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Multi-channel Audio Part 2

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Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#21

Post by toast0 »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #13
recursive wrote: post #7

I'm a grumpy old man, and no one can ever make me care about any audio transport fancier than analog stereo. To my dismay, it's getting hard to find TVs that can even provide usable stereo output without some kind of extra decoder box or something. Luckily, last time I bought a TV, I was still (barely) able to find one that had a headphone jack, which I use as a stereo line out.

This might be off-topic, but I'd like to use this opportunity to complain that basically every modern home theater setup has like hundreds of milliseconds of audio latency.

I get that audio latency matters for say phone calls (and I can rant about that getting only worse over time), but does it matter for home theater as long as it's known and adjusted for? Maybe it's a bit annoying if you pause and the audio doesn't stop right away, but otherwise, give me a 2 second audio latency and I don't care as long as you've got a/v sync so the sound and the picture line up where I'm sitting.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#22

Post by jcrawfordor »

aidenn0 wrote: post #2

I gave up on getting audio passthrough to work reliably and just send PCM over HDMI. I don't think there are downsides to this, unless my computer is somehow worse at decoding DTS than my AV receiver?

Should be just fine, at the minor cost of losing some configuration via your receiver remote, as long as your PC can deliver multichannel PCM to your receiver. Until relatively recently there wasn't a common way to do this, but recent versions of HDMI can.

The main reason that passthrough is the norm is history - the connection to the receiver used to generally be S/PDIF or HDMI 1.x versions that had the same capability as S/PDIF, so you had to use Dolby or DTS to get the audio to the receiver. Otherwise you could only do two channels.

Actually a shocking number of PC motherboards and soundcards of that era have 7.1 worth of analog outputs, but I can't say anyone ever used them. I believe 7.1 analog outputs were required for Intel HD Audio compliance.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#23

Post by zamadatix »

recursive wrote: post #7

I'm a grumpy old man, and no one can ever make me care about any audio transport fancier than analog stereo. To my dismay, it's getting hard to find TVs that can even provide usable stereo output without some kind of extra decoder box or something. Luckily, last time I bought a TV, I was still (barely) able to find one that had a headphone jack, which I use as a stereo line out.

What's it matter if the DAC is inside the TV or out, beyond the one in the TV is probably a cheap piece of crap. The important thing is the TV support plain Jane 2 channel PCM for digital output. From there you can go anywhere and do anything without loss or codec compatibility nightmares.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#24

Post by _kb »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #13
recursive wrote: post #7

I'm a grumpy old man, and no one can ever make me care about any audio transport fancier than analog stereo. To my dismay, it's getting hard to find TVs that can even provide usable stereo output without some kind of extra decoder box or something. Luckily, last time I bought a TV, I was still (barely) able to find one that had a headphone jack, which I use as a stereo line out.

This might be off-topic, but I'd like to use this opportunity to complain that basically every modern home theater setup has like hundreds of milliseconds of audio latency.

In many cases, that's intentional and required.

Decoding, distributing, processing, and rendering across all the involved components can take in the order of 100's of ms. HDMI 1.3 and up has had a mechanism for equipment to communicate internal delays so audio remains time-aligned with the rendered image.

Some devices will also have manual overrides for this. If you are experiencing significant drift something is likely borked in the setup.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#25

Post by theandrewbailey »

I'm sad that PC surround sound is (mostly) either multiple analog wires to plain old speakers, or HDMI to a receiver. HDMI mostly works, but it's not ideal, since running it through the video card and drivers introduces points of failure, and needs a monitor output to piggy back off of to work. (That's fine for a TV, but PC audio and video are separate concerns.) Why can't they use USB instead? Is the market too small? Receivers have had USB ports for years, but those are for playing MP3s off a flash drive. A PC isn't a flash drive.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#26

Post by omnicognate »

Atmos has put me in an awkward position. I have a proper home cinema setup (AVR, wired separate speakers including the ones that bounce sound off the ceiling) and listening to Atmos music on it is amazing. It's every bit as revolutionary as claimed.

However, I like to own music and that is simply impossible at the moment for most Atmos recordings. I would love to build a library of such recordings, preferably in physical form, and would happily spend quite a lot of money doing so. But Apple Music is basically the only way I can listen to anything.

I can't help but suspect this is entirely deliberate, an attempt to use this innovation to hasten the passing of the concept of owning music into the past.

Sadly, I also worry the move to streaming means an awful lot of music is eventually going to be lost forever.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#27

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

hapticmonkey wrote: post #14
qozoq wrote: post #8

VLC and other PC based software has always left me with just as many problems - if not more - regarding picture quality, as well as audio. The gold standard for me - this goes for three TVs going back 12 years - has always turned out to be to use the TV's own media player app, in conjunction with a solid DNLA server. Otherwise it's gripes over finding the ideal combination of TV picture settings AND OS display settin…

I’ve tried various methods for playing media files on my TV over the years. I’ve settled on an AppleTV with the Infuse app as my gold standard. I used to use Kodi, but got tired of endless minor issues and UI skins that haven’t evolved since 2005. PCs have also been left behind when it comes to HDR, Dolby Vision, and streaming options due to DRM.

> AppleTV with the Infuse app

This. It even remembers played status across devices. No need to guess which episode to watch when on the phone in bed.

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#28

Post by atoav »

Ad the part about cables:

If you have long cable runs I'd use an optical signal or a balanced line signal (this is why professional audio gear has balanced outputs and inputs with TRS 6.3mm or XLR-3 connectors).

There are simple adapters that allow you to send 4 balanced audio signals over existing ethernet connections. With CAT6 you can easily push balanced signals over a kilometer (long beyond the 100m treshold of actual CAT6 ethernet) without any noticable degradation.

If you have unbalanced signals from weak sources (vinyl needle?) you should keep the cable runs short, but even if the driver is good it can help to add a balun (passive or active) to run the thing balanced when the cable run is longer than 10 meters or is in a harsh environment (e.g. power chords with bursty loads emitting EMF).

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#29

Post by bitslayer »

theandrewbailey wrote: post #25

I'm sad that PC surround sound is (mostly) either multiple analog wires to plain old speakers, or HDMI to a receiver. HDMI mostly works, but it's not ideal, since running it through the video card and drivers introduces points of failure, and needs a monitor output to piggy back off of to work. (That's fine for a TV, but PC audio and video are separate concerns.) Why can't they use USB instead? Is the market too smal…

_those are for playing MP3s off a flash drive._ I am reminded of the workaround people used to use for inputting streamed audio to their old car stereos through a cassette tape adapter. Could the computer emulate a flash drive somehow?

Re: Multi-channel Audio Part 2

#30

Post by ansgri »

toast0 wrote: post #21
thescriptkiddie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be off-topic, but I'd like to use this opportunity to complain that basically every modern home theater setup has like hundreds of milliseconds of audio latency.

I get that audio latency matters for say phone calls (and I can rant about that getting only worse over time), but does it matter for home theater as long as it's known and adjusted for? Maybe it's a bit annoying if you pause and the audio doesn't stop right away, but otherwise, give me a 2 second audio latency and I don't care as long as you've got a/v sync so the sound and the picture line up where I'm sitting.

It makes a fancy HT setup unusable for gaming.
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