Hi All, I have bose 700 with sub 700 soundbar so really a 3.1 setup. A90J tvwith Bose connect to eARC HDMI. When I play TrueHD tracks on Z10 it just doesn't play them... When I play the same files on shield with Kodi 19 it plays TrueHD perfectly and downmixes as needed. I tried adjusting downmixing to 5.1, on/off sample rate control, avr compatibility mode etc. to no avail. My other audio settings are auto and spdif off. Any idea why I can't play TrueHD with Z10? 5.1 tracks play fine... Edit: I've read in another thread that zidoo can't downmix TrueHD tracks due to some licensing limitation... Does this mean that Zidoo is useless for people with soundbars? Thanks!
I think you are confusing downmixing and decoding here. Donwmixing only changes the channels, say 7.1 to 5.1. Decoding means taking that Dolby TrueHD track decoding it and sending a PCM signal instead. Downmixing does not help you at all because your Bose soundbar doesn't support TrueHD (i.e. it cant decode it). So I assume that Kodi on the Shield decodes TrueHD and sends out PCM instead. The Zidoo is not at all useless for people with a soundbar (myself using one)! Not to sound like a dick but your soundbar is stuck in the 2000s codec wise. What container are you using? iso or mkv? I assume you are using mkv: TrueHD does not have a "core" like DTS-HD has. You should still have audio on DTS-HD although your soundbar does not support it, but it supports the DTS core of it. So the solution would be to also rip the embedded Dolby Digital track of the TrueHD track as a second audio track. You should select the embedded audio track like this (please note that although this is DTS-HD MA it will look the same with Dolby TrueHD but I dont have a Dolby example right now): In case you are playing back a downloaded remux, a second Dolby Digital track will already be there so you will just have to select it.
Thank you- makes sense now! I stick with Bose because it is still the best soundbar for stereo music listening. No other soundbar (unless very recent) has beaten it in stereo signal quality. In that case can I use HD Fury Arcana to split out TrueHD into PCM and bypass that limitation?
Sorry not an expert on HDFury devices. If it can decode TrueHD to PCM then yes you are fine. Summoning @Markswift2003 as an HDFury expert
To be honest haven't really explored that option as shield can decode to good quality 3.1 and it's a far better option albeit with lower quality DV. The best solution would be to get true AVR with dedicated speakers but I live in a condo and space is at a premium.
By the way, If I back up my stuff with a folder structure in m2ts container will truehd work or I would still need to backup DD AC3 5.1 core in addition to truehd? I've been reading back and forth and seems like only mkvs have issues with uncompressed audio on zidoo and m2ts should be fine. Not sure if that's correct or not. Oppo 203, for example, does have issues with MKVs but m2ts folder backup are good to go. Again, oppo has built-in decoders...
The issue is not the file structure or the file container, the issue is that your soundbar does not recognise a TrueHD bitstream. As long as you have an audio track which your soundbar will recognise it doesn't matter what container it's in, so in the case of Dolby Soundtracks that would be an AC3 track. There isn't a "core" track associated with TrueHD in the way there is with DTS-HD, they are simply separate tracks.
Thanks Mark- understood! In that case I would've upgraded to Bose 900 - does support TrueHD, but loses DTS... Decisions, decisions)))
Bose 700 doesn't support Atmos, HD, Dts X. Bose 900 Audio formats Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital, Dolby TrueHD, Dolby Digital Plus Why don't you gou with Samsung Atmos/DTSX soundbars? You could, for same price add two satelites?
Yeah Bose dropped the ball on that one... If it woulde've supported DTS- I'd already have it. The main reason I don't go with anything else but Bose is stereo signal quality. To my knowledge no other similarly priced soundbar has the stereo signal down as good as Bose and I listen to a lot of music/music videos. That's the #1 reason. The 900 version is actually worse in stereo than 700 as per rtings.
