Playing DTS Wav file (1 Viewer)

[Chris T. Kennedy]

What software do you use/require/etc.... to play a DTS file. I have a digital output on my computer, however I just get a staccato drum sound of junk through powerDVD, winamp, windows media player, etc...

Thanks,

Chris

 

[Jeff Kleist]

You need either software that supports it (new versions of Power DVD and WinDVD do) or a DTS capable reciever that you send the signal to through digital coax

 

[Chris T. Kennedy]

Hmmm... check, check, check on those three things.

PowerDVD XP

using SPDIF output

Dolby Digital/DTS receiver.

No go.

- Chris

 

[Cliff Watson]

Chris,

To send DTS CD wave files thru S/PDIF to an external receiver for decoding you will need a soundcard that can send the 44.1kHz PCM stream to the on-card S/PDIF encoder unmolested by the Windows Scan Rate Converter (SRC). This means that you must use Win98x with VxD (non-WDM) drivers and a pro-audio soundcard such as the M Audio Delta cards. None of the mass-market AC97 soundcards have the ability to pass DTS CD audio.

 

[Chris T. Kennedy]

That sounds kinda....odd. Why are things so particular for playing a DTS CD? VXD but not WDM? (Especially when 9x/ME driver system architecture sucks so bad)

How does the soundcard interfere with the audio stream? It can't just pass whatever it picks up right out the digital output without touching it? (well...obviously there is whole technical stuff behind how it gets passed, but you know what I mean) How does a DTS CD's bitstream differ from DTS streamed from a DVD? It isn't the same thing but just associated with a video? (MPEG)

- Chris

 

[Cliff Watson]

Chris,

DTS CD audio is compressed data imbedded in the 44.1 kHz PCM tracks of a Redbook CD. Windows WDM drivers and all AC97 compliant drivers think it is nothing but uncompressed PCM audio and will proceed to resample the bit-stream which corrupts the DTS tag bit needed by an external receiver/processor to route the bit-stream thru a decoder. The white noise you hear is what compressed data sounds like when sent direct to the DAC without being decoded into proper PCM.

You need a soundcard that can route the DTS imbedded bit-stream directly to the cards S/PDIF encoder without being changed in any way (bit-perfect) by the operating system or soundcard drivers.

DTS from a DVD is recorded at 48 kHz and has a bit set to ID the bit-stream as “non-audio” causing Windows to bypass the SRC.

 

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

FWIW - most sound cards with digital-out are capable of passing a DTS bitstream unmolested. It is just Uncle Bill deciding he knows better that is screwing things up. The linux drivers for the very same sound card will probably do exactly what you want, you just have to run linux instead of windows, which is probably not what you want.

 

[Cliff Watson]

AC97 standard = Uncle Bill