Why Isn’t My Denon AVR Decoding DTS? (1 Viewer)

[housainim]

Background

I'm in the middle of upgrading my home theater setup, and am having some issues with audio decoding on my AVR.

For context, my TV, speakers, and laptop are connected to my AVR. I'm playing DTS and DTS-HD MA encoded movies on my laptop, its video is outputted to the TV, and its audio to the speakers (all via the AVR).

• Samsung 85" Q80T QLED Smart 4K TV (2020)
• Logitech Z906 5.1 Surround Sound Speaker System
• Denon AVR-X1600H 7.2ch 4K AVR - Connected to the TV via HDMI eARC.
• ThinkPad X1 Extreme Gen 2(Win 10 Pro, GTX 1650 MaxQ GPU - this is used by the HDMI port) - Connected to the AVR via HDMI.
  • I'm playing the movies on my laptop using VLC Media Player. Going to the codec information section while the movie is being played seems to reveal that the audio is recognised as DTS:
    
    
    
    
    
    
  • Windows seems to recognise that the connected AVR supports DTS-encoded audio (among others):
    
    
    

Note: I'll be using Plex Media Server and a device running a Plex Client to stream videos on my final setup (eg. Nvidia Shield TV Pro), but I've taken that out of the picture for troubleshooting purposes. The same issue mentioned below occurs when using Plex.

Issue

The AVR processes the audio using the DTS Neural:X protocol, instead of decoding it in DTS or DTS-HD MA.

Things I've Tried

1. Going through the 'Movie' sound modes using my AVR's remote control - there is no option for DTS, DTS-HD, or DTS-HD MA. There are options for Stereo, Dolby Surround, Virtual and a few others.
2. Going through the 'Pure' sound modes using my AVR's remote control - there are only two options: Auto and Direct. This is what I see when I choose Direct:

Questions

1. How can I confirm that my laptop is passing through DTS audio to the AVR via HDMI?
2. Assuming my laptop is passing through DTS audio to the AVR, why does the AVR process the audio using the DTS Neural:X protocol instead of DTS (when the source file's audio is DTS-encoded)?

 

[housainim]

Issue was due to not enabling the passthrough option in VLC.

 

[JohnRice]

So it’s fixed?

 

[John Dirk]

Issue was due to not enabling the passthrough option in VLC.

Right. Passthrough means you want to send the compressed signal to the AVR for decoding, which is usually the better choice. Prior to that, the decoding was being done by the laptop itself.

 

[housainim]

So it’s fixed?

Yes