[HN Gopher] Multi-channel Audio Part 2
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Multi-channel Audio Part 2
Author : kogir
Score : 40 points
Date : 2024-02-02 18:49 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (computer.rip)
(TXT) w3m dump (computer.rip)
| aidenn0 wrote:
| I gave up on getting audio passthrough to work reliably and just
| send PCM over HDMI. I don't _think_ there are downsides to this,
| unless my computer is somehow worse at decoding DTS than my AV
| receiver?
| randomfinn wrote:
| The only two things I can think of are Atmos (as mentioned in
| the article), and metadata for dynamic range compression (which
| you can do on the computer too but may be more convenient to
| control on the receiver).
|
| I think the main reason for audio passthrough preference in the
| home theater crowd is seeing the DD/DTS logos light up on the
| receiver.
| duped wrote:
| > But what about object-based surround sound? I'm using that
| somewhat lengthy term to try to avoid singling out one commercial
| product, but, well, there's basically one commercial product:
| Dolby Atmos.
|
| In theory, the recent(ish)ly standardized SMPTE 2098-2 bitstream
| protocol will allow for 3rd party encoders/decoders of object-
| based "immersive audio." In practice, 2098-2 is the bastard child
| of Atmos and DTS:X and I kind of doubt we'll ever see a FOSS
| decoder.
|
| But anything's possible.
| adanto6840 wrote:
| Somewhat tangential, but here's a cool _somewhat_ open-source
| project related to Dolby Atmos:
|
| https://cavern.sbence.hu/cavern/
|
| https://github.com/VoidXH/Cavern
|
| The visualizer, which is what I was _most_ interested in (along
| with software decoding) is written in C# and the rendering is
| done in Unity -- both things I valued & thought were cool. In
| theory, you could build a DIY multi-channel "receiver" with this
| type of software if given enough audio outputs (and/or put
| something like Dante to use).
|
| I explored it a bit further but it's relatively cost prohibitive,
| especially if you want to do something like accept HDMI input, it
| gets messy. AFAICT, at least when I went down this research path
| a few months back, even finding & getting dev kits/boards with
| HDMI input (of semi-recent generation) was non-trivial & pretty
| pricey.
| recursive wrote:
| I'm a grumpy old man, and no one can ever make me care about any
| audio transport fancier than analog stereo. To my dismay, it's
| getting hard to find TVs that can even provide usable stereo
| output without some kind of extra decoder box or something.
| Luckily, last time I bought a TV, I was still (barely) able to
| find one that had a headphone jack, which I use as a stereo line
| out.
| daoistmonk wrote:
| fwiw, you can get a higher quality output (if your tv has it)
| via optical and/or hdmi looking for the "PCM" output setting.
| on my recent tv (an LG) it was buried in the settings and
| greyed out until i turned off all the Ai processing bs. only
| then could my external stereo DAC work.
| mysteria wrote:
| Some TVs have a SPDIF output that you can connect to a D/A
| converter, but that's also an external box which you don't
| want. The thing here is that modern TVs typically have an
| integrated Class D amp for their speakers that has a direct I2S
| input for the DSP. The TV manufacturer doesn't bother adding in
| a seperate D/A chip on the board as it doesn't need it.
|
| The good thing though is that those cheap $10 HDMI audio
| extractors work well for this use case if you have a playback
| device that outputs PCM over HDMI. As a side note those
| extractors are also a great way of getting 5.1 surround sound
| from a HTPC running the Dcaenc DTS encoder [1] into an old pre-
| HDMI AVR.
|
| 1. https://gitlab.com/patrakov/dcaenc
| thescriptkiddie wrote:
| This might be off-topic, but I'd like to use this opportunity
| to complain that basically every modern home theater setup has
| like _hundreds_ of milliseconds of audio latency.
| qozoq wrote:
| VLC and other PC based software has always left me with just as
| many problems - if not more - regarding picture quality, as well
| as audio. The gold standard for me - this goes for three TVs
| going back 12 years - has always turned out to be to use the TV's
| own media player app, in conjunction with a solid DNLA server.
|
| Otherwise it's gripes over finding the ideal combination of TV
| picture settings AND OS display settings. The TV is an OS of it's
| own, of course. How does one go about tweaking two sets of
| settings that overlap?
| wfleming wrote:
| Similarly, I wrestled for years with getting good results out
| of Kodi/XBMC. It was mostly good but never entirely reliable
| and took a lot of fiddling to get to that stage. I recently
| switched to Jellyfin with the Android TV client app on my TV,
| and so far it's been better results with almost zero fiddling.
| hapticmonkey wrote:
| I've tried various methods for playing media files on my TV
| over the years. I've settled on an AppleTV with the Infuse app
| as my gold standard.
|
| I used to use Kodi, but got tired of endless minor issues and
| UI skins that haven't evolved since 2005.
|
| PCs have also been left behind when it comes to HDR, Dolby
| Vision, and streaming options due to DRM.
| timc3 wrote:
| I try to buy whichever is considered the best at the time and
| consider a TV to be a 2000Euro upwards purchase. But every TV
| needs the settings tweaked and a lot of its processing turned
| off. The quickest way to get there is to start with the tweaks
| others have done from video forums. Get to that to a reference
| point.
|
| Then buy a good source like an Apple TV for streaming, a BluRay
| HD if you like disks or a OSMC Vero to run kodi. They should
| require very little changes or setup.
|
| I think the audio is more challenging.
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