.04.10_V.  
• Live is plugged into my Pioneer amp via HDMI and Optical.  
• Amp feeds video signal to TV via HDMI.
• Live audio output is set to Digital without HDMI.  
• Amp is set to play from Optical source only.
• Connected to network via WD Livewire
• Playing files stored on a WD MyBookLive NAS via media server connection  

Test file is a Transformers 2 rip with DTS audio, as well as AC3 (my previous amp was ancient and didn’t support DTS, so all my DTS files also have AC3 tracks thanks to Popcorn MKV Audio converter).

I can switch between audio tracks in the file and the amp updates its display to show whether it’s decoding AC3 or DTS.  So it definitely works (for me).