Problem with multi-channel dsf file from SACD

[swandruski 12]

After a lot of research I found a relatively easy way to rip my batch of SACDs. I ripped one that had both stereo and 5.1 surround tracks and got them into my music library. Both versions play fine on my PC with either the web version or Emby Theater. When I play the albums through my nVidia Shield, the stereo tracks play fine, but the 5.1 tracks are garbled. The surround tracks play fine through Kodi. My Emby version of the Shield is 1.8.55g. And, yes, my Home Theater receiver can play high resolution audio. I have a universal player that plays the SACD just fine.

 

[ebr 16184]

Hi. Can we please look at specifics from an example?

 

[swandruski 12]

OK. I just sent a log a few minutes ago (~7:01pm EST). After activating the debug options I went to the home screen and went down to recent music and played about 30 seconds of the song Jerusalem, the first track on the Emerson Lake and Palmer album Brain Salad Surgery. After stopping that I went over to the Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon surround mix and played Speak to Me and let it go into the second track Breathe before stopping. My Emby user name is Steve Andruski. Most of these tracks are larger than 200-300MB.

[ebr 16184]

I don't know that the Android player supports this format unfortunately but what exactly do you mean by "garbled"?

[swandruski 12]

This may be a silly question but why would there be support for stereo dsf playback, but not multichannel?

Anyway, what I mean by garbled is that it kind of sounds like it's playing under water, or like someone singing while gargling. I don't know how to describe it better. I think this issue with high resolution audio on the nVidia Shield has come up before. The device is capable of playing these hi-res files. 

[FrostByte 5392]

Yes, this has come up before.  I believe samples were giving in the other thread, but I can provide more if needed.

High-res is simply greater than 16bit or 44.1kHz and the latest beta versions of both ATV/ET have no issue playing hi-res audio  except for the SACD/DTS audio format which causes the loud annoying noise.

I've tried ripping SACD as wav, dts, and mka and get the same result using both apps.  However, VLC on the Shield will play them using one or two of those containers I listed, but don't recall which ones work right now.

I'm guessing it's a limitation of Exoplayer and not the Shield from my testing.

 

 

Edited March 4, 2021 by FrostByte

[swandruski 12]

So it's been a while since I've had time to look at this again, but I tried some multi-channel DSF files again on my Shield. They play OK as far as not having that garbled sound I observed before. However, the multi-channel files seem to only play in Stereo (or maybe only the front channels - hard to tell if it's being down-mixed, or not). It would be really nice to have this working. Anyone else have some experiences to share?

[Luke 42078]

11 hours ago, swandruski said:

So it's been a while since I've had time to look at this again, but I tried some multi-channel DSF files again on my Shield. They play OK as far as not having that garbled sound I observed before. However, the multi-channel files seem to only play in Stereo (or maybe only the front channels - hard to tell if it's being down-mixed, or not). It would be really nice to have this working. Anyone else have some experiences to share?

Hi there @swandruski can we please look at an example?

Thanks.

[ebr 16184]

Hi.  The player doesn't currently support playing these as multi-channel so they are being mixed down to stereo.

[swandruski 12]

Thanks. Put in my vote to provide multi-channel support for .dsf files. Most of the surround sound stuff I have is on DVD-Audio or Blu-ray discs and I can rip these to flac conveniently. However, for a few albums, the only multi-channel versions are on SACD and it would be nice to play these through Emby.

[swandruski 12]

I noticed that there was a recent upgrade to the Emby Shield Android TV app. I went in and tried one of the surround dsf albums I had left on the server and surround now seems to work. Now, however, the file periodically stops playing. I can imagine this could be a network bandwidth issue on my end, though I have everything hardwired to my router. The dsf files are large. Another possibility is that my WD PR4100 is getting bogged down with all of the data.

I'll try some other albums and see if t he delays are consistent, or if it's only happening with the larger multi-channel files. Anyway, there seems to be progress.

[Luke 42078]

Hi, is this inside the same LAN network as the server?