Hi Res audio from visual media sources

Might be of interest to those who don’t have home theatre but do play their dvd/blu-ray/tv through their DAC :

I just invested in Pink Floyd’s Later Years bundle. This includes several DVD and Blu Ray discs. Sound is 96/24 and I enjoyed watching the gig disc so much, I wanted to experience the concert in hi res sound.

For any of you playing the sound of your Blu Ray/DVD player (and TV) through your DAC over optical/coax, like I do, you’re most likely only getting it at 48khz. If there’s hi res audio on the disc, it’s probably restricted to your player’s HDMI output only. But there’s an easy fix to get up to 196khz out via coax/optical.

  1. Buy a (Lindy, in my case) tiny HDMI audio extractor for £60
  2. Run HDMI out of player into extractor. Run HDMI out of extractor into TV for picture
  3. Run optical out of extractor to DAC for hi res up to 196khz.

The extractor overcomes the restriction the visual media puts on its audio - namely restricting it to HDMI - by liberating it from its HDMI cell and forwarding it in a freed state.

Not much money for a jump to the hi res’ if your disc has it.

I haven’t yet tried applying the same principle to TV streaming services which have some movies with hi res sound, but am hoping that it will also work.

Interesting over lockdown I decided to add the Tidal TV app via Echo Fire 4k into a Samsung TV and all in one soundbar.

Yes the SQ is not audiofool standard, but the visual aspect does make it much more of an engaging experience.

Sadly Tidal is Jay Z centric so hours of R&B arse shaking, but Coldplay live in concert was great.

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Interesting, thanks. I have a Sony UBP-X800 universal player, connected to an Arcam DAC via a coaxial cable. The Sony has a setting in the menu to change the maximum sample rate limit of the Coaxial output, