Help:Dolby Tru HD

[VR3]

Help!

I use a Sony Vaio laptop (F Series) - See specs

Product: US-VPCF1190X-LBOM
Component: No Additional Video Editing Software
Component: Intel? Core? i7-720QM processor (1.60GHz) with Turbo Boost up to 2.80GHz
Component: 16.4" VAIO Premium Display (1920x1080) with NVIDIA? GeForce? GT 330M GPU (1GB VRAM)
Component: Fresh Start
Component: No additional Office Software
Component: No additional Photo Editing Software
Component: 4GB (2GBx2) DDR3-SDRAM-1333
Component: Blu-ray Disc? player
Component: No additional AntiVirus Software
Component: Keyboard Backlight
Component: Standard Capacity Battery
Component: Black
Component: Engraving
Component: Genuine Windows? 7 Professional 64-bit
Component: 320GB Hard Disk Drive (7200rpm)

It uses the GT 330M GPU video card that also outputs HD audio. I literally as of 20 minutes updated the drivers to the latest and greatest out there.

I can output DTS, DD and everything in between.

My sound is set to 5.1 surround, 24/192, the whole nine yards

My receiver is a Pioneer Elite VSX 23 TXH - it shows up on the front display PCM Direct and shows the front, center, right, surrounds and subs as if they are being utilized. However it is outputting in stereo with a LFE track.

My video player is Corel WinDVD BD and it shows it is outputting in Dolby Tru HD

I am flat out stumped at this point, I really dont know what else to do. I am running HDMI 1.3 everywhere...

My soundcard has been calibrated by a mic as well as my receiver.

Thoughts?

[PrazVT]

Can you double check the WinDVD BD audio settings? Perhaps a screenshot of that menu as well as of the nVidia settings menu may be helpful.

[VR3]

The Nvidia menu is crap for the audio portion as it is 99% video related...

The audio menu is the Windows Sound menu - basically the only settings you can choose is how many speakers and bit rate... which mine is set to 5.1 and 24/192

The Corel menu is barebones basic too - its almost like the receiver just is not decoding it??

[PrazVT]

Okay - have you tried leaving the bitrate part at its default setting? Because DD and DTS are not natively 24/192. DD is going to 16 / 48 and DTS will be 16/48 or 24/96 usually. Otherwise, as long as Corel audio options are set to spdif passthrough and your hdmi audio in the windows control panel is the default device, you should be good to go.

[cheddar]

24/192 on all channels is more than most receivers can handle. Sad, but true, while specs say hdmi 1.3 compatible devices should be able to handle it, few receivers do. Drop the bit rate to the next available setting and it should solve the problem. Sounds like the receiver is just downgrading the signal to whatever it can handle at that bitrate.

[cheddar]

I should add, this problem appears on my preamp with just TrueHD. DTS-HD MA plays just fine at the higher bitrate. A workaround for the higher bitrate audio for those rare tracks that actually have that native bitrate was to just have my player decode to PCM which the preamp could handle just fine.

[cheddar]

Because DD and DTS are not natively 24/192.

However, TrueHD and DTS-HD MA can be. They are just very rare. The few tracks I've heard are deep and rich, though. Reminding me of SACD or DVD-Audio quality, just in surround multi-channel.

[izafar]

The Nvidia menu is crap for the audio portion as it is 99% video related...

The audio menu is the Windows Sound menu - basically the only settings you can choose is how many speakers and bit rate... which mine is set to 5.1 and 24/192

The Corel menu is barebones basic too - its almost like the receiver just is not decoding it??

Looks your PC is doing the decoding as you have set it to 5.1 out. You need to set it up so that outputs raw bitsream, then your Pioneer will be able to show DD Tru HD.
You need to check if your card can output this, if it has older HDMI 1.3 chip it wouldnt be able to output raw data for your receiver.

[VR3]

Looks your PC is doing the decoding as you have set it to 5.1 out. You need to set it up so that outputs raw bitsream, then your Pioneer will be able to show DD Tru HD.
You need to check if your card can output this, if it has older HDMI 1.3 chip it wouldnt be able to output raw data for your receiver.

I am pretty sure my laptop cannot do this...

Argh...

[PrazVT]

Okay - so I pulled my desktop out to the living room and hooked up the GTX580 to the Denon receiver. I get the following in the control panel:



Didn't mess with any options. Just verified the device was there. Next, pulled up Cyberlink Powerdvd 10 and made sure HDMI was chosen as an option. Also, chose to output Dolby Digital / DTS unencoded:



Info window from movie player (receiver showed dolby digital):



That was a blu-ray rip. I tried a blu-ray disk as well, and noticed that it outputs compressed DTSHD (ie. regular 5.1 DTS on the receiver). When I changed that option to LPCM, the receiver was only outputting 2 channels even though the player was showing 6 channels in the info window. Doesn't this sound familiar? OK. Back to the windows audio settings. Click Configure for the HDMI device and you get the following screen:



Choose 5.1 and hit next next next, etc.

Go back to the player and pop in another movie:



Window shows 6 channel PCM being output to the receiver. And receiver shows 6 channel multichannel PCM with audio coming out of all channels.

Trey, do this last bit where you configure the audio as 5.1. Then choose LPCM in your WinDVD. See if that fixes the 2ch output issue.

FYI, changing the audio setting to 24/192 didn't make any difference.

[VR3]

Hmmmmm My Win DVD program does not have a menu like that - under the audio menu it is generics with no specifics...

Maybe I need the program you are using?

[PrazVT]

Yeah - you might want to use Cyberlink PowerDVD. It's probably worth the $$ for the features. It pretty much plays everything. But did you set the audio to 5.1 in the windows audio options? you were getting 2 ch audio output though right?

[VR3]

Yep in the settings it is 5.1 ---

Looks like I need to buy a little software.

It outputs DD and DTS no problem - but Dolby TruHD is no good...

Thanks for your help! Mucho appreciated!

[PrazVT]

What happens if you disable audio bypass to external processor? Will it output 6 ch lpcm?

No problem. If it's just a software issue, then it'll be easy to fix.

[VR3]

I will have to try it tomorrow - getting late and my room mate is already asleep lol

[PrazVT]

:) ha ok np.