Trending Lyricist II

The definitive DTS-HD sound work-around for the Sonos Arc

24 replies
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Hello all, I thought I would share my work-around for this much derided problem: lack of support for DTS sound on Sonos’ so-called home cinema set-up. So called, because, it does not support the sound encoding used on *most* Blu-ray Discs. I say most with good reason, out of the 100 discs I have of the most popular and mainstream films, 80% are DTS-HD.

For the Play Bar I had a decent work around which produced DD5.1 or DD Stereo (see here: https://en.community.sonos.com/home-theater-228993/dts-dolby-5-1-on-playbar-2015-edition-6731191).

For the Arc it was really annoying to have to even look for a work around, however, I think I have a solid one. Bit it does require you to be much more technical and basically, be capable of ‘ripping’ or copying your Blu-ray Discs. Before I went this route, I looked for every transcoder, box, set-up going but there is nothing. I even though about returning the Arc or buying a second one to use for DTS alone, which was a bit mad.

As it happened I just bought the Zappiti 4k system (which is amazing!!) and was in the process of transferring my BDs to it when the Arc arrived and presented this problem. This is what I did.

Set up

I made 1:1 copies of the disc using AnyDisc and MakeMKV. If you don’t want 1:1 copies for your media system/set up, you can skip this. You will need a vast amount of space...

I was able to play all Dolby encoded discs from the Hard Disk and experience TrueHD, Atmos etc. The Arc is absolutely magnificent, with a Sub and two rear Play 1s. However, even by itself, it is very impressive. Really towers above the PlayBar; kudos to Sonos. Highly recommended Atmos film: First Man--skip to the take off scene. Will blow you away!!

Transcoding to Dolby Digital Plus

To play DTS-HD, DTS5.1 or DTS I used Handbrake to create MKVs of the main movie (ie the single title on the disk--Handbrake will usually find it for you). Why Handbrake? It was the only software which definitely converted DTS-HD to Dolby Digital Plus. All other open source applications did not; only to DD5.1 using AC3, with a bitrate limit of 640kbps.

Re-coding to DD+ uses the E-AC3 codec and it works on the Arc with a bitrate of up to 960kbps. I don’t know why 960kbps as DD+ (which the Arc supports) is up to 1.5mbps but I only got silence once I exceeded 960kbps. I tested this many times with many discs.

E-AC3/DD++ is better than AC3/AAC and DD5.1 as these are limited to a bitrate of 640kbps. 960kbps isn't great when we are downmixing from HD sound, but better than 640kbps. Using Handbrake with the mixdown set to 5.1 channels (using E-AC3), the mkv produced was recognised by the Arc to be 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Plus.

As a result, I could experience much better sound than PCM/stereo.

Please note that I had set my Zappiti (ie media player) to pass through bitstream so the sound send to the Arc via my TV was the sound played by the MKV file.

Dolby Digital Plus is quite a rare find on disc, however, it is really good, rich sound. I don't think you can easily tell that its more comparable with “standard” 5.1 sound compared to HD sound.

Ripping/making MKVs

Making MKVs from Blu-ray Discs are really straight-forward but is no substitute for an “on the fly” solution or Sonos support by way of a firmware update. However, for those who want to move away from physical discs this works very well.

Regards!

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Show previous replies

EvanderAuthor

Trending Lyricist II

Thanks for posting this Evander, I’m in a similar position with:

A stack of blu rays I’d like to backup onto digital
A Plex server
A new Arc with sub.

From your post, I should select E-AC3 at 960 with a mixdown of “5.1 channels”, and you said:

the mkv produced was recognised by the Arc to be 5.1 channel Dolby Digital Plus.

How do you work that bit out? I assume it doesn’t generate an ‘ATMOS’ sign in the app?

Also, do you think that is better than doing an auto-passthrough on the TrueHD master?

Just wanting to pick the best option before hitting ‘go’ on the handbrake queue!

Hi sorry for my late reply, I did not see this.

Using my method, you get DTS-HD to DD+ 960kbps 5.1 48kHz, max. It does not give you Atmos, because it does not recode the objects into DD+; its just DD+ not Atmos. So, its the best you can do, not anywhere near the same as DTS-HD let alone DTS-X.

Your question; I worked this out because if you go to system information when playing it will say Dolby Digital Plus. It does not give you the bitrate but it is 960kbps as that’s what it was encoded in; I tried going higher and lower etc, and this was the max bitrate it would play; you can encode DD+ into a much higher bitrate but the Arc would not play past 960kbps, it would just be silence.

