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Atmos finally decoded in PC/Mac

Aerith Gainsborough

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Yep. They changed it back.
Who cares?

It's useless to worry about some nonsensical human law. As long as you do not pass the content that you rip on to other people:
a) no financial harm will be done to the creators (rendering the law nonsensical)
b) no one will know you did it in the first place

That being said: ripping 4K UHD discs is a hassle and eats storage space like candy. You'd actually save a lot of cash and worries by just plopping down a 160€ UHD player and feeding the signal into an AVR. One cable, a few buttons and going back to the thing that actually matters in this show: the movie.
 

somebodyelse

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I'll repeat my previous 'hire a lawyer' suggestion - I've just read some stuff on the internet.
I'm talking specifically about the UK.
Time shifting is allowed, but format shifting isn't, so far as I can tell. It briefly became legal in 2014 but the High Court overturned that change in early 2015. Current government guidance here.
Note that even when it was allowed, you weren't allowed to bypass any DRM to do it - thank you EUCD, the European equivalent of DMCA. On both sides of the atlantic DRM is allowed to stop you exercising your usual rights.
I am in the United States.
As I understand it both format shifting (if you have a legal original) and time shifting are allowed 'Fair Use' exceptions to copyright. If the media has DRM then you aren't allowed to make use of your 'Fair Use' right though...probably... unless the Library of Congress has granted an exception (may be revoked as well as granted). IIRC the DMCA had, or led to, some absurdities like bypassing DRM for fair use being allowed only if you made they bypass tool yourself, and illegal numbers.
 

threni

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I'll repeat my previous 'hire a lawyer' suggestion - I've just read some stuff on the internet.

Time shifting is allowed, but format shifting isn't, so far as I can tell. It briefly became legal in 2014 but the High Court overturned that change in early 2015. Current government guidance here.
Yes, attempting to stop time shifting would have meant going up against Sony etc and their desire to sell home video players/recorders. That wasn't going to happen. But stopping people ripping CDs to MP3s doesn't upset corporates/lobbyists.
 

ThatM1key

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Imagine paying $400 to decode a format, where a good chunk of movie studios don't even mix in that format properly. I would rather use that money towards a Denon that uses Auro3D to upmix those Dolby Atmos tracks.

I just miss the 2000s. HDMI was actually king, the jump DVD to Blu-ray was amazing, PCs can fully replace a optical player, etc. This whole market is just plain damn stupid these days. You buy a 4K TV that supports HDR but the companies are too damn stupid to support RGB. We have OLED TV's that can beat actual computer monitors but won't support RGB still. I remember when having DD TrueHD & DTS HD badge on machine meant something, nowadays I see Dolby Atmos TVs, Dolby Atmos Headphones, Dolby Atmos Soundbars (that don't have rear channels), What's next? Dolby Atmos Brain Implant.

I hate seeing those "You can't rip your own movie" posts. You can literally follow every single law that your government has but it'll still fuck you over. I'm being told that when I get old, I probably won't receive Social Security benefits. The likely hood of Social Security going bust grows bigger and bigger every single decade.
 

Avamander

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The netflix app does not offer Atmos. The best it can do is 5.1
Incorrect. You have to have the Dolby Experience app installed and a compatible output selected. You don't need to purchase anything if your receiver/TV supports it. (What you can't get is Dolby Vision, only the Movies & TV app can play it, only as HDR)
 

digital_av

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Imagine paying $400 to decode a format, where a good chunk of movie studios don't even mix in that format properly. I would rather use that money towards a Denon that uses Auro3D to upmix those Dolby Atmos tracks.

I just miss the 2000s. HDMI was actually king, the jump DVD to Blu-ray was amazing, PCs can fully replace a optical player, etc. This whole market is just plain damn stupid these days. You buy a 4K TV that supports HDR but the companies are too damn stupid to support RGB. We have OLED TV's that can beat actual computer monitors but won't support RGB still. I remember when having DD TrueHD & DTS HD badge on machine meant something, nowadays I see Dolby Atmos TVs, Dolby Atmos Headphones, Dolby Atmos Soundbars (that don't have rear channels), What's next? Dolby Atmos Brain Implant.

