Receivers that decode 4.0 PCM/MLP recordings over HDMI

[Sal1950]

Well you could just rip the music, use one of the apps to remix to 5.1 flac and play with whatever music player you prefer. I use Foobar.

Amen,
Why continue to fart around these guys?
I just rip all to flac and then us MMH to add the missing channel-s. After that all is well anywhere.

 

[mandrix]

Yes. I don't care if it's DSP's, HDMI, Microsoft or a an AVR manufacturer throwing a wrench in the gears... In the end you have to do something that works to hear your music. If it wasn't for the people independently developing apps to play music then (music) life would be a lot harder. Our good fortune to have Garry's MMH and Pl4t's AudioMuxer when we need good music utils. Plus MMH gets continually updated!
While it would be nice to have one box to play everything, every disc and file format, that's getting harder to do these days. Plus I personally am not going to keep spending money on hardware, I mean geez I have like 3 disc players now + one boxed and another I gave to my stepson.

I still like to play discs, but I confess I'm starting to lean the other way a bit. Having the ability to stream from the pc to the Oppo is nice, especially now that I can stream .iso files.

 

[Nyad]

I had an Onkyo 609 and it was quad capable as you noted, and I also have an Oppo 103. When I changed to an Onkyo 656 that is when I lost the rear channels. The easiest thing to do is add empty channels, just the center will normally do it but Garry's Music Media Helper can take a surround quad wav/flac file and add zero-volume C and Lfe channels/remap it to 5.1 to make the files pleasing to the AVR's that don't like quad.
Also the AudioMuxer App can do this as well. If you're the tinkering type you can take any of the files from the track into Audition and set the volume as low as it will go and insert it as a C or Lfe or both in a 5.1 and that will work as well.

Why oh why didn't they encode them in DTS-MA like the Quad mix of Echoes on the Early Years Reverberation? That would have made life a lot easier.

 

[Sal1950]

Why oh why didn't they encode them in DTS-MA like the Quad mix of Echoes on the Early Years Reverberation? That would have made life a lot easier.

Cause they didn't like you.

 

[Nyad]

Cause they didn't like you.

Probably an incentive to buy a whole lot more equipment (so much for the Swiss Army Knife receiver)

 

[mandrix]

Probably an incentive to buy a whole lot more equipment (so much for the Swiss Army Knife receiver)

Funny you should say that....during the 3 year warranty of the Oinkyo 609 (Oink! Oink!...ahem! ) I sent it all the way the way from Florida to Syracuse, NY to be repaired 'cause the HDMI board failed (common on that board and on several other Oink...I mean Onkyo's. Well it went along good for a while with some minor glitches when I got word of a post on the AVS forum that Onkyo was working a deal on select models to "upgrade" to a newer model if you were having certain problems.
So I contacted Onkyo, stripped off the S/N and sent it to them along with about $200 and they sent me a bright shiny new 656 model. (For reference I paid $375 retail for the 609)
Difference? The 656 has a window so tiny I can hardly read it with my face on it, but it IS Atmos 5.2.2 capable. (I use it as Atmos 5.0.2)
The 609 I was allowed to keep. A fellow QQ'r spec'd out some better/higher temperature caps for the HDMI board for the 609 and I soldered them on. (All apologies I just don't remember his name). I used the 609 for a while at my pc sound system via HDMI to make sure I got it right, then eventually gave it to my adult Daughter.

So far the 656 has held up well. Far from top of the line fo' sho' but works.

 

[Nyad]

Funny you should say that....during the 3 year warranty of the Oinkyo 609 (Oink! Oink!...ahem! ) I sent it all the way the way from Florida to Syracuse, NY to be repaired 'cause the HDMI board failed (common on that board and on several other Oink...I mean Onkyo's. Well it went along good for a while with some minor glitches when I got word of a post on the AVS forum that Onkyo was working a deal on select models to "upgrade" to a newer model if you were having certain problems.
So I contacted Onkyo, stripped off the S/N and sent it to them along with about $200 and they sent me a bright shiny new 656 model. (For reference I paid $375 retail for the 609)
Difference? The 656 has a window so tiny I can hardly read it with my face on it, but it IS Atmos 5.2.2 capable. (I use it as Atmos 5.0.2)
The 609 I was allowed to keep. A fellow QQ'r spec'd out some better/higher temperature caps for the HDMI board for the 609 and I soldered them on. (All apologies I just don't remember his name). I used the 609 for a while at my pc sound system via HDMI to make sure I got it right, then eventually gave it to my adult Daughter.

So far the 656 has held up well. Far from top of the line fo' sho' but works.

I've still got the 609 sitting in a box in my not so dry studio, but seriously running out of room (6 turntables, 6 systems, 4 subs, yadda yadda) I've got boxes of records spilling out from the shelves too, (may have a hoarding problem).

I also had the HDMI board replaced, the main reason I upgraded was to get a foot in the Atmos door, so to speak. So I need to get a USB 2 Blu-ray player for my Macbook to rip the content, it seems, slowly dragging myself into the 21st Century

 

[Krobar]

Amen,
Why continue to fart around these guys?
I just rip all to flac and then us MMH to add the missing channel-s. After that all is well anywhere.

Expanding to 5.1 works fine unless you want to upmix in which case you get silent channels/speakers which you would not get with a proper 4.0 file and 4.0 supporting hardware.

