Importing DTS 5.1 Surround Audio CD

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Importing DTS 5.1 Surround Audio CD

I recently purchased the CD Summertime by the Ray Brown Trio from Telarc Records. The CD is from 1998 and is a DTS 5.1 Surround CD and states on the CD that "A dts Digital Surround Decoder is Required". When I attempted to play in on my eMac, all I got was noise. However, when I played it using VLC, it played just fine. Playing on the CD in the car or in my Sony CD changer also produces noise. I was hoping to import the CD into iTunes and put into my iPod.

I have managed to rip the CD on a PC using dbPoweramp's CD Ripper and Tranzcode which created stereo wav files from the original DTSWAV files. From that I was able to burn the songs onto a CD and import them to iTunes on my eMac. However, I was wondering if anyone knows of a Mac-Only solution, if one exists, preferably using Free or Share-ware. It seems to me if it can play the DTS 5.1 audio CD using VLC on the eMac, I should be able to import into iTunes without going through a PC.

Thanks in Advance for any pertinent information.

eMac G4 1 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.11), 640 MB, Airport Extreme, 40 G internal, 120 G/250G firewire

Posted on Sep 12, 2009 5:40 PM

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Answer 1

Sep 12, 2009 8:37 PM in response to Jazz Man

The VLC player must understand the DTS 5.1 bitstream, and decode it.

DTS is 5.1 bitstream data on normal CDs. They're really CD-ROMs which contain compressed data, not normal 2 channel audio CDs which contain 2 channel PCM audio.

I can't really answer your question for a Mac solution.

I have many DTS CDs and import them as Apple Lossless (which reduces the data in iTunes to around 1270 kbs from 1440 kbs), then stream them via an Airport Express to my Home Theatre reciever via optical output. The Receiver (Yamaha RX-V2700) decodes the DTS 5.1 audio perfectly.

This is the only way to listen to DTS 5.1 natively. Audio on the iMac won't work, neither will the analog outputs on the Airport Express. Just noise, as it's a data stream, not normal 2 channel PCM audio.

What I would do in your situation is to play the DTS CDs on a normal DVD player with a built-in DTS decoder, set to 2 channel analog output, let the DVD player do a 5.1 to stereo downmix, then input this analog output to the Mac, and record the stereo 2 channel audio signal in realtime. Re-digitize and import this back into iTunes or whatever music programme you're using on the Mac.

Otherwise, just continue to use the PC option if you can.

Craig.

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Answer 2

Oct 2, 2009 10:28 AM in response to Craig Avan

I also import DTS-CDs in iTunes as Apple Lossless and stream the data via AE to my amp (Yamaha DSP-A2). It works perfectly with one exception: if the music on the DTS-CD hasn't any gaps between the song (e.g. a live recording of a seamless transition from one song to the next) and I stream those tracks to my amp, I get gaps between the tracks.

Does anyone have the same problem or is it just my amp? Of course I do not get any gaps if the DTS-CD is played on my DVD-player. Only streaming via AE produces gaps.

I know I could import the whole DTS-CD as one single track but this it not what I want.

Josef

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