Music Media Helper (Tools for Multichannel Audio & Music Videos)

[HomerJAU]

Need some help please: I have a bunch of DTS CDs that I want to rip and convert to flac (or is it just putting the DTS track in a flac container? not well versed in the technical details) which I have done using Foobar2000's DTS decoder, and the files are 24/48, 5.1 flac files that playback fine through VLC or Foobar but the flac files don't show up in my Plex server.

I read somewhere in this thread I think that MMH can convert the DTS track on a DTS CD to PCM which may possibly solve the issue if it converting the DTS track to PCM and not just putting the DTS track in a flac container. Couldn't find that feature/option in MMH though. Is it an older feature (the posts on this were from 2020) that are gone now or I'm not looking in the right place?

MMH doesn't work with discs. It can convert files to files etc but doesn't read discs.

There must be a setting to allow Plex to see FLAC files?

 

[himey]

MMH doesn't work with discs. It can convert files to files etc but doesn't read discs.

There must be a setting to allow Plex to see FLAC files?

Plex will see both standard FLAC files, including the ones up to eight channels and the FLAC container with dts, made from the option in Audiomuxer. No setting needed.

 

[impetigo]

MMH doesn't work with discs. It can convert files to files etc but doesn't read discs.

There must be a setting to allow Plex to see FLAC files?

Thank you, I was using EAC to rip the audio to wav (as an audio CD it is naturally 16bit/44.1khz) which ends up being stereo, but if I convert to flac (using foobar) it becomes 5.1 again. I found a post from this thread from around 2020 where you mentioned that MMH was adding a feature that could convert the DTS track (with file extension .dts or .dtswav) into PCM, thereby converting the DTS track to PCM, as I cannot think of any other reason why Plex cannot see the flac files from these DTS CD discs.

Plex (when I check on my PC using chrome brower) has no problem seeing multichannel flac, as all my surround music (both 5.1 and 7.1) show up fine, but those are derived from SACD, DVD-A and blu-ray. Only the DTS CD don't show up. I think I'll post a separate post to inquire about this issue. Also, thank you so much for your incredible work on MMH, it literally made my blu-ray to flac project possible!

 

[impetigo]

It is under remix channel layout, last option (top right). If you didn't use Audiomuxer in the original ripping process, I don't believe it will work for your usage.

Thank you!!! And to HomerJau for MMH in the first place!

edit: so I tried to use the wav files I got by ripping a DTS CD (Sting's Nothing Like The Sun) using EAC but it would not open. I had selected the "convert DTS flac to PCM flac" option first. I then downloaded Audiomuxer but don't see anyway to rip a DTS CD using it. Looks like there are options for extracting audio from a DVD-V, blu-ray or mkv/mka file but nothing for CD. Perhaps I misunderstoof what you meant by using audiomuxer in the "original ripping process"?

edit2: I ripped the 5.1 DTS CD again using Foobar2000 (and not selecting the "decode DTS" option) and got a 2 channel, 16/44.1 flac. I was able to use MMH to convert that (presumably) DTS flac file to a PCM flac file, and got a 6 (5.1) channel, 24/44.1 (not sure why it went from 16>24bit) file, and the file size was about 3x the size (50MB track went to about 150MB). Still, doesn't show up in Plex though, which is the whole reason for all my efforts...

 

[himey]

Thank you!!! And to HomerJau for MMH in the first place!

edit: so I tried to use the wav files I got by ripping a DTS CD (Sting's Nothing Like The Sun) using EAC but it would not open. I had selected the "convert DTS flac to PCM flac" option first. I then downloaded Audiomuxer but don't see anyway to rip a DTS CD using it. Looks like there are options for extracting audio from a DVD-V, blu-ray or mkv/mka file but nothing for CD. Perhaps I misunderstoof what you meant by using audiomuxer in the "original ripping process"?