I hate seeing those "You can't rip your own movie" posts. You can literally follow every single law that your government has but it'll still fuck you over. I'm being told that when I get old, I probably won't receive Social Security benefits. The likely hood of Social Security going bust grows bigger and bigger every single decade.
How much should an atmos/auro/dts digital decoder(output to usb audio) with HDMI switching (8 inputs) and basic dsp functionality should cost to reach mass market appeal ?
 

prerich

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How much should an atmos/auro/dts digital decoder(output to usb audio) with HDMI switching (8 inputs) and basic dsp functionality should cost to reach mass market appeal ?
I'd pay $1500 -2000 USD for something like that to drop in my PC...however since its doing the decoding itself, I'd want the card to also supply 16 channel analog output. It's already amazing what madVr can do for the video side of PC's and we can currently bitstream atmos/dts-x from PC's to a receiver. If they develop a card that can do the audio decoding and video (cough-cough....Nvidia team up with Topping or Gustard, somebody)....that could actually make the PC a true replacement for a prepro. At one time, back in the 7.1 days...I did replace my receiver/prepro with a computer, running the Asus Xonar with the daughter card. That was a fun time...and if anything went down, I had a spare PC that I could go to in a clutch. When Atmos hit - that was the death of using your PC as the brains and it becoming a source again. I do love my PC though - and I've invested in room correction, it has MathAudio Room EQ and just recently - bought Dirac multi channel suite (should have just bought the 2 channel and upgraded later as you can output Atmos or DTS-X unless you bitstream - and room correction comes before going to the receiver ...I'd be forced to use up-mixing instead of true Atmos/DTS-X). Give me that ...I'll be a happy camper indeed...as my current PC is dead silent from my listening position (water cooled at that).
 

DVDdoug

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I have a Blu-Ray drive (and HDMI) in my laptop and the AVR takes care of the decryption & decoding just like with my regular Blu-Ray player. :p (It does require player software. I'm using PowerDVD.) I don't actually have an Atmos setup but it would work the same.
 

prerich

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I have a Blu-Ray drive (and HDMI) in my laptop and the AVR takes care of the decryption & decoding just like with my regular Blu-Ray player. :p (It does require player software. I'm using PowerDVD.) I don't actually have an Atmos setup but it would work the same.
I'm currently doing the same and I use JRiver to bitstream movies to my Marantz prepro (and I have Atmos/DTS-X as well - my PC is setup for it too). I'd just like everything ....and I mean everything except amps in the PC. I looked at the MadVR Envy Extreme that people are gushing about for video and it cost about $14k....You could build a PC with a RTX 3090 ti (I can get one for about a grand), run MadVr maxed out and crush the Envy Extreme! The big thing is this ....the Envy Extreme is a PC!!!!!!!! I think the electronics world has realized that the PC is too powerful and stands as a threat to it's high end market.
 

srrxr71

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I'm currently doing the same and I use JRiver to bitstream movies to my Marantz prepro (and I have Atmos/DTS-X as well - my PC is setup for it too). I'd just like everything ....and I mean everything except amps in the PC. I looked at the MadVR Envy Extreme that people are gushing about for video and it cost about $14k....You could build a PC with a RTX 3090 ti (I can get one for about a grand), run MadVr maxed out and crush the Envy Extreme! The big thing is this ....the Envy Extreme is a PC!!!!!!!! I think the electronics world has realized that the PC is too powerful and stands as a threat to it's high end market.
Been doing HTPC for some decades at this point. They’ve been saying that forever. The truth is very few people care to have a PC to watch movies. All the software that was considered promising is all gone. The huge hurdle is the control.

I don’t know if anything has solved that problem. I had a windows media center remote among all kinds of other systems in the past.

That’s what keeps this space bereft of proper solutions.

I keep a 3080ti PC connected to my TV. I guess I should play with MadVR again. I don’t think it was able to handle everything maxed out. I had to cut some settings back. I hope the 4090 would be able to. I keep a wireless Trackpad on the sofa for control. Also a keyboard.

The discontinued Lenovo N5902 was the handheld combo keyboard mouse I’ve ever used. It’s about as close as you can get to having a single handed device control your PC. I still have 2. I need to connect it back up.
 

Curvature

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I cannot wait for the playback to be cracked.

Not that I'll ever load up my house with enough channels.

This is a good step in normalizing (in the social sense) multichannel and leading the way to spatial audio at home.
 

tecnogadget

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Been doing HTPC for some decades at this point. They’ve been saying that forever. The truth is very few people care to have a PC to watch movies. All the software that was considered promising is all gone. The huge hurdle is the control.

I don’t know if anything has solved that problem. I had a windows media center remote among all kinds of other systems in the past.

That’s what keeps this space bereft of proper solutions.

I keep a 3080ti PC connected to my TV. I guess I should play with MadVR again. I don’t think it was able to handle everything maxed out. I had to cut some settings back. I hope the 4090 would be able to. I keep a wireless Trackpad on the sofa for control. Also a keyboard.

