G73 HDMI HD Audio (DTS-HD and TrueHD) problem

I was experimenting with my G73 the other day and hooked it up to my Onkyo 805. It's definitely capable of decoding TrueHD and DTS-HD or accepting a PCM signal, but I'm not getting any HD audio.

If I pop in a blu-ray that has DTS-HD and select it, it's downgrading to the core DTS lossy track instead. Is there a setting I'm missing somewhere? It's not incredibly important as I only watch BD's on my main setup with my normal player, but I'd certainly like to get it to work if possible. Has anyone else gotten it to work?

 

*bump* No one's tried HDMI HD audio on this yet?

 

Well, first, what are you using as a software player?

 

Heh, good call. I'm using PowerDVD10 and outputting via HDMI to my receiver.

 

Surely someone has tried HDMI on a receiver capable of lossless...?

 

K, with PDVD 10 you have 2 options:

1) Let it decode all the HD Audio and output to LPCM.

2) Stream it out to the external decoder. This is tricky due to their asinine DRM compliance. You have to start the movie first in order to verify the HDMI DRM, then pop into Audio Properties to get the dropdown option to output HD Audio as a stream.

Honestly, you get the same quality either way, and the LPCM method is painless.

 

Appreciate the help Chastity. However, maybe I'm missing it, but I can't find a section to have output LPCM (which I agree, is the same and sounds like it's painless).

 

Curiously, what drivers did you install for the HDMI?

 

Don't have it in front of me at the moment, but I have the newest Realtek drivers for the audio and I don't think I touched the actual HDMI driver. Is there a different one I should be using?

 

I noticed in another thread Chastity that you were able to play games via your HDTV/receiver w/6 channel LPCM enabled.

Am I using the wrong driver here?

 

This is why I asked. I'm using the Realtek HDMI 2.49 driver.

 

the Realtek HDMI driver does seem to work better for me than the ATI one as well, you then have to make sure that it is setup to work with HD audio formats.

Then it is simple to just go into power dvd, settings, audio, drop down menu and choose non-decoded audio to external device.

 

Think that's the solution. I'm pretty sure I'm using the ATI one but not 100%. I'll check it when I get home, but I know that I didn't have options for non-decoded audio/etc in PowerDVD.

I'll report back. Thanks you two!

 

Ok, reporting back. I ended up messing with drivers and finally got it to work with the ATI driver on the Realtek site. I know this goes against what both of you stated, but it's what worked for me. I noticed that it only decoded Dolby Digital and DTS until I installed that driver, and then DTS-HD and TrueHD were listed. Thanks again for the help - +1 rep to you both.

 

The ATI Driver on the Realtek site??? Did you mean to say the HDMI driver on the Realtek site?

 

Maybe both since it's called "ATI HDMI Audio Device"

 

Yes, the ATI HDMI audio driver on the Realtek site (I thought it was kind of odd to have it there, but that's what worked).

 

Weird, it wasn't called that before on their download page...

 

Just so you and others know this isn't entirely true. PowerDVD downsamples DTS-HD MA and TrueHD from 24-bit to 16-bit - not ideal. The old version of Total Media Theatre (pre v3) had a DTS-HD decoder filter which could be used with other DirectShow filters and output full 24-bit streams but it wasn't a great solution. FFDShow is able to decode TrueHD but it will also downsample from 24-bit to 16-bit.

The best way to get full quality HD audio to your receiver (especially if it doesn't support HD audio bitstreaming) is to convert DTS-MA or TrueHD to FLAC. FLAC has far superior compression (even though it is still lossless) and can easily be decoded to LPCM for output over HDMI. This method allows you to use ReClock to sync video to your display for super smooth playback whilst ensuring audio is kept in sync. Reclock also allows you to bypass the Windows sound mixer to ensure the full quality stream is not downsampled.

 

That's good to know. I didn't really experiment with it other than to see it worked. Since my receiver does decode lossless I'll probably just try and get that working.