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Will my X-Box play - Alan Parsons "ON AIR" in DTS? (1 Viewer)

John Pine

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I have a DTS receiver but didn't know if the X-Box would play this disc properly.
 

Dave Falasco

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John, I haven't been able to get a DTS disc to play through the Xbox properly. There was a thread about this a few months ago, and I think someone posted the reason it doesn't work, but I don't remember what it was. Sorry... :frowning:
 

John Pine

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Dave: Thanks for the quick reply! I think I found the post you are talking about. Man that SUX! Do you know if I can put this disc in my old Sony(RCA outputs)5 disc-changer and play it in standard 2 channel format? I would like to know before I order it.
 

James St

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John, in order to play DTS discs you need a player with a digital output. With the standard analog outs you will get nothing but static noise.
 

James St

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John, you can play them on your cd changer only if it comes with a digital audio output. Most come with an optical or coaxial or both.

I just put in a DTS CD in my Xbox and PS2. The Xbox passed the stream but was not decoded by my reciever. All I got was static. When I played the same disc on the PS2 it played fine. Perhaps it has something to do with the PCM bitstream that is being sent. I checked all my settings on the Xbox but it wouldn't play.
 

John Pine

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James: Unfortunately, my Sony CD-changer is too old to have digital outputs. Since November of last year I have been using my X-Box as my CD player/changer/DVD/gaming console. I'm glad I checked with you guys before I ordered it. I assumed that since my X-Box will play DTS DVD's, why wouldn't it play these. But, you know what happens when you "ass-u-me". I doubt I'll be buying a new CD player any time soon. But, from what your saying James if I had one of the new CD players with digital outs, I could play this disc in the DTS format?
 

James St

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Yeah that's too bad. I bought the first Sony dvd changer back in early 1999. It doesn't pass a DTS signal for dvd but it will play DTS encoded cd's because the bitstream is passed differently. Since most people are buying dvd changers nowadays you should be able to get a cd changer pretty cheap.
 

John Pine

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James: Thanks for the input, you saved me from buying an expensive coaster!

p.s.

I think I'll order the Freudiana CD instead.
 

Michael St. Clair

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The XBox resamples the audio. This destroys DTS. Only way I could think of making it work would be to rip the DTS track from the CD and burn it on a DVD-R.
 

Jeff Kleist

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Basically the X-Box's software was not programmed to know about DTS CDs. Maybe an update will fix this, but I doubt it's high on their priority list
 

Michael St. Clair

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Basically the X-Box's software was not programmed to know about DTS CDs. Maybe an update will fix this, but I doubt it's high on their priority list
A CD player doesn't need to know about DTS CDs in order to play them. All it needs to do is pass the PCM bitstream through unaltered; a 10-year old CD player (before DTS CDs even existed) will play DTS CDs just fine as long as it has a digital output.
The problem with the XBox is it resamples ALL CD audio on the fly, in realtime. Possibly it does whatever resampling they may do when ripping to WMA all the time, even on simple CD playback. Or maybe it does something else. Regardless, CD audio from the digital out on the XBox is not the normal PCM bitstream a normal CD player passes.
 

John Pine

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Micheal: Thanks for answering my previous question! I don't think it's worth spending $99-150 bucks for a new CD player just to play DTS audio CD's. Especially since my old Sony carousal is still going strong. From what I've read this audio format is fading away. This is the only case so far that the X-Box has not done what I expected. Overall, I'm still happy with it!
 

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