223 replies to this topic

[MACCA350]

Came across this on AVS and thought I'd post it here as a heads up

link

Shamus said:

I've run across several posts now saying they have had issues with dts masters when bitstreamed to their receivers. Apparently it causes an extremely loud popping sound that can damage your speakers. (reminds me of when you would send bitstream dts to an incompatible receiver)

-The Fly
-Fantastic Four
-The Golden Compass
-Chronos

It is unknown if this is a disc, player or receiver problem but it only happens when Masters is bitstreamed to your receiver.

Please test at your own risk!!!
Even low volumes can damage your system!!!

If you have watched any of these movies AND are bitstreaming DTS masters to a 1.3 receiver please post your results and what player and receiver you are using.
Also, if you run across any other titles please post.


The Fly (At the beginning of the movie when Jeff Goldblum goes to the magazines office, the main editor greets him and then walks out of his office door leaving Jeff Goldblum and Gina Davis in the office. Right when the door closes the audio goes ballastic.)-jsmiddleton4

Fantastic Four (Its the first scene where Reed and Victor are negotiating in his office. Right around the time they shake hands on the 75/25 deal.)-strange_brew

Chronos (near the end of the movie arouind 38:50 to 38:55 (38:52 exactly I think) where the camera is looking up at the cathedral ceiling with the lights shining thru)-kinglerxt


Involved Equipment:
Player-receiver
Panasonic BD30-Onkyo 705
Panasonic BD30-Yamaha 1800
Panasonic BD30-Onkyo 805
Panasonic BD30-Onkyo 605
Panasonic BD30-Onkyo Pro PR885

First reported links:
Link
Link
Link

Edited by MACCA350, 21 March 2008 - 03:31 PM.

[...]

I notice one common feature here....... Pana BD30!

I wonder if these problems are pre or post the most recent firmware or independent of it?

Given I was looking a pairing this player with my Onkyo 705 I would be interested in finding out........

[Basil]

Hi
  I just re-read your Post and noticed it mentioned in the opening paragraph,when they first put DTS on CD's similar stories of blown Amps and speakers emerged ,the problem is trying to separate the facts from fiction and urban-myths.

[:)]

interesting,

though never had a prob bitsreaming from either the tosh xe1 or pio lx70a to denon 4308

[MACCA350]

When I first saw the title at AVS I thought it was going to be similar to Telarc's 1812 Overture warning

Edited by MACCA350, 21 March 2008 - 02:06 PM.

[Chesty]

I know speaker popping has always been an issue with Onkyos / Integras. Mine have been known to "pop" from time to time but not from DTS HD MA bitstreaming.

[50MXE20]

Is anyone else having trouble with those links?

[monkeychow]

Interesting and Scary

I'm bitstreaming from a Samsung 1400 to a Yammie 3800 without issue so far.

edit: Although I havn't watched those movies. scared now...dts-MA is my preferred format as a rule

Edited by monkeychow, 22 March 2008 - 01:54 AM.

[MACCA350]

Lyle, on Mar 21 2008, 04:28 PM, said:

Is anyone else having trouble with those links?

Fixed

cheers

[laurie]

So amps do not have speaker protection circuits in them for this very same reason!

cheers laurie

[MACCA350]

peter_vfr, on Mar 21 2008, 01:40 PM, said:

I notice one common feature here....... Pana BD30!

How many BD players are there on the market now that are able to bitstream?

cheers

[50MXE20]

MACCA350, on Mar 21 2008, 02:32 PM, said:

Fixed

cheers

Yep.

Ta.

[MACCA350]

laurie, on Mar 21 2008, 04:34 PM, said:

So amps do not have speaker protection circuits in them for this very same reason!

cheers laurie

IIRC they normally only protect the amp against overdriving and overheating, so depending on what this 'pop' signal is it probably will get past the protection circuitry.

cheers

[Padre]

If these are the masters, then more than likely the encode itself has not been calibrated to 0db for each particular encode.
Many post production houses (ours included) master soundtracks to exceed 0db (within the master, not the final).
In digital terms this clips the sound during mastering causing popping/noise (for one example).. others cause excessive boosting of the LFE, as in the signal exceeds or fluctuates through the standard 120hz (Dolby) and 112 (DTS) filters.

But the saving grace here is the fact the the final encode is actually dropping the global gain and using DR settings to bring this mix into tightly packed compressed streams.
We KNOW thevolume and freq levels will drop once we encode, so we compensate.

As these particular encoded freq's are not compressed "per se" then these mastering anomolies are also included in the final lossless encode as DR compression is usually not used with these codecs.  

If it IS used (as in DDplus and DD5.1, or EX,) then we compensate that drop in gain by boosting the gain within of the master.
If we know its going to drop by -6bd after its encoded, then we ADD +6db before its encoded
Once its encoded, its then a clean flat 0db
One offsets the other see

It seems to me that theyre encoding lossless straight from a master without checking their mastered levels for each codec.
More than likely the masters are calibrated for DR Compressed formats (DTS or DD5.1)

Some amps wont allow thresholds above 0db simply because they run their own filters, but those amps that dont have these filters, will more than likely experience this glitch/anomoly/spike in freq or gain.

I could be wrong, but from the sound of the problem and from what we've been told about it in regard to how to manage the encoded format, it seems to be the case.

Edited by Padre, 21 March 2008 - 08:25 PM.

[cwt]

What Padre says is quite plausible imo . Onkyo in particular have a history of white noise problems with dts lossy until they installed a mute circuit to give the avr a chance to lock on to the bitstream. Ive no doubt the mastering of some discs from particular studios [anecdotally] is not done with the care of others .  