PS I used handbrake but I would ditch that if I were you. Here’s why: it transcodes the video which is a waste of time and effort unless you want to save space. If you want a carbon copy of the video do this:

Make an MKV using MakeMKV and then convert the audio into DD+ 960kbps using XMediaRecode (ensure that video, subs etc, are all copy); this is the fastest way to get 100% of the video quality into an MKV with a DD+ audio track. Also, used less space than a HQ rip using handbrake.

Recently, I have started to keep the DTS-HD track as track 2 and transcode it to DD+ as track 1; so if (one can only hope) there is a change and I can play DTS-HD I have that in the MKV and haven't lost it.

# Sonos should support DTS-HD, come on man #

sturmen

Lyricist I

Hi Sturman I’ve tried this too, using a great program called XMediaRecode; but this doesn't work. My educated guess on this is as follows.

Firstly there is no free way to convert DTS-HD to Dolby TrueHD; this simply does not exist. I think professional software does, which I have seen about, but that’s serious stuff for serious sound people like broadcasters etc.

Secondly, I think ffmpeg and XMediaRecode do not actually recode the audio to TrueHD, they just change the label or container in the MKV. So your computer will still play the underlying DTS-HD even though its labelled TrueHD because it can actually decode the underlying data. However, it is not in fact TrueHD. Which is why with Sonos, which cannot actually play DTS, it will not play.

I had the same experience using XMediaRecode--worked on my Mac and computers but not Sonos.

That’s what I think. It makes no sense that free applications could actually convert DTS-HD to TrueHD when even paid consumer applications can’t do this. Also, nowhere has anyone claimed to have done this and it worked. When I researched this, this was an issue people could only work around and not directly convert from one to the other.

Best you can do--as my experience in the original post says, is convert rich lossless 1,500kbps+ DTS-HD to 960kbps DD+ using (eg) XMedia Recode which is really fast and works perfect.

Regards

I think ffmpeg does encode TrueHD, and I would expect such an open source program like ffmpeg to have no reason to try and pretend it does something it actually doesn't. I just think that since it’s a reverse-engineered encoder the output isn’t always compliant with the spec.

EvanderAuthor

Trending Lyricist II

Hi Sturman I’ve tried this too, using a great program called XMediaRecode; but this doesn't work. My educated guess on this is as follows.

Firstly there is no free way to convert DTS-HD to Dolby TrueHD; this simply does not exist. I think professional software does, which I have seen about, but that’s serious stuff for serious sound people like broadcasters etc.

Secondly, I think ffmpeg and XMediaRecode do not actually recode the audio to TrueHD, they just change the label or container in the MKV. So your computer will still play the underlying DTS-HD even though its labelled TrueHD because it can actually decode the underlying data. However, it is not in fact TrueHD. Which is why with Sonos, which cannot actually play DTS, it will not play.

I had the same experience using XMediaRecode--worked on my Mac and computers but not Sonos.

That’s what I think. It makes no sense that free applications could actually convert DTS-HD to TrueHD when even paid consumer applications can’t do this. Also, nowhere has anyone claimed to have done this and it worked. When I researched this, this was an issue people could only work around and not directly convert from one to the other.

Best you can do--as my experience in the original post says, is convert rich lossless 1,500kbps+ DTS-HD to 960kbps DD+ using (eg) XMedia Recode which is really fast and works perfect.

Regards

I think ffmpeg does encode TrueHD, and I would expect such an open source program like ffmpeg to have no reason to try and pretend it does something it actually doesn't. I just think that since it’s a reverse-engineered encoder the output isn’t always compliant with the spec.

I don't think its a case of pretending, or may be it is, XMediaRecode does the same; I’m not technical enough to know what it does but it sure as hell isn't encoding to TrueHD which is a proprietary Dolby technology; Dolby won't just licence that away to freeware. By all means have a look around, you will see no one is claiming to have converted DTS-hD to TrueHD; if you find otherwise, please let me know!!

# Sonos should support DTS-HD, come on man #

L

LarrikinAUS

Lyricist II

Why not convert to TrueHD 5.1? Much better than E-AC3. Also, handbrake will process your video. you could use ffmpeg to get the audio out in TrueHD 5.1, and then use MKVToolNix to mux it back in.

Just a thought...

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