 

[wrat]

Onkyo txnr 6050 decodes 4 channel over hdmi also the rare 3 channel and anything else I have fed it

 

[JanBakker]

Not at home right now and won't be until Saturday but I'm 99 percent sure that my Onkyo tx-nr808 plays 4 channel files just fine

 

[Nyad]

Not at home right now and won't be until Saturday but I'm 99 percent sure that my Onkyo tx-nr808 plays 4 channel files just fine

As does the TX-NR609, think Onkyo has a good number of contenders

 

[Sal1950]

Expanding to 5.1 works fine unless you want to upmix in which case you get silent channels/speakers which you would not get with a proper 4.0 file and 4.0 supporting hardware.

Most of the newer units handle 4.0 files correctly.
My older Marantz 7703 didn't like them at all and I had to use Gary's MMH.
But my new Denon X4700H handles stock quads just fine.

 

[Owen Smith]

Anyone know how the Arcam AVR31 handles 4.0 PCM over HDMI? I'm looking to change amp and move to HDMI audio. Note any of the following Arcam AVRx amps will behave the same since the decoding is identical in all of them: 5, 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 31, plus the AV 40 and 41 processors.

 

[Krobar]

Anyone know how the Arcam AVR31 handles 4.0 PCM over HDMI? I'm looking to change amp and move to HDMI audio. Note any of the following Arcam AVRx amps will behave the same since the decoding is identical in all of them: 5, 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 31

I have had an AV40 with the HDMI 2.0 card and now the HDMI 2.1 card. My findings are as follows:

HDMI 2.0:
4.0 FL+FR+SL+SR - OK
4.0 FL+FR+SBL+SBR - BAD
4 channel PCM - No Channel Markings - OK (Treats as FL+FR+SL+SR)
3.1 - OK

HDMI 2.1:
4.0 FL+FR+SL+SR - OK
4.0 FL+FR+SBL+SBR - OK (Treats as FL+FR+SL+SR)
4 channel PCM - No Channel Markings - OK (Treats as FL+FR+SL+SR)
3.1 - OK

 

[Owen Smith]

I have had an AV40 with the HDMI 2.0 card and now the HDMI 2.1 card. My findings are as follows:

Sounds like I should be OK then. The AVR31 should behave the same as your AV40 with the HDMI 2.1 card, since the only difference between the 10/11, 20/21, 30/31 and 40/41 is the HDMI 2.1. The AVR5 doesn't have an HDMI 2.1 version yet.

My speaker setup is 5.0 so SBL/SBR issues aren't that relevant to me. (Though historically I've told my amps and decoders I have a sub ie. 5.1 because otherwise they mix the .1 into left/right and the bass from my Castle Harlech floorstanders becomes overwhelming and annoys the neighbours. A level control for how much the .1 was mixed in would have helped but I've never had gear with one.)

 

[Krobar]

Sounds like I should be OK then. The AVR31 should behave the same as your AV40 with the HDMI 2.1 card, since the only difference between the 10/11, 20/21, 30/31 and 40/41 is the HDMI 2.1. The AVR5 doesn't have an HDMI 2.1 version yet.

My speaker setup is 5.0 so SBL/SBR issues aren't that relevant to me. (Though historically I've told my amps and decoders I have a sub ie. 5.1 because otherwise they mix the .1 into left/right and the bass from my Castle Harlech floorstanders becomes overwhelming and annoys the neighbours. A level control for how much the .1 was mixed in would have helped but I've never had gear with one.)

Yes, the AVR31 should behave exactly the same as my AV40 with HDMI 2.1.

The SBL/SBR support in 4.0 is important if your source is an HTPC. Ancient Microsoft spec defines FL+FR+SBL+SBR as the default 4 channel format meaning it get used a lot more than you would expect; as explained earlier channel mapping support for HTPC depends on the graphics card used too. If using a Bluray player then most support 4 channel PCM properly and FL+FR+SBL+SBR support is almost irrelevant.

The Arcams support multiple Dirac presets. If you use room correction then you could configure your 5.0 setup and then roll off the bass using Dirac for one of the Dirac presets so you avoid upsetting the neighbours but at least get some of the LFE.

 

[Owen Smith]

I hadn't realised the issue with SBL/SBR for PC playback. However I won't be using that, initially I'll be using my Oppo 95 over HDMI and in future who knows but some other disc player plus things like Apple TV.

Thanks for your fast and detailed replies Krobar.

 

[Owen Smith]

The Arcams support multiple Dirac presets. If you use room correction then you could configure your 5.0 setup and then roll off the bass using Dirac for one of the Dirac presets so you avoid upsetting the neighbours but at least get some of the LFE.

I plan to set the AVR31 up initially using just speaker distances and levels, so I can judge what the new amp sounds like compared to my existing Arcam AVR350 without confusing the issue with room correction. But I do plan to try Dirac at some stage and I did know it supports 3 presets that you can switch between or indeed assign different presets to different inputs. But I hadn't thought of using it to tackle my LFE issue, thanks.

 

[Sal1950]

Anyone know how the Arcam AVR31 handles 4.0 PCM over HDMI? I'm looking to change amp and move to HDMI audio. Note any of the following Arcam AVRx amps will behave the same since the decoding is identical in all of them: 5, 10, 11, 20, 21, 30, 31, plus the AV 40 and 41 processors.

You might consider using Gary's MMH to add silent missing channels. It eliminates any concern over improper handling of true quad sources.
Just a thought.

 

[Owen Smith]

You might consider using Gary's MMH to add silent missing channels. It eliminates any concern over improper handling of true quad sources.
Just a thought.

I'm using a blu ray player to play discs, I have no interest in ripping my media. I got half way through ripping my CDs and gave up as too much like hard work for little benefit.