Stream 5.1 DVD audio to AirPlay?

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Level 1

9 points

Stream 5.1 DVD audio to AirPlay?

I have a Denon AVR that supports AirPlay, as well as an ATV3 that runs to the Denon via HDMI. I recently purchased a couple DVD-A discs that sound fantastic in 5.1 surround, but the beauty of an environment with an ATV or with AirPlay is that you can store everything digitally on hard disk and "stream it when ya want it." I have been unable to find a way to do this with the DVD-A discs, and I've tried a lot, and searched a lot, and read a lot! So far - no joy!

I have mainly Windows machines here at the house, hardwired access to both the AVR and the ATV3. I used DVD Audio Extractor to convert the discs to both ALAC and FLAC formats in 24/96, but can't seem to find any way that will allow me to stream them. iTunes refuses to even import or add a link to the resulting .m4a file after doing the ALAC conversion. I know iTunes will not touch a flac file. Does anyone know any series of step with some series of software apps that will allow me to stream this wonderful six channel music to either the ATV or AirPlay?

Posted on Sep 20, 2013 11:37 AM

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Answer 1

Sep 20, 2013 3:54 PM in response to John James4

There are lots of options out there to RIP DVD's and import them to iTunes. Doing it so that you preserve the channle encoding requireds paying attention to so the settings options. Can not provide more details here on the process or Apple will delete the post.

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Answer 2

John James4 Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 21, 2013 8:25 AM in response to Brian Cook4

I'm not actually having trouble with the ripping - I have multiple alternatives there. What I'm finding thus far is that iTunes doesn't support a 5.1 file, and seem to have that confirmed. However, the information I see out there says that AirPlay will support a 5.1 stream, and if that's the case, it would seem there would be some way to send it one! If it's a question of file conversion, I'd just like to know what to convert the file to - I can find whatever I need to do that conversion, I'm sure. I'm just not sure what the file needs to look like for AirPlay to work.

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Answer 3

dsbenson

Level 1

5 points

Feb 8, 2014 4:17 PM in response to John James4

Here's what I'm finding:

Apple TV *can* play 5.1. Easily seen with movies streamed to ATV from Netflix or Apple.
Apple TV *can* stream 5.1 over AirPlay from a Mac, when using an app like Beamer-App.com's. I converted some 5.1 audio to a .MOV using Adobe Audition, and when played through Beamer, it streams great, in full 5.1.
Unfortunately, Beamer doesn't do playlists, so I can't play an entire album, only one track at a time.
However, I cannot find *any* way to to get iTunes on that same Mac to stream 5.1 over AirPlay to AppleTV. In the above example, since the files are .MOV, iTunes will import them (as movie files). However, if I stream the same .MOV over AirPlay with iTunes, the result will not play (no audio).
I haven't found *any* 5.1 audio or video format that will play from Mac to ATV and maintain 5.1, other than .MOV through Beamer. With several other formats (WAV, AIFF, MP4) I can get audio to play, but only stereo. Same behavior from iTunes, QuickTime, VLC, etc.

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Answer 4

dsbenson

Level 1

5 points

Feb 11, 2014 8:30 AM in response to dsbenson

Update: if you're just talking about a movie file, you CAN get iTunes to stream the audio in 5.1, same as with a movie downloaded through iTunes or Netflix. You need to make sure that the primary track is stereo audio, and that there's a secondary 5.1 audio track encoded as AC3 Passthru (not AAC).

Unfortunately, this doesn't help with DVD-A multichannel audio. I haven't found any way to get ALAC, FLAC, AIFF, WAV, 5.1 MP3 or any other *audio* format to stream over AirPlay from iTunes, VLC or anything else. Converting the audio to a video movie file is possible, but really painful, and since the result will be a blank video file it's not really suitable unless you want to listen to tracks one at a time (or mess with playlists).

I was hoping that since VLC can do just about anything it would stream 5.1 audio over AirPlay, but it doesn't.

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Answer 5

Mar 19, 2014 5:23 PM in response to dsbenson

How would one go about converting the audio to movie files? I've ripped a few test tracks from a DVD-A using DVD Audio Extractor, but no luck producing a viable .m4v file (via FFMpegX or Handbrake). What steps did you take to make a movie from the audio (with both stereo and AC-3 tracks)?

Thanks!

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