DMP-A6 and 6ch HDMI out experience

You can find/search the answer in the Zidoo posts about Dolby Vision mostly, but I am sure Mark will answer this one. He is very familiar with the device and spoofing. In fact it is mostly his development effort making it work.

No a gen-2 won't make any difference here. If Eversolo is willing to add a feature here is questionable as HDMI output isn't exactly popular with Eversolo products.

 

hdmi with only 6 channel output. why oh why is it not populair?
Duh!!!
Passing this huge feature into gen 2 is an even bigger wonder.

 

Maybe you have Mark's nickname, how can I write to him about my problem?

 

See my previous answers. There it is as I copied him on it.

 

I will be purchasing the first music streamer that will stream ALL audio formats as bitstream out the HDMI without decoding.

 

It does, if you use Roon.

 

what is your response to?

 

Then what do you need it for??? Connect your source player directly on HDMI and you're done... Doing what you say you are just using the "streamer that streams ALL..." as a wire. And a quite expensive one.

 

JRiver is currently the closest, but it will not stream native DSD as GPU HDMI out still does not handle native dsd.

 

Was meddling with DTS Audio from music DVDs -- checking which ones were full bitrate (~1,5Mbps) or half bitrate (~750kbps).

Turns out you can extract a MKV from the VOBs with only the video and the DTS audio track.
I used MakeMKV for this.

VOB -> MKV

Then with another software you can split the audio only (untouched) into a .WAV container.
I used VLC convert function for this.

MKV -> WAV

Then play the DTS files on the DMP-A6 through the HDMI ouput and your A/V amp will gladly decode the DTS 5.1ch.

No video, just the sound playing.
No need to boot up the disc player and navigate menus.

 

Thanks to wav container you can tag the files also.
As far i know the dmp A6 does the decoding. Not the avr.

The a6 has only problems with dts-ex. it is a channel layout bug I guess.
Other versions of dts seem to work ok. (44.1 khz, 48khz, 96 khz)
Original .dts files also play on the A6. But then tagging issues arise.

 

I believe the DMP-A6 does not decode DTS (confirmed by EverSolo).
It's sent bitstream to the AVR.

If you manipulated/converted the files upstream, it might have been converted to 6ch PCM.

 

My avr reports 'multi in' for discrete pcm. (Upto 6 channels ).
For a bitstream-dts my avr reports dts (as with raw output from the z3000)

So I don't know how old the information is you are quoting from eversolo.
I can get only raw dsd out of the a6

 

This is a .dts file. Eversolo reports pcm

The avr

 

And here are the screens when the same file is played on the z3000


I don't see how much prove I can provide that the common knowledge about mch on A6 has become outdated!

 

I think I found the reason for my confusion: we're both right, but not with the same comparison basis.

My only DTS test files so far were DTS CDs (or DTSWAVs).
These are hitting my decoders (MSD-4 optical IN or OPPO 205 HDMI IN) as undecoded DTS 2ch 44.1kHz.
The OPPO 205 detects DTS codec and processes it.
The MSD4 turns to DTS decoding.



All good.

Only recently did I extract the DTS soundtracks from DVDs and LaserDiscs ... and these were not playing nice on the MSD4.
Couldn't figure out why.

Now I know: The DMP-A6 does indeed decode DTS on regular DTS files, not on DTSWAVs.
The OPPO 205 detects 5.1ch 48kHz LPMC (so does the DMP-A6 display).
The MSD4 only detects 2.0 and turns into Dolby Surround for decoding (the center, rears and subwoofers are missing).

If you name the file .WAV, it shows as WAV.
If you name the file .DTS, it shows as DTS.
But they play exactly the same.





Makes perfect sense.

But now I have the opposite issue... how to make the DMP-A6 *NOT* decode DTS?

 

But... what is the actual file format of the extracted audio tracks?

Not the extension, the TYPE: linear PCM .WAV?, linear PCM lossless-compressed FLAC? DSD stream .DSF/.DFF?

The DMP A6 might do DSD => PCM if the DAC itself does not notify its capabilities - in this case Direct DSD playback...

 

My dtswav files are converted to 6-ch PCM before hitting the HDMI.
consider me confused.
could it be a spdif thing?

 

Note that I did all my tests around the very beginning of 2024, many firmware upgrades came since that might have changed how things work in the background.
This might also explain a separate topic where a set of standard stereo speakers were able to play L/R from a DTS file... implying decoding but the poster never provided further details to confirm this assumption.


[DTS CD]

The DTS CDs are directly extracted to WAV format by Exact Audio Copy (EAC).
FLAC'ing was just a test to see if DTS encoding would remain untouched.

It's not a WAV -> LPCM -> multi-channel FLAC (like Foobar2000 would do) but a CLI-based WAV -> FLAC retaining the DTS encoding.
It keeps the specific encoding used to "hide" DTS in a Redbook CDDA.

The DMP-A6 then probably tries to figure out the format, fails to detect DTS and forwards it as-is, then the external DAC/decoder engages.

[DTS/AC3]

These are "raw" dumps of the audio part of a MKV.
They are saved by VLC as .WAV but I believe this is not true as Foobar2000 fails to read them as wav (wrong/damaged file format) but gladly accepts them as .DTS.
DMP-A6 will read both extensions.

Another type of files tested are 16b/44.1k audio capture from DTS LaserDiscs saved as .WAV.
DTS bitrate on LDs is somewhere around 1,235kbps, not ~1,500kbps or ~750kbps like DVDs.


You picked my curiosity and I extracted a raw DD5.1 track from a DVD for testing (King Crimson - Eyes Wide Open).
Tried to name them both .WAV and .AC3.

Only the .WAV is detected by the DMP-A6 and.... it plays decoded as 2.0 on S/PDIF and 5.1 LPCM on the HDMI!
I'm quite sure this didn't work back in 2024, did EverSolo change something at some point?

So, now, I have 2 problems: how to stop the DMP-A6 from decoding DTS and AC3.

I want to send it unprocessed over S/PDIF to my DTS/AC3 decoder, I do not want to have to power up another device (OPPO 205) and manually switch configurations to HDMI to get the 5.1 channels to play.
I just want a dumb streamer, not a decoder.

Any idea?
Should I engage with EverSolo?

 

Hmm, very good job you did.
Maybe it decodes when output is through S/PDIF "thinking" of its "limited" bandwidth?
Nevertheless it could indeed pass it over without reinterpretation, but this has to be taken over by the Eversolo devs...

You said you "name" them as .WAV or .AC3 (and clever players do not mind the extension...) but what is the actual format? The file "header" so to speak? They cannot be raw audio, as the information about the 5.1 what-is-what- must be there...