The discontinued Lenovo N5902 was the handheld combo keyboard mouse I’ve ever used. It’s about as close as you can get to having a single handed device control your PC. I still have 2. I need to connect it back up.
Dude, you must’ve mess up something with MadVr because im on a humble RTX 3060 and everything that “really matters” is on the high side or maxed out. And it only gets 60% to 80% of workload. I come from a GTX1070 mobile, and while it also allowed to tick all the important stuff, I had to make some small compromises and the card was 98% while running madVR.
The things that will cost you the most (performance wise) are the upscaling of chroma and resolution, everything else is a piece of cake for a midrange RTX card. With 1080p Blu Ray I can max out everything. With 4K UHD discs, I may have to play with settings and use “High quality” instead of “Very high quality” on Chroma Upscaling with NGU, in which case there is no human on earth that could discern by eye the difference, even MadShi (madVR developer) stated that once:

NGU Very High upscaling quality consumes 2.5x as much performance as NGU High upscaling quality, but with most movie frames there will be exactly zero image quality improvements. Maybe you'll find 1% improvement if you carefully search for that one rare ultra sharp video frame which has lots of thin diagonal or curved lines in it. But you really have to search for it. Trust me, I know, I've been searching a lot for movie frames to demonstrate the power of NGU with. Or talking about chroma upscaling, any difference between various NGU upscaling levels is even harder to see." You should be fine with "NGU High" for image (luma) and "NGU Medium" or even "NGU Low" for chroma.
 
D

Deleted member 50971

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So now we can skip the lousy AVP's/AVR's and do it all in the HTPC instead. I've been waiting a long time for this..:)

https://audiophilestyle.com/ca/imme...olby-truehd-atmos-on-windows-and-macos-r1092/

So what do you all think..?
My thoughts are it’s pretty cool, and also it looks like a lot of tinkering to get it right. That may be OK and second nature to ones that are computer savvy, but to someone like myself I’d rather have it done by the player and a good AVR/AVP. I did not go Atmos yet in my theater, and back when Panasonic was getting out of the plasma TV business I bought the PST 60, and around the same time I bought an AVP. Anyway I’m almost ready to go Atmos, and I think what’s pushing me over the top is all the Atmos music that’s out there.

After looking at all those different screenshots in the link you posted, looks like a lot of fuss, but I will look at it a bit more closely.

Thanks for the post I appreciate it.
 
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D

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Don’t forget good measurements are one thing with an AVR/AVP but room correction more than levels the playing field in my opinion. So they may be under-performing compared to a good two or four channel DAC, but in a home theater setting i’ve never thought to myself “wow this sounds terrible” or even “this AVP just doesn’t do two channel well”
 
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prerich

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Been doing HTPC for some decades at this point. They’ve been saying that forever. The truth is very few people care to have a PC to watch movies. All the software that was considered promising is all gone. The huge hurdle is the control.

I don’t know if anything has solved that problem. I had a windows media center remote among all kinds of other systems in the past.

That’s what keeps this space bereft of proper solutions.

I keep a 3080ti PC connected to my TV. I guess I should play with MadVR again. I don’t think it was able to handle everything maxed out. I had to cut some settings back. I hope the 4090 would be able to. I keep a wireless Trackpad on the sofa for control. Also a keyboard.

The discontinued Lenovo N5902 was the handheld combo keyboard mouse I’ve ever used. It’s about as close as you can get to having a single handed device control your PC. I still have 2. I need to connect it back up.
You'd better have stout power supply (1000 watts minimum) for the 4090
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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Don’t forget good measurements are one thing with an AVR/AVP but room correction more than levels the playing field in my opinion. So they may be under-performing compared to a good two or four channel DAC, but in a home theater setting i’ve never thought to myself “wow this sounds terrible” or even “this AVP just doesn’t do two channel well”
That's because the measurements done here and the subsequently placed performance demands are complete overkill for 99% of all practical home-listening scenarios. Especially when it comes to movies, that blast your brain with not only sound effects but also dazzling and highly distracting visual effects.

What's important is that Amir discovers unruly behavior where the signal really goes into the crapper and the exposition of non existent scaling between signal purity and purchase price.

As Amir himself already stated: an AVR cannot get the SINAD of the TOTL 2 channel DACs, because they need to implement a crapton of DSP processing that costs them SINAD headroom. So an AVR with a SINAD of around 100dB is perfectly fine for the intended use, even if it's not audibly transparent in all theoretically conceivable situations.

What annoys me infinitely more in movies is not the potential quality of the tech involved but rather the retarded mastering that makes speech so ridiculously quiet compared to the boom-boom effects. Ugh. A human screaming at the top of his lungs never sounds actually loud. ... not unless I want to go deaf at the next explosion.
 
D

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That's because the measurements done here and the subsequently placed performance demands are complete overkill for 99% of all practical home-listening scenarios. Especially when it comes to movies, that blast your brain with not only sound effects but also dazzling and highly distracting visual effects.

