Roku Ultra Does Not play DTS-HD MA 7.1

[speechles 2086]

13 hours ago, One2Go said:

Still don't get it why the DTS-HD MA 5.1 gets flaged for transcoding and the DTS-HD MA 7.1 does not.

Think of DTS as either 5.1 or 7.1. The Roku can play DTS. The Roku cannot play lossless streams. It must always use the DTS "core". Even if you have DTS-HD MA in 6 channel, rather than 8, the Roku isn't playing the lossless stream. It is playing the lossy "core" from the DTS stream.

DTS should pass-through. The player just goes hmm.. whatever.. here is the stream. Untouched. Passes it down the wire. Just puts it out on the pass-through audio stream. After that.. it is up to your equipment to decode that or remove the DTS "core" from the stream and play it.

This is why you must both enable pass-through then rather than use "Auto" use "Custom" and choose which codecs to allow. Usually DD5.1 and DTS turned on. Then restart the Roku. After that the Roku now understands you want DTS to pass-through. It is doing this because you hear silence with 8 channel DTS. That must mean the pass-through is working, or it means Roku isn't passing through the DTS to the receiver. But it does mean the Roku is doing it since this shows as Direct Play. 

@ebrDo you have a TV that supports DTS which can connect to a Roku? I do not or I would do this myself to test. Simply disable audio transcoding for a test user. Then play that file with that test user that has DTS-HD MA in 8 channels. Can you hear the lossy DTS "core" playing from the DTS-HD MA track? or do you also hear silence? If you also hear silence this is most certainly a recent Roku firmware bug.

Edited 4 hours ago by speechles

[rotational467 45]

3 hours ago, pünktchen said:

The DTS Core is usually embedded within the lossless DTS HD-MA track, so it cannot be "deleted" without re-encoding the audio. Most Blu-rays have a seperate DTS only track, that's what you can deselect within MakeMKV.

You're correct, my memory is failing me. At some point in the past pre-emby I had some kind of setup that couldn't handle DTS-MA at all, and including the separate DTS track was the workaround. It became part of my standard rip workflow and I forgot why.

Testing on my Ultra (Roku OS 15.2 4.3442-C2, latest Emby app, local network) shows expected behavior - it is not passing through DTS-MA, 5.1 or 7.1, but it is passing the DTS core properly for both. Receiver reports standard DTS streams while Emby shows direct play of the DTS-MA streams. On the Roku the Streaming Format is Auto and Digital Output is passthrough.

[tedfroop21 97]

1 hour ago, speechles said:

The Roku can play DTS.

Roku does nothing but pass through DTS.  It only "plays" Dolby formats.

IE: All Roku does is steer the audio stream to a device to decode it.

I had issues when I started here and came to understand DTS is a three way negotiation between Emby, the Sink Device (TV) and the AVR and all three must be capable of handling the 7.1 stream or you get 5.1.   After updating my Sink device (TV), no problems playing DTS-MA

[One2Go 122]

2 hours ago, speechles said:

Think of DTS as either 5.1 or 7.1. The Roku can play DTS. The Roku cannot play lossless streams. It must always use the DTS "core". Even if you have DTS-HD MA in 6 channel, rather than 8, the Roku isn't playing the lossless stream. It is playing the lossy "core" from the DTS stream.

DTS should pass-through. The player just goes hmm.. whatever.. here is the stream. Untouched. Passes it down the wire. Just puts it out on the pass-through audio stream. After that.. it is up to your equipment to decode that or remove the DTS "core" from the stream and play it.

This is why you must both enable pass-through then rather than use "Auto" use "Custom" and choose which codecs to allow. Usually DD5.1 and DTS turned on. Then restart the Roku. After that the Roku now understands you want DTS to pass-through. It is doing this because you hear silence with 8 channel DTS. That must mean the pass-through is working, or it means Roku isn't passing through the DTS to the receiver. But it does mean the Roku is doing it since this shows as Direct Play. 

My AVR plays ALL lossy DTS audio tracks thrown at it by the Roku. But just lossy DTS the Roku passes on and the front display of the AVR says DTS and no transcoding takes place. As soon as the Roku plays DTS-HD MA audio, Emby is transcoding it but ONLY when it is 5.1 NO core from the DTS-HD MA. This came only to my attention recently as the 2021 movie black widow also has a DTS-HD MA 7.1 audio track and no problems were detected a few years ago when I played it.

The Roku is connected via HDMI to the AVR and the AVR connects directly to the Projector. 2 days ago I connected the 2019 Shield to a separate input and every content that I play displays on the front of the AVR the default audio format DTS-HD MA, Dolby Digital, DTS, TrueHD and whatever else. So all the movies we have listed here play the highest quality of audio when using the 2019 Shield where the Roku screws up.

For the Roku's Audio it has 4 entries.

1. Audio Mode: It has 2 entries: Stereo | Auto (DD+, DTS-HD)

2. Preferred Audio Language (English)

3. Preferred Streaming Format it has 3 entries: Auto | Dolby | DTS

4. Digital output and it has 3 entries: Auto | Stereo | Customs. Under customs there is Dolby Digital and DTS.

Nowhere is there anything regarding passthrough but I assume the Audio Mode Auto will pass through the audio format. Regardless of the changes in the settings the DTS core is not handed over to the AVR.

I am off for the weekend and will not be where the equipment is.

[speechles 2086]

Digital output format would be what you want to change.

A RokuTV device will show "Passthrough" as an additional option for digital output format. A Roku set-top-box or stick will need to use "Custom" and then enable DTS or not and choose the correct flavor of Dolby Digital either non-plus or plus. The "Passthrough" option of the RokuTV will allow the HDMI(-ARC/eARC) to pass these through.

Using Auto it must determine support from the HDMI-CEC chain. If you have an AVR this might cause problems with auto-detection if the AVR is turned off, but the Roku is always on, as the order the devices are turned on matters. Detection is done as the Roku boots up. In order for Auto to work correctly all the time the Roku will need to turn off with the AVR and turn on with it. Using Custom will work correctly all the time without needing to make sure of the order of devices is turned on correctly.

Audio mode allows you to quickly enable Stereo without goofing with the other settings. For when you want to do this.

Preferred streaming format isn't really used by the Emby app. We aren't providing streams without multiple audio tracks. We don't provide your media. So we don't read this value from the Roku which would tell us how you want your audio packaged from our content delivery network. Since we do not have a CDN serving video this one exists for everything else, but Emby. Those who have content will surely use this to determine how best to handle your audio stream delivery. Since Emby is limited by what your media item has for audio this is why we can never use that field.

Edited 53 minutes ago by speechles

[rotational467 45]

19 minutes ago, speechles said:

Digital output format would be what you want to change.

A RokuTV device will show "Passthrough" as an additional option for digital output format. A Roku set-top-box or stick will need to use "Custom" and then enable DTS or not and choose the correct flavor of Dolby Digital either non-plus or plus. The "Passthrough" option of the RokuTV will allow the HDMI(-ARC/eARC) to pass these through.

My Roku Ultra 4802X connected via HDMI to a Denon receiver offers Passthrough, and it correctly detects what the receiver can accept. I think this became available with the 4800 series, I had the Custom audio settings configured with my older model Ultra.