Use this dts Foobar component, and output to FLAC. First Ioad the wavs you made using EAC, in Foobar. Select all the files and right click, select Convert, output to FLAC.

Forgot to mention you need to enable additional decoding under processing.

 

[mandrix]

I used to use EAC to rip DTS-CD's and render as DTS wav files...this keeps the encoding intact. But this was more pre-FLAC days. They will show as a 16 bit / 44.1 kHz file but when played back in e.g. Foobar will show that they are multichannel once decoded (using the dts component added to Foobar).
Yea, AudioMuxer will not rip CD's but is handy for other things. It will rip a mounted DVD or BD if it's not encrypted, or encryption removed. Before MMH I used it for a lot of things and both have their unique features.. Unfortunately Pl4it hasn't really updated AudioMuxer in a while. Back in the day we were using the DTS-HD MAS encoder a lot and he did automate that quite a bit, but not for the Surcode MLP encoder I was hoping for as I was authoring a lot of DVDA discs from Quad rips.

Between MMH, Foobar & AudioMuxer, that's my main group of tools, but MMH keeps gaining ground and it's going to be a true "Swiss Army Knife" of audio tools, if not already.

 

[impetigo]

Use this dts Foobar component, and output to FLAC. First Ioad the wavs you made using EAC, in Foobar. Select all the files and right click, select Convert, output to FLAC.

Forgot to mention you need to enable additional decoding under processing.

Thank you. I'd already tried that though and while it yields flacs that play perfectly well on my PC, it doesn't get detected by Plex for some reason, which is the reason for why I was trying to use MMH to convert the DTS flac to PCM flac, hoping that was the reason. Still not clear if the flac created by Foobar when you use the DTS post processing option is PCM already at that point, which would explain why I can't use that file in MMH (to convert DTS flac to PCM flac).

I used to use EAC to rip DTS-CD's and render as DTS wav files...this keeps the encoding intact. But this was more pre-FLAC days.
Yea, AudioMuxer will not rip CD's but is handy for other things. It will rip a mounted DVD or BD if it's not encrypted, or encryption removed. Before MMH I used it for a lot of things and both have their unique features.. Unfortunately Pl4it hasn't really updated AudioMuxer in a while. Back in the day we were using the DTS-HD MAS encoder a lot and he did automate that quite a bit, but not for the Surcode MLP encoder I was hoping for as I was authoring a lot of DVDA discs from Quad rips.

Between MMH, Foobar & AudioMuxer, that's my main group of tools, but MMH keeps gaining ground and it's going to be a true "Swiss Army Knife" of audio tools, if not already.

Yeah those are great apps! I have been using MakeMKV/MMH for blu-ray audio, DVDAE for DVD-A, and the blu-ray player with ISO2DSD and DSD2FLAC for my SACDs. AudioMuxer looks useful for joining wav/flac files (MMH can do this but cannot sort files by track number or move tracks around so less useful for this), and I should try it for DVD-A now that my trial period of DVDAE has expired.

 

[mandrix]

Yea DVDAE is handy for ripping DVDA. There is always the old DVDAExplorer but it's sort of clunky...but once was about all we had..
Since I usually convert everything to .iso format, it's easy to load a DVDA .iso in Foobar and rip the tracks, provided you have installed the DVDA component from SourceForge. Can do the same with SACD .iso's as well.
Heres the links for the two components:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dvdadecoder/files/https://sourceforge.net/projects/sacddecoder/

 

[marpow]

Hi Garry, been having some issues with MMH ripping Atmos, whereas before I had no issues.
I will put together a list soon.
Still using MKV for the actual rip, then using MMH for the chapter separation either into MKV files for Atmos or FLAC files for stereo and 5.1.
My end result is always good, just that the tagging process has changed, and I must be doing something wrong since about 4 updates ago.
Sorry to be vague for now but just wanted to get on the books, hope you and yours are doing well.