What's important is that Amir discovers unruly behavior where the signal really goes into the crapper and the exposition of non existent scaling between signal purity and purchase price.

As Amir himself already stated: an AVR cannot get the SINAD of the TOTL 2 channel DACs, because they need to implement a crapton of DSP processing that costs them SINAD headroom. So an AVR with a SINAD of around 100dB is perfectly fine for the intended use, even if it's not audibly transparent in all theoretically conceivable situations.

What annoys me infinitely more in movies is not the potential quality of the tech involved but rather the retarded mastering that makes speech so ridiculously quiet compared to the boom-boom effects. Ugh. A human screaming at the top of his lungs never sounds actually loud. ... not unless I want to go deaf at the next explosion.
Hi, I agree with most of this but I still want something that measures at least as good as the Denon AVR‘s, and if they can do that with inboard amplifiers, surely the other ones Marantz included can do it without them.

Give me 100-105 SINAD on a new Marantz AVP and I’m probably a buyer. Why should us separate component guys not get the same treatment that Denon customers are getting? I want all XLR, and I want an XLR input also like I have on my current Marantz AVP. I don’t mean to get off track, but I’m really hoping that some of the engineers at not only Sound United, but other manufacturer’s are also listening.

I strongly agree with your last paragraph, because many of the new shows on prime, and Netflix before I got rid of it, and TV and movies in general… need to record the dialogue louder. Admittedly I don’t hear as well as I used to, but if I turn it up and the next scene happens to be an explosion… I’m going to go deaf. Of course that’s not literally, but I don’t know what they’re doing because I’ve been unable to decipher some of the language with the volume cranked up almost completely. Please stop the whispering language that has only gotten worse in the last 5 years.
 

Aerith Gainsborough

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Give me 100-105 SINAD on a new Marantz AVP and I’m probably a buyer.

I strongly agree with your last paragraph, because many of the new shows on prime, and Netflix before I got rid of it, and TV and movies in general… need to record the dialogue louder. Admittedly I don’t hear as well as I used to, but if I turn it up and the next scene happens to be an explosion… I’m going to go deaf. Of course that’s not literally, but I don’t know what they’re doing because I’ve been unable to decipher some of the language with the volume cranked up almost completely. Please stop the whispering language that has only gotten worse in the last 5 years.
Aye to the first. 100dB SINAD should be the "gold" standard for AVRs. Denon has proven for it to be possible at no insane cost, so we should not accept less. The fact that Marantz (aren't they the "premium" models of the same company?!) can't deliver is why Armirs tests are so important.

Heh, try enjoying a movie in an apartment. That's when the dialogue loudness really gets annoying. I typically operate at the lower end of audibility and when actors whisper ... well I either ride the volume wheel or I don't stand a chance. I guess that's the same as asking people to speak up in real life..... not that I ever had to do that... *cough* So. umm .. yay, realism? :'D
 

prerich

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Aye to the first. 100dB SINAD should be the "gold" standard for AVRs. Denon has proven for it to be possible at no insane cost, so we should not accept less. The fact that Marantz (aren't they the "premium" models of the same company?!) can't deliver is why Armirs tests are so important.

Heh, try enjoying a movie in an apartment. That's when the dialogue loudness really gets annoying. I typically operate at the lower end of audibility and when actors whisper ... well I either ride the volume wheel or I don't stand a chance. I guess that's the same as asking people to speak up in real life..... not that I ever had to do that... *cough* So. umm .. yay, realism? :'

I don't want to derail the thread, however I truly believe the problem with Marantz (as I have the AV7706) is their HDAM circuit. I've owned the Denon x4400H and gave it to my son when I moved to the pure prepro. I have mixed feelings about it as there are feature that I like but I believe the fidelity is off from the Denon. This brings us back to the ability to decode Atmos from a PC. If it were a one shot, and able to output the atmos channels through a 16 channel Dac...I'd be all for it. I believe that besides fear of piracy, the other reason that the industry purposefully handicaps PC's is they can't afford to destroy their own industry. I remember a few years ago I repaired a TCL flat screen that I had in my bedroom. I didn't feel like buying a new set at the time so I said what's to lose. I opened it up and I said "This is just a computer"!!! I identified the bad board and replaced it....boom, running perfectly. I'm one of those who believes in "right to repair".
 
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retro

retro

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If it were a one shot, and able to output the atmos channels through a 16 channel Dac...I'd be all for it.
While u cant pop a disk in the bluray-drive and just play it, it really isn't that fiddly. In the article I linked in my first post, Chris from Audiophilestyle is exclusively into pure music-atmos and thus does many additional steps in order to extract the separate music-files from the discs. We don't need to do that. A simple rip with MakeMKV is enough.
 
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