Music Server Newbie Experiences and Questions

[ssully]

Are there any possible benefits to let the avr do the decoding?

Are there any benefits to *not* letting the AVR do it?

I like to do all decoding within my AVR because then it's totally integrated with the AVR's room correction DSP and any other settings.

 

[ssully]

View attachment 25645

as far as i can see in foobar tagging of DTS is available. albeit i never used this,
it seems like it is possible to tag DTS as is, thus that's not main issue.
perhaps, as ssully says, you may try to use wave wrapper, tag the dts.wav file with foobar and try out.

I first put it in a .wav wrapper, then 'compress' with FLAC (which doesn't really change the size) and then tag, because flac file tagging seems to be supported well.

 

[ssully]

I just noticed that the files are also smaller in size than the wav and the flacs ripped with Foobar (wav 520mb, flac Foobar 730mb and flac eac 450mb)

Same FLAC compression setting in both? The setting ranges from 0 to 8 (8 gives the smallest file size).

Same version of FLAC in both? Later versions do a slightly better job of compressing.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Are there any benefits to *not* letting the AVR do it?

I like to do all decoding within my AVR because then it's totally integrated with the AVR's room correction DSP and any other settings.

I have been wondering about all this myself. I suppose it is possible that the AVR might have a better decoding engine than the software, or vice-versa, but I highly doubt we'd be able to tell the difference.
Ssully: couldant you do the same room correction DSP and anything else regardless if you sent flac or DTS to your AVR?

The only concrete advantage I can think of in favor of not doing the decoding in the AVR would be if you were going to use the files stored on a central NAS to stream to some device other than the AVR. Assuming this other device cannot decode DTS. A phone maybe, a Bluetooth device, as long as it supports a mixdown to stereo. Everything seems able to play flac.

 

[HomerJAU]

By the way, if any of you gentlemen have a workable solution for how to make a usable conversion of the 10 or so DTS entertainment disks I have, please chime in. To be clear, these are not the same thing as the DTS streams found on DVDV's. The best I can tell is the data is a DTS stream wrapped in a CD like wav container. I haven't tried them using AudioMuxer for this purpose yet.

I answered this a few days ago. I use Foobar with its DTS decoder plugin. Then use open or rip CD option. Ensure the 'Processing' option I screen captured earlier is checked.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I answered this a few days ago. I use Foobar with its DTS decoder plugin. Then use open or rip CD option. Ensure the 'Processing' option I screen captured earlier is checked.

I know Homer, I just haven't tried it yet. I was just looking to see if there were other options. Ill try it out and post some results.

 

[JanBakker]

Same FLAC compression setting in both? The setting ranges from 0 to 8 (8 gives the smallest file size).

Same version of FLAC in both? Later versions do a slightly better job of compressing.

Yes, level 5.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

I missed the detail of your DTS Entertainment discs (DTS CDs right?). Foobar will play and convert them to 5.1 FLACS if you install the DTS decoder from the Foobar website, if you enable an option in the conversion dialog.

Homer... U Da Man :bounce17

This worked perfectly across 3 conversions now. Foobar would not play the tracks directly, at least not any of the ways I tried. Only static. But I used the rip CD option with conversion to Flac, and there they were... a glorious set of 24/44.1 5.1 flac files.

Wonderful.

I also had success with the >4GB issue. Using DVDAExtractor in demux mode produced 24/96 DTS files which I then converted to 24/96 Flac using Foobar. It was definitely faster than audiomuxer, and apparently no 4GB errors. The only titles I had this problem with were Tull TAAB and "Suppers Ready" from Genesis Foxtrot. I know several of you suggested this route and I want to thank you as well. I also kept the DTS files. They will play using Kodi with no issue. When I get my Pre/Pro back I will do a full comparison of the sonics.

This forum is awesome. :banana::banana::banana::banana::banana::banana:

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Last night I successfully converted all of my 5.1 DTS music disks. I had only one issue with Don Henley's The End of the Innocence. I got all of the tracks except the title track, which converted to flac 2.0 and plays back only noise. A bit of research shows this track is encoded in DTS 6.1 on the disk. Go figure. I assume it was beyond the decoders capabilities. Unless someone has a better idea, I'm just going to omit the track and add a stereo or Specweb version of it later. I cant see going through a lot of trouble to get this one track.

 

[magicmarkie]

Hi everyone,
I appreciate this is not strictly quad and rather off the wall but I need help. I live in South London in the UK and want to stream/upload to my phone using Foobar. I have downloaded various components but i am a compete novice re anything complicated to do with PC's. I would really like someone to visit and give me a tutorial so I can sync to my player and show me how I can stream on my Oppo without the songs showing up in alphabetical order!
Does anyone in the UK know of someone who can help? I've looked at videos on you tube to no avail, asked local computer services/engineers and it seems they do not know users into computer audio.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

Another update…:zzzzz

The conversion process continues. All multichannel material has been converted. I’m into the R’s on Redbook CD rips. I’ve only dabbled with video transfers so far. Thanks to all on the board here that have helped me out along the way. I couldant have done it without you.