 

[himey]

Thank you. I'd already tried that though and while it yields flacs that play perfectly well on my PC, it doesn't get detected by Plex for some reason, which is the reason for why I was trying to use MMH to convert the DTS flac to PCM flac, hoping that was the reason. Still not clear if the flac created by Foobar when you use the DTS post processing option is PCM already at that point, which would explain why I can't use that file in MMH (to convert DTS flac to PCM flac).



Yeah those are great apps! I have been using MakeMKV/MMH for blu-ray audio, DVDAE for DVD-A, and the blu-ray player with ISO2DSD and DSD2FLAC for my SACDs. AudioMuxer looks useful for joining wav/flac files (MMH can do this but cannot sort files by track number or move tracks around so less useful for this), and I should try it for DVD-A now that my trial period of DVDAE has expired.

Are you adding them to a Music library in Plex and not a Video Library? As I mentioned before, Plex will work perfectly fine with both "types" of FLAC files, the standard ones that are multichannel, and the ones that are actually DTS and the FLAC is just the wrapper.

 

[impetigo]

Are you adding them to a Music library in Plex and not a Video Library? As I mentioned before, Plex will work perfectly fine with both "types" of FLAC files, the standard ones that are multichannel, and the ones that are actually DTS and the FLAC is just the wrapper.

Yep, added theto the music library folder in plex. Didn't know DTS in a flac container work since that was the only difference I could identify that could be the cause of it not showing up in plex.

When I tried the MMH function to convert DTS flac to PCM flac it didn't seem to work though as expected, as it remained 2 channel and was static when played. Maybe I'm confused about what the conversion (DTS flac to PCM flac) actually does?

 

[himey]

Yep, added theto the music library folder in plex. Didn't know DTS in a flac container work since that was the only difference I could identify that could be the cause of it not showing up in plex.

When I tried the MMH function to convert DTS flac to PCM flac it didn't seem to work though as expected, as it remained 2 channel and was static when played. Maybe I'm confused about what the conversion (DTS flac to PCM flac) actually does?

There is a function in Audiomuxer that produces FLACs, directly from .dts files, mostly from DVD sources. FLAC becomes just a wrapper, they are still DTS and MUST be decoded by a DTS processor. MMH takes those FLACs (wrapper) and converts them to true multichannel FLAC files. MMH has no DTS CD DISC support as Garry (Homer) mentioned before.

Your issue is with Plex. There is no reason Plex isn't adding them to a Music Library. Something simple is being overlooked. Create a new Plex Music Library with both types of FLACs as a test library. They both should show up. If it still doesn't work, PM me, and send me a couple files.

What does Media Info app show about the two types of FLAC files in question?

 

[HomerJAU]

Hi Garry, been having some issues with MMH ripping Atmos, whereas before I had no issues.
I will put together a list soon.

There was another fix in yesterdays MMH update. The issue was caused by a code change a few weeks back. I finally found why and sorted it out. Please update to latest.

 

[HomerJAU]

Your issue is with Plex.

Does Plex need tagged file?

 

[himey]

Does Plex need tagged file?

I don't think so, but I can check. I will post back. I think it just uses the filename and probably depends on the scraper settings.

 

[impetigo]

There is a function in Audiomuxer that produces FLACs, directly from .dts files, mostly from DVD sources. FLAC becomes just a wrapper, they are still DTS and MUST be decoded by a DTS processor. MMH takes those FLACs (wrapper) and converts them to true multichannel FLAC files. MMH has no DTS CD DISC support as Garry (Homer) mentioned before.

Your issue is with Plex. There is no reason Plex isn't adding them to a Music Library. Something simple is being overlooked. Create a new Plex Music Library with both types of FLACs as a test library. They both should show up. If it still doesn't work, PM me, and send me a couple files.

What does Media Info app show about the two types of FLAC files in question?

