Rhino Blu-Rays not indicating Atmos signal on AVR

[JediJoker]

Frogmort. Thank you for giving me the extra push needed. As before, I could not find Secondary Audio, but decided to experiment with turning on and off options. And...EUREKA!
View attachment 109501
TURNING OFF THE BD AUDIO MIX SETTING BROUGHT UP ATMOS IN THE DISPLAY! I'M DOING MY HAPPY DANCE NOW!
I'm going to notify Rhino Customer service right now! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

So glad to hear that this was the issue after all. Let this be a lesson to all: if something doesn't sound right or a disc isn't playing back in the selected audio format, before you panic, check your audio playback and output settings! Easier on some players than others, unfortunately.

 

[Frogmort]

Frogmort. Thank you for giving me the extra push needed. As before, I could not find Secondary Audio, but decided to experiment with turning on and off options. And...EUREKA!
View attachment 109501
TURNING OFF THE BD AUDIO MIX SETTING BROUGHT UP ATMOS IN THE DISPLAY! I'M DOING MY HAPPY DANCE NOW!
I'm going to notify Rhino Customer service right now! Thank you, thank you, thank you.

I'm pretty sure that's the Secondary Audio setting, it's just named Mix Setting, as it mixes the secondary interactive audio with the main audio. With it on, you are not truly bitstreaming, so you can get wacky results. You don't want to mix two different audio sources (even if there's not a secondary interactive audio source, it can still mess up bitstreaming), so with it turned off, you are truly bitstreaming the exact information from the disc directly into your receiver. Essentially putting this to 'Off' is actually turning Bitstreaming 'On' and what it actually does is tell the blu-ray player to just stay completely out of the way and send the information that's on the disc directly to the receiver without messing with it at all. They really should rename this setting to where it says 'Setting A: Bitstreaming Audio On' and 'Setting B: Mixed Secondary Audio On (Bitstreaming Disabled)' and also make the bitstreaming turned on the default setting.

When I read the problems you were having, I pretty much knew it was this, because like I said, the same exact thing happened to me years ago and turning that crap off fixed everything. So glad you got this fixed! Make sure you turn it off in your other player too!

 

[Frogmort]

I also noticed that the bottom option on this menu is 'Audio DRC' (Audio Dynamic Range Compression) and it is set to 'Auto'. I would definitely turn that to 'Off' in both of your blu-ray players. You don't need to have your blu-ray player arbitrarily deciding when to compress the dynamic range and when not to. It would probably be bypassed anyway by running bitstream, but I wouldn't want to take any chances that it might decide to compress your dynamic range down. And what the hell is this 'Auto'? Sometimes it compresses the dynamic range and sometimes it don't? Screw that!

 

[LuvMyQuad]

What are the options for the top line "Digital Audio Output" ? It's set to Auto as well. I would think that is where you choose bitsreaming.

 

[Frogmort]

What are the options for the top line "Digital Audio Output" ? It's set to Auto as well. I would think that is where you choose bitsreaming.

From his S6200 manual:

"[Digital Audio Output]

[Auto]: Normally select this. Outputs audio signals according to the status of the connected devices.

[PCM]: Outputs PCM signals from the DIGITAL OUT (COAXIAL)/HDMI OUT jack."

So according to that, there are only two options:

'Auto' For regular use. (So this is the correct setting.)

'PCM' To convert all audio to PCM.

 

[atlantasteve]

I noticed that my Rhino discs play out of one speaker when I set my Anthem AVR 60 to 4.0. The sound comes in surround when I set the speaker placement to 5.1.

 

[barfle]

It seems odd to me that some discs from a manufacturer would have different playback parameters than others from the same manufacturer. In the analog world, I understand manufacturing tolerances can sometimes build up with unpredictable effects, but there’s something weird going on when you need to change menu settings for one or two discs.

As an (over the hill) engineer, I have every confidence this is something a mix/mastering engineer set during the file preparation process, but I have no idea what it might be.

 

[ProgRules]

It seems odd to me that some discs from a manufacturer would have different playback parameters than others from the same manufacturer. In the analog world, I understand manufacturing tolerances can sometimes build up with unpredictable effects, but there’s something weird going on when you need to change menu settings for one or two discs.

As an (over the hill) engineer, I have every confidence this is something a mix/mastering engineer set during the file preparation process, but I have no idea what it might be.

I'm no engineer, but I'd guess it's something simple like some kind of flag telling the player there's a secondary audio track even though there isn't.