Media Play for DTS and Dolby digital

**rmsk8r** · 12-12-2006, 06:45 PM

After putting 60 Gigs worth of CDs into my ipod I discovered Surround sound in my car system. Now I'm back to a huge notebook full of CDs and DVDs to sort through when I want to play music.

Could the media player (maybe it already does) be made to have a Digital passthru mode where DTS wav files would be directed out an SPDIF output on your soundcard, for processing by an external DTS decoder like the Alpine PXA-H701?

Similarly with soundtracks from DTS or DD encoded movies?

Thanks

**rmsk8r** · 12-14-2006, 01:46 AM

Today I confimed that I can play a DD or DTS soundtrack from a DVD from my XP laptop through a turtle beach USB sound card with SPDIF out to the alpine processor in my car.

WinDVD did this corectly but windows media player did not.

Unfortunatly, I still don't have a player that will play DTS wav files, or even DTS CDs, but at least I've proved the hardware can do it and all works together.

**rmsk8r** · 12-14-2006, 08:08 PM

OK, I found a player that will play DTS wave files (out the SPDIF to my alpine porcessor):

www.videolan.org

It just worked, no codecs or any other packages needed (unlike foobar2k mediaPLAYER CLASSIC, etc).

So, Can streer deck call this player (it has a command line interface) when encountering files with a certain extension, or duplicate this functionality natively?

Next chanllenge: DTS CD's arrive (from bit torrent) usually as .iso or one big .wav with a .cue file. What would be the most efficent way of going to per song (in artist/album folders) DTS .wav files?

Similarly for the DTS track (or even MLP?) on DVD Audios?

**rmsk8r** · 12-16-2006, 12:44 AM

Alcohol 120% will mount .nrg and .iso files

exact audio copy will then copy (use uncompressed) to individual DTS wav files.

One trick in exact audio copy to get it to see the alcohol mounted drives:

Eac --> EAC options

Interface tab --> Choose Native Win32 Interface

**sama** · 12-16-2006, 07:05 AM

hey there, I used VLC as a media player for a while, but I've now switched to mplayer. Based on the same ffmpeg underneath, but faster at loading and more stable from my experience.

**RedGTiVR6** · 12-16-2006, 08:29 AM

btw - search this forum for BitPerfect. If you can get BitPerfect audio on your computer, you will be able to use WinAmp to play DTS files.

Unfortunately, I have not been able to find any software plugins for Windows Media player that will allow for BitPerfect audio.

**RedGTiVR6** · 12-16-2006, 08:33 AM

FAQ: What is Bit-Perfect?

There's the link, take a look. If you're looking for DTS playback, this might be the route you want to go.

**rmsk8r** · 06-29-2007, 12:49 PM

Well I drifted away from this project for a while, but recently got interested again, and after much trial and error I do have a combination of things that work. so I thought I'd post it for others to see.

This is not "bit perfect" audio, as it decodes DTS and then re-encodes as AC3, but there doesn't seem to be any other solution out there, if you are using USB soundcards, as none of them do 41Khz over SPDIF.

Anyway, a working setup for playing DTS wave files (encoded for DTS CD) from a harddisk:

Steetdeck (uses Windows media player)
Windows media player (in my case version 11)
Windows XP sp2
ffdshow (the version from streetdeck.com Oct. 12 2004. many newer versions don't work for DTS inside Windows Media Player with SPDIF out)
Turtle Beach Amigo USB sound card
My processor: Alpine PXA-H701

ffdshow settings

codecs:
AC3 SPDIF
DTS libdts
Uncompressed: All supported

Resample (the only thing checked in the left hand column):
Resample checked
Resample to 48000 Hz
Mode: (windowed sinc) I may experiment here but this works

Input output:
AC3 checked
Bitrate 640

I still have a lot of issues to solve before investing in my touch screen etc.

Can I hear the difference between DTS cds/dvds played on my alpine head unit and this set up?

How to (efficently)transfer all the DTS audio, form DTS CDs, DTS DVDs, or .iso or .wav +.cue, and keep all the track/album/artist names for street deck.

how to easily switch on/off the SPDIF to switch between alpine head unit and carputer: Software from streetdeck, toslink switch, usb switch. Interface to alpine somehow?

FYI if you are curious here is link to photos and descriptions of my current car audio/video/nav/bluetooth etc. system. A carputer would be a 3rd Video screen (maybe on the passenger visor?).

http://www.glenn.ws/~gnewell/Photos/ZAudio/

comments/feedback appreciated

**rmsk8r** · 12-29-2007, 08:49 AM

Back to this again some months later:

tonight I did find a bit perfect way to play dts .wav files from dts CDs (44.1 Khz). Using the m-audio transit USB sound card, but only with the ASIO driver. Winamp has an ASIO plugin that makes it work in winamp. supposidly this would work with foobar too but I'm not going to mess with that.

I discoverd this five minutes after ordering an Edirol UA-1EX USB, so we'll see if that can be made to work with windows media player (which does not use ASIO drivers).

In the meantime I'll be looking for frontends that use winamp as the player, or just forgo a front end since 5.1 audio playback is really the only thing I need a car pc for (well, maybe OBDCII too) since my alpine and factory nav do everything else already. I would just need a winamp skin with big buttons and fonts.

I still need to figure out how to control the laser in the USB sound card as having it on overides all the non-optical inputs to the alpine PXA-H701. Basically I see two reasonable choises:

Interupt the 5 volts in the USB cable to the sound card (making windows beep, etc.) or hacking into this optical switch box to make the switch remote:

Hosa Digital Audio Optical Toslink Switch ODS-330