[MPlayer-users] Problem playing DTS Audio CD

[Vladimir Mosgalin]

Hi Barak Zalstein!

 On 2006.06.02 at 05:00:37 +0300, Barak Zalstein wrote next:

> >Why can't you use search?? It has been discussed many times.
> >cdda://1 -rawaudio format=0x2001
> >
> >Yes, such forcing isn't a proper way, on the other hand it works ever
> >since dts support was introduced.
> >
> >
> I used that switch with MPlayer-1.0pre7try2 and it works ok, almost - the
> sound still pauses every second. when I use "-ao alsa" or "-ao oss" the time

I don't experience this both with alsa and oss.

> between each pause is different (I am able to play and save output of dts
> wav files with dtsdec executable, but couldn't find a way for generating a
> non-downsampled usable output).

If you want to save wav file, don't use mplayer, use cdparanoia for
ripping wav files (dts-encoded) off cd.

dtsdec can decode dts stream into multiple channels, but AFAIR due to
some error doesn't produce multichannel wav files.

If you desperately want to get uncompressed music off your dts cd, you
can always do it from windows. Windows tools handle rare audio formats
like dts or dvd-a much better than linux ones. Even though all open
source windows dts decoders are libdts-based, they don't have such
trivial bugs as dtsdec binary.

> Using "-ao pcm" with mplayer creates an output file which is listenable but
> mplayer crashes with signal 11 after a while  (and I  think that the output
> is downmixed as well as I hear no sound on left speakers while
> 6_channels_id.wav test plays ok)

Yes it is downmixed to stereo. Mplayer's limitation...

> When using mplayer_20060519 and ffmpeg_20060519 with that switch, dts is not
> found in libavcodec and hwac3 is tried instead. This problem is mentioned in
> http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?t=364883
> but the suggested solution of installing libdca did not help.
> (I tried 
> libdca-0.0.2.tar.gz

Well, 0.0.2 is old, but it's the latest version of libdts/libdca
available, and it is the ONLY way of decoding dts files in linux in
software.

After installing libdts (better just install libdts and libdts-devel
packages already compiled for your distribution), just recompile
mplayer. Make sure it detects and compiles in dts support. After that,
you'll be able to playback dts files with software decoding.

-- 

Vladimir