On the equipment end, I had previously purchased an Emotiva UMC-200 to replace my B&K reference 30 pre/pro. This unit was purchased (on the used market) specifically to be able to have an HDMI input for the NAS. Why the Emotiva? B&K is no longer the company it once was, so a new B&K wasn’t an option. The Emotiva had good reviews, it didn’t cost a fortune, and I had heard a lot of good things about the company. I also like the wide range of their product offerings. I would have loved to get an XMC-1, but the $2500 cost was more than I was willing to spend at this point in time. At $500 a used UMC-200 fit the bill, especially since I was able to have the remainder of the 5 year warranty transferred.

Unfortunately, when I received the UMC-200 the remote trigger ports were not functional and it had to be sent back to the factory for service. I had played with it only briefly while waiting for the Emotiva service people to determine it had to be returned for service. In fact it had to be returned twice. It came back the first time with the triggers still inoperable. I let them know I was unhappy. They apologized over and over and promised to get it all working properly, which they did.

Like I said, prior to purchasing the Emotiva, I had no HDMI input to the system. All digital based playback was accomplished using the analog outputs from my Oppo player (BDP-83SE) going to the B&K pre/pro using its “analog direct” mode. Decoding duties for the B&K were limited to processing Dolby digital sound from DirecTV broadcasts. Another component I had in the chain was an Outlaw ICBM (Integrated Controllable Bass Manager), connected between the B&K and the power amp. The ICBM is basically a 7.1 adjustable crossover. I needed this because the B&K had no analog bass management, and while I could accomplish bass management through the Oppo itself for digital sources, there was no way to manage bass from my turntable without first digitizing the signal, which I was not willing to do. By bass management I am speaking specifically of routing low bass from all the system loudspeakers to the subwoofer (all speakers get set to “small” in my system) along with whatever might be present on the LFE channel. I assume this is a feature of nearly all multichannel pre/pros, but also, nearly all do it only in the digital domain, including the B&K and the Emotiva. So, I knew I would have the same issue with the Emotiva, but decided to first install everything without the ICBM in the system to see if I could live with the digitization of my LP’s, which seem to be getting less and less play over the years.

To my surprise, it seems I need the ICBM in the system for more than just LP playback. Basically all of my music collection has been (or will be) converted to flac files. Many are 4.0 transfers from old school Quad recordings. Others are DTS 5.1 based, DVDA based, you know the drill. The Emotiva offers a playback mode to perform bass management and other DSP functions for pretty much everything except multichannel PCM. It offers a mode for stereo PCM (stereo mode), but multichannel PCM is limited to playback as either “direct” (no DSP of any kind, no bass management) or Dolby PLII.

So, the ICBM needs to go back into the system. It’s going to be a requirement for playback of any multichannel PCM source on the NAS. It’s not a real big deal as I expected to have to use the ICBM anyway for LP playback. But the lack of any DSP option for multichannel PCM did surprise me.

I am assuming at this point that having DSP modes for multichannel PCM is feature specific based on the pre/pro in question and that this Emotiva pre/pro is just simply an entry level product (though, I must say, it does have excellent sonics for an inexpensive unit) that only includes a basic feature set. Is this correct? Do most pre/pros allow DSP and bass management for multichannel PCM? Also what do you guys with turntables do for bass management using a system like this. I traded in my full range stereo FR and FL towers many years ago in favor of five identical smallish monitors and a subwoofer. I have no plans to go back. I like the sound of this system too much for that.

So the moral of the story is, if you are contemplating a move to a NAS be sure you understand the capabilities of your pre/pro to provide proper bass management. Apparently not all do. Also, you may be able to get around this problem (except for pure analog LP play) by using a Media Player capable of DSP processing, at least with the capability to provide a 6 channel crossover for sub and speakers. I think JRiver MC can do this, but I'm not sure. Please, any JRMC users please chime in. For my case, the need would be to be able to do that for 2.0, 4.0, 4.1 and 5.1 format configurations.

 

[LuvMyQuad]

So I finally got my bass management situation straightened out all is good in that department with the reinstatement of the ICBM. The system fidelity is as good as its ever been.

I've been playing with Kodi. I noticed I could fix the audio setting to always output a specific number of channels and a specific sampling rate. Using a fixed setting of 5.1 channels and 192 kHz posed no problem for either the QNAP server nor the Emotiva pre pro. The benefit is the pre pro never misses a mode switch from 2.0 and 5.1, which it would do regularly in the past. This would require me to restart playback and sometimes even reset the mode on the pre pro.

So my question is, when streaming a 44.1 kHz stereo source with Kodi set to output 5.1/192 kHz (and according to the pre pro, that is what it is receiving from the QNAP server), what happens during the up-sample process? Does it pad the unused resolution and extra channels with zeros? Is there any downside to doing this? I haven't tried to listen critically to the same source at various settings, but I'm not expecting to hear any difference. On casual listening I could not detect a difference between 192 and 96 kHz.

The one downside I have found is that since the input to the pre pro is always 5.1, I can no longer run the PLII mode for simulated surround from 2 channel sources. Not that I used it a lot, but it did do a nice job on a few selections I tried it with. Hendrix albums come to mind.