THANK YOU! You were right that the issue was with my Plex library which for some unknown reason refused to detect the DTS CD ripped/converted flac files. Once I made a new library folder and put it in there then magically it was detected! Just incredible and a reminder to me that you always have to do the basic troubleshooting before assuming the issue is something more complicated than it is. I guess I'll put all my DTS CD albums in the new folder for now although I'll see if maybe it's actually just this one album misbehaving for unknown reasons.

Edit: Omg I figured out what the reason was for that album ("...Nothing Like The Sun") not showing up in Plex. I organize all my albums in my library in separate folders with the album title as the folder name, and just discovered that it was the leading "..." in front of the title that made it not detectable by Plex. Once I deleted the three periods in front of the title, voila, it was detected when I tried scanning again. The reason it worked with the new test library folder is that I didn't name the folder "...Nothing Like The Sun." Man, what a waste of time but at least I learned something.

Does Plex need tagged file?

Nope, it defaults to the file name if there are no tags.

 

[himey]

THANK YOU! You were right that the issue was with my Plex library which for some unknown reason refused to detect the DTS CD ripped/converted flac files. Once I made a new library folder and put it in there then magically it was detected! Just incredible and a reminder to me that you always have to do the basic troubleshooting before assuming the issue is something more complicated than it is. I guess I'll put all my DTS CD albums in the new folder for now although I'll see if maybe it's actually just this one album misbehaving for unknown reasons.

Edit: Omg I figured out what the reason was for that album ("...Nothing Like The Sun") not showing up in Plex. I organize all my albums in my library in separate folders with the album title as the folder name, and just discovered that it was the leading "..." in front of the title that made it not detectable by Plex. Once I deleted the three periods in front of the title, voila, it was detected when I tried scanning again. The reason it worked with the new test library folder is that I didn't name the folder "...Nothing Like The Sun." Man, what a waste of time but at least I learned something.



Nope, it defaults to the file name if there are no tags.

Plex has an issue with MKA files where if there is a dash in any of the file names, it splits them up, and creates a separate album. Flac's don't have the issue, only mka's.

 

[impetigo]

Plex has an issue with MKA files where if there is a dash in any of the file names, it splits them up, and creates a separate album. Flac's don't have the issue, only mka's.

Haha that's nuts! Love Plex but it does have its quirks and learning curve.

 

[ted_b]

I know this was asked before but apologize, I can't find it. I use a Zidoo Z9X to play back my Atmos and movie stuff. The movie stuff is easy, cuz I fire up my pj and screen.

What are best practices when playing music-only Atmos BD rips (think Abbey Road or Air 10k hz Legend) without having to fire up a tv screen (in my case a pj and retractable screen). I tend to use the Zidoo app on my iphone. But playing a BDMV or a single MKV album file is a pain as it has no track tags, etc. I'd take the MKVs and break them into multiple MKVs (one per track) but I believe I lose gapless for that, and not sure what they look like in the app. Thx

 

[HomerJAU]

Firstly, I have no experience with Zidoo.

You could try these solutions to give you track names in Zidoo:

Using MMH’s Chapter Editor with an MKV file with chapters:

1. Edit chapter names with Song Titles (see pdf docs for various methods). Then create a CUE file. Does Zidoo read cue files?

2. Same as above but just load the MKV with edited chapter names. Does Zidoo see the chapter (song) titles? Can you navigate to each chapter?

Both the above should play gapless.

3. If above doesn’t work then use MMH’s Extract Audio from MKV or Split & Rename Concerts tools to split your MKV to individual files. Splitting won’t be gapless (I presume).

Both tools allow semi auto song title updating of files and renaming. Extract tool can convert MKV Atmos to MP4 Atmos. MP4 can be tagged with that tool and Zidoo may read those tags. Same converting to M4A, although most players do not support Atmos in M4A (Kodi does).

Try all the above and let us know how you go.

Again: Please check the docs on options to semi automate song titles because there are ways to greatly reduce data entry (online lookup or copy and paste a list of track titles from discord etc. You do not need to enter each track name manually!)