Audio decoding in ET instead of AVR

[Sammy 790]

Last week I had a failure of my AMD Radeon HD7850 GPU and am currently using the onboard intel HD4600 iGPU. I had to disable madVR (until I tune it down from Jinc, etc to avoid stutter) and am currently using the ET video renderer with some "mild" settings for stutter free playback. With this I noticed that my AVR 2312ci no says "Multi-Channel Stereo" instead of say "DTS Master" for example. What settings to make to have the DAC in the AVR do the decoding rather than the DAC in the CPU?

 

TIA

[Sammy 790]

How to ensure the audio is decoded by the AVR and not the HTPC? In other words, where's the passthrough checkbox in ET?

[Luke 42077]

Have you explored the in-app audio settings?

[Sammy 790]

[Guest asrequested]

Have you solved your issue?

[Sammy 790]

No. And my Denon AVR2312ci most definitely supports more than this..

 

 

 

If I deselect Passthrough in ET I get Stereo on my AVR?

[Luke 42077]

If you deselect passthrough then of course you get stereo, yes.

 

Is there a problem that you're experiencing?

[Guest asrequested]

Enabling pass-through just means the audio is bitstreamed to your AVR and the AVR will perform the DAC. That is the correct behavior.

[Sammy 790]

When I enable Passthrough, I get Multi-Channel Stereo, Not Passed through audio which then would display DTS-Master or Dobly TruHD on the front panel of the AVR. This is not what is happening. It seems that if I disable passthrough then the decoder in the HTPC should be sending Multi-Channel Audio to the AVR. What is odd is that my AVR supports the (then) current formats (not Atmos) and even can use front height speakers in its own matrix output but if you see the Sound Properties > Supported Formats it only says it supports the Lossy audio.

 

In addition to all this, I'm having issues with some movies not properly playing back the audio tracks. It sounds as if it is muted by 25 dB relative to the rest of the audio output. This is not occurring on all movies and it is not relative to any specific audio format as I've tested quite a few different ones.

 

When playing back on Roku the audio is there and the dialog is not dropped output; it even bitstreams dts but not dts-MA. The issue with Roku is that it plays back 24p content at 60p and it doesn't show full range RGB so it looks washed out too. 

[Luke 42077]

Maybe you need to select the right audio track?

[Sammy 790]

I have tried several tracks but a lot of my mkv's are parsed of tracks I don't want to save hard drive space. I usually chose the best one I can. An this issue with the dialog being muted is not track or codec specific. It happens on some movies and not others. Maybe I need to redo the backup or get a different file and try that.

 

I'm wondering if the EDID is not being properly sent to the HTPC now via HDMI and if it is related to using the on board intel HD4600 iGPU or if my AVR is in need of a replacement, something I don't really want to pay for right now..

[Jdiesel 1431]

Have you tried testing passthrough with standalone mpv or another player like hpc-hc?

[Sammy 790]

I have not. I am still just starting my testing. I get maybe an hour in the wee hours of the morning to do this stuff. I am also going to rule in or out issues with the iGPU in the HTPC by putting a disk with a 7.1 lossless track in the Blu-Ray Player and see what happens. Hope it still works to play Blu-ray disks as I only use it to stream 3D content from Vudu at this point..

[Guest asrequested]

You should probably setup mpv logging. That will tell you what's happening. Add this line in your conf

log-file=<path>

Edited September 20, 2017 by Doofus

[Sammy 790]

You should probably setup mpv logging. That will tell you what's happening. Add this line in you conf

 

log-file=<path>

 

This is in the ET settings, right?

[Guest asrequested]

This is in the ET settings, right?

ET uses mpv but logging isn't enabled or in the settings. You have to make the conf and write it in, yourself. If you can't figure it out, I can walk you through it, tonight, when I get home.

[Sammy 790]

Yeah. I know you've been doing a LOT of testing of mpv in ET. Thanks for that! I have not had the time to just keep up on all my tinkering projects so it is much appreciated.

 

a sample configuration file and a path to put it in is what I need I suppose.

[Guest asrequested]

We'll start with testing in ET so a basic config won't be needed. We'll just do the logging and go directly the issue at hand.

[Sammy 790]

I'll pull some server and transcode (if they exist but they shouldn't) and post them tomorrow.

[Guest asrequested]

Ok, so make an mpv.conf file in this location

 

C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\mpv

 

In that .conf file, put this line, and change the highlighted text to the directory of your choosing.

 

log-file="D:\ET mpv logs\log.txt"

 

Play something once (if you play another, it will overwrite it) and check or post the log.

[Sammy 790]

Have you tried testing passthrough with standalone mpv or another player like hpc-hc?

 

 

I have not. I am still just starting my testing. I get maybe an hour in the wee hours of the morning to do this stuff. I am also going to rule in or out issues with the iGPU in the HTPC by putting a disk with a 7.1 lossless track in the Blu-Ray Player and see what happens. Hope it still works to play Blu-ray disks as I only use it to stream 3D content from Vudu at this point..

 

 

I tried this this morning. On MPC-HC my AVR says dts Surround (but not dts-Master) so MPC-HC is passing through the audio track best it can given that for whatever reason the lossless tracks are not available in the Control Panel > Sound settings page. That's another issue to tackle I suppose but ET is still decoding and sending Multi-Channel Stereo. The good thing here is that it is sending the PCM 7.1 track to the AVR. I have also seen but still need to double-check / verify that when the track is lossy, such as dts-Core the AVR shows dts Surround on the display when using the mpv player. It would seem that the mpv player is decoding when the system sound settings does not recognize the format and doing pass through when it does. This is probably why, when unchecking the lossless dts-MA and Dolby TruHD in the ET settings, it sent stereo but that is something for the experts here to answer.. as they know what mpv is supposed to do in these situations.

[Sammy 790]

Ok, so make an mpv.conf file in this location

 

C:\Users\YOU\AppData\Roaming\mpv

 

In that .conf file, put this line, and change the highlighted text to the directory of your choosing.

 

log-file="D:\ET mpv logs\log.txt"

 

Play something once (if you play another, it will overwrite it) and check or post the log.

 

This morning I was busy setting up my new Harmony Elite which going to be a bit of a chore getting that done and hooking into my VeraPlus and Amazon Alexa! Additionally, I was pairing a new Z-Wave Switch to Vera so that I can power cycle my HDHR Primes and Tuning Resolvers via Vera from anywhere in the world with internet so that I can reset the damn tuning adapters when they fall off the configuration with Spectrum so I can stream LiveTV on Emby! I didn't see this post until now. I will do this tonight and report back, posting the log.txt file.

 

Thanks!

Edited September 20, 2017 by Sammy