[kamma]

i got a bd30 and a yammy 1800 and have not had any problems yet but i haven't seen those 4 movies either

[Padre]

cwt, on Mar 21 2008, 06:34 PM, said:

Ive no doubt the mastering of some discs from particular studios [anecdotally] is not done with the care of others .  

That my friend, is what is called the human element

Edited by Padre, 21 March 2008 - 08:26 PM.

[SimonNo10]

I posted about this issue when I purchased the XE-1 and bought Rambo-First blood on HD-DVD. My first DTS-HD MA disc and I had this problem (just after the guy asked for the bazooca to take out Rambo in the cave) and yes it scared the crap out of me. I thought my Krell amp had blown an amp or something. It's extremely load especially if your watching a movie at your normal lisytening level. Sounds like a fire cracker or a voltage spike going through every speaker. I took the movie back to JB got a replacement and it was still there so got a refund. Running an Oynko SR-805 as pre-pro via HDMI.

[Ted]

MACCA350, on Mar 21 2008, 04:37 PM, said:

How many BD players are there on the market now that are able to bitstream?

cheers

Chronos SE 13188kbps DTS 1536 kbps  1920x1072 1080p  streamed on the PopcornHour but not to the speakers :-)

[...]

MACCA350, on Mar 21 2008, 04:37 PM, said:

How many BD players are there on the market now that are able to bitstream?

cheers

Pana BD30
Samsung 1400
Pio lx70 (?)

[MACCA350]

Found a report of someone having dropouts with TrueHD while bitstreaming. Sounds like a similar problem as the DTS-HDMA except that when there is a break in the TrueHD signal there seems to be a dropout and not a spike.

Link

Quote

Hey I had a few auido drop outs on the True HD Track. I have a Yamaha RX-V3800 and the Panasonic BD-30. Anyone else having issues or is it my disc?? I tried rewinding the parts that droped out and it played fine. I have the 1.6 firmware for the BD-30 installed.

Within the thread there are numerous reports of the same issue with these combinations:

Player--------------------->Receiver

BD-30 --------------------> Yamaha RX-V3800
Samsung BDP1400 -----> Onkyo 875
BD-30--------------------> Onkyo PR885
BD-30--------------------> Onkyo 605
BD-30--------------------> Onkyo 805
BD-30--------------------> Denon 3808


Those without problems:

BD-30-------------------> Denon 3808
Samsung 1400---------> Onkyo 805

cheers

Edited by MACCA350, 22 March 2008 - 12:57 PM.

[MACCA350]

Link

Kishiro said:

Originally Posted by little_donkey said:

I post these again
use to translate the page
http://babelfish.altavista.com/
http://www.areadvd.d....e_DTS-HD.shtml
http://www.areadvd.d....a_Update.shtml
This is very interesting, to put it mildly.

Here's a quick Paraphrasing/Translation by me, on the middle section of the second url.

Quote

"DTS Global Product manager Ronny Katz confirms that the problem is caused by a faulty DTS Decoder Chip (IC) in the Receivers of the companies of Onkyo and Yamaha. Recievers from Denon, Pioneer and Sony, which uses a different DTS Decoder Chip are unaffected and has no difficulties bit-streaming the DTS-HD MA tracks from the titles concerned. DTS has a made a fix/update to their Encoding software which will address the problem by taking the faulty DTS Decoder Chip into consideration, thus avoiding the issue on future Blu-Ray releases. It is however unknown at this time, if the Recievers with the faulty DTS Decoder chips can be fixed to work with the current DTS-MA discs by firmware update."

I see that Yamaha is allready offering a firmware update to fix the problem on their recievers (RX-V3800 series). Good news Here's the info;

Quote

"Update (January 25th 2008): Besides the firmware update for the RX-V3800 series, Yamaha is now also supplying a firmware update for the RX-V1800 model. While the update for the RX-V3800 is installed using the USB interface, there is an iso-image for a Firmware CD to be used with the RX-V1800. It updates the Receiver firmware over the digital connection (HDMI I presume..?). The firmware CD can be downloaded/requested at http://www.yamaha online.de"

This doesn't explain why not all Yamaha and Onkyo users are having issues

Another thing is there are reports of this "pop" affecting:
Pioneer 91txh
Denon 3800 bitstreamed to Integra 9.8

cheers

Edited by MACCA350, 22 March 2008 - 01:01 PM.

[MACCA350]

peter_vfr, on Mar 22 2008, 11:57 AM, said:

Pana BD30
Samsung 1400
Pio lx70 (?)

Thanks, also found a complete list

Quote

Samsung BD-UP5000 [Blu Ray & HD DVD] (True HD bitstream only, not DTS HD MA capable until firmware is released - If this doesn't come out it will be removed off the list)

Samsung BDP-1400 [Blu Ray]
Panasonic DMP-BD30 [Blu Ray]
Pioneer Elite BDP-95FD [Blu Ray]

Toshiba A35 [HD DVD]
Toshiba XA2 [HD DVD] (Only if you have firmware v2.7 or higher)
Onkyo DV-HD805 [HD DVD]
Integra DHS 8.8 [HD DVD]

cheers

[Franin]

So it's not the players but the amps?

[Struggo]

MACCA350, on Mar 22 2008, 12:33 PM, said:

Link
Here's a quick Paraphrasing/Translation by me, on the middle section of the second url.
I see that Yamaha is allready offering a firmware update to fix the problem on their recievers (RX-V3800 series). Good news Here's the info;
This doesn't explain why not all Yamaha and Onkyo users are having issues

Another thing is there are reports of this "pop" affecting:
Pioneer 91txh
Denon 3800 bitstreamed to Integra 9.8

cheers

My XE-1 popped when running HDMI into my Hitachi plasma, yet it only happened on SD content and on firmware 2.7 or higher!