meli

I'm getting an error message when I try to combine (concatenate?) several FLAC files into one FLAC file. I'm on a Mac, using the terminal, I installed FFmpeg. Other FLAC files work fine, but this one album is giving me problems. It's the 5.1 96/24 of the Beatles "Love". Any idea what's causing this error? Or is there another forum I'd be more likely to get help? Thanks! invalid sample rate Error initializing output stream 0:0 -- Error while opening encoder for output stream #0:0 - maybe incorrect parameters such as bit_rate, rate, width or height

Thank you, that's pretty much what I'm wondering. If I play FLAC files ripped from CDs, then the player (say Audirvana) will uncompress the file and output PCM to the DAC. Correct? But I have some .mka files with Dolby Digital and some with DTS. What will an audio player like Audirvana do with those? Will it just send the unaltered signal to the DAC? Can external DACs handle those codecs? Or can Audirvana also convert DD and DTS to ordinary PCM? I also have many .dsf files. Can Audirvana convert those to PCM? Or does it just forward the bitstream and I need a DAC that can decode dsf files? Thanks. I'm sure these things are obvious to most people here. I'm planning on buying something like the ifi Micro DAC and I don't want to be unpleasantly surprised that I can't play certain files. I'd also like to have a better understanding of how everything works.

I’m not clear on a fundamental question about how external DACs work with players such as Audirvana. I have some Matroska music files with the mka extension. To play these with an external DAC does the DAC need to support mka files, or is it only necessary that the player supports that codec? What is the signal that the player outputs to the DAC? Would the answer be the same for FLAC files? How about DSD files? Thanks.

srrndhound For future generations: Thank you for all your help. I kind of hate to write this, but I don't want to leave you with incorrect information. After futzing around for a couple days, I learned that the Oppo will not correctly output Atmos from an MKV file when the HDMI Audio Output is set to "Auto". It needs to be set to "Bitstream". So all I ended up having do to was use MakeMKV and correct that setting on my Oppo player. Thanks again!

Hopefully my last question... To break it into chapters, how can I find out the timecodes for the start/stop of the songs? Or is there a way automatically to create a new track after every (for example) 2 seconds of silence?

srnndhound, thanks for all the help. I've been playing around with it more this morning and I may have discovered the problem. I'm using an Oppo 103 which may have some issues when playing back Atmos MKV files. I found this old post on the MKV board: Oppo changed the way of playing TrueHD/Atmos in the new firmware. Formerly it was possible to play an Atmos track, even when there were some small issues at the beginning of a movie. But now, the Oppo's output rather PCM than Bitstream while playing an Atmos track, so no decoding in AVR is possible. Reason is a flaw in the Matroska container, because it doesn't include the Dolby Digital Core in a TrueHD track. Solution is to mux with m2ts only (e.g. with tsMuxerGUI)... take the largest m2ts-file from a BDMV folder, choose the soundtracks and tick "m2ts-muxing"... that's it. Those files are not larger, than a comparable remuxed mkv. Oppo plays fine m2ts files either from USB or network share... Atmos is working again. This explains a problem I had last year when the Atmos test tones, an MKV file I downloaded from Dolby, also did not play correctly. So I tried muxing the R.E.M. M2TS file and it does indeed now play on my Oppo as Atmos. Yay! Now I just need to solve the problem of how to break it into chapters.... I took a look at MKVToolNix and don't understand it yet. One thing I'm unclear about is what order I should do things. Should I mux the entire file (the whole album as one track) first? And then use MKVTool to break it into chapters? Or should I break it into chapters first? Thanks again for your help.

I'm playing back the file on an OPPO 103 via USB. The whole M2TS file plays fine except for the fact that there are no chapters/tracks. It's one 40 minute (or whatever) file. I tried MKV but, according to my receiver, that exports an 8-Channel signal, not Atmos. And it is also one large file; no tracks. I just spent a few painful hours trying FFmpeg and that also exports an 8-Channel signal, stripping away the Atmos. I own another Atmos music disc, Galvany Street by Books Shade, and ripping that with DVD Audio Extractor brings in the tracks as individual files. It's so easy. This REM disc may have defeated me.

I ripped the Atmos mix of R.E.M.'s "Automatic For The People" so I could play it via USB, but the album comes in as one large M2TS file. Does anyone know an easy way to edit the M2TS files into individual songs (and preserve the Atmos)? I own the disc, so I can easily re-rip it if necessary. Thanks.

So my fundamental idea to use FLAC was flawed, but I got it working. I opened the BDMV file, then the STREAM folder, and copied the M2TS files to my USB drive. Renamed the files as the track names. And the OPPO is able to play the M2TS files as ATMOS. Thank you for the help.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried again using DVD Audio Extractor and exporting to AIFF and WAV files. Both carry all 8 channels, which is a step forward. But both are routing the 2 Atmos channels to the Surround Back speakers. Any chance you have an idea how to fix that? Thanks!

That may be. The OPPO can play FLAC files, even 5.1 FLAC files, but maybe it can't handle 8 channel FLAC files. I'll give it a shot and post back (for posterity). Thanks.

I own a couple of Atmos music discs (REM and Booka Shade) that I ripped to a USB drive using MakeMKV and DVD Audio Extractor. The FLAC files will not play on my Oppo-103, no audio at all is produced and the "timer" doesn't move, it stays at 0:00. Any ideas? The FLAC files play fine on my computer with VLC and VOX. And I've played the Atmos demo disc files via USB on my Oppo with no problems. Thanks.

I’m a video editor and frequently find Genelecs in edit rooms, although less frequently now than 20 years ago. (There’s less money in the industry these days). I’m always happy to find Genelecs at work, but I’ve always thought they’d be too revealing, analytical, and directional to use at home. At home maybe I want something a little warmer, even if it’s less accurate. But I’ve always thought about trying them at home. Active speakers are obviously the correct path to good speakers.

I'm pretty confident the answer to that is "no". But it is easy do to with a BluRay drive (like the Pioneer BDR-XD05B) and two software programs; MakeMKV and DVD Audio Extractor.

Thanks, Ted. The naming conventions are confusing; I couldn't figure it out without asking for help. But this seems to meet my needs: %TITLE% - %INDEX% - %CHAPTER% If you don't mind, I have a follow-up question about FLAC.... Is there any advantage to using a lesser FLAC compression level? For instance, do any DACs have a difficult time decoding (in real time) 6 channels of Hi-res surround-sound FLAC audio that has been compressed at the maximum level? Maybe some DACs choke, or overheat, with that amount of data? Or maybe there's some other advantage to not using the maximum compression that I'm not aware of? Obviously, I don't know much about the technical abilities of current DACs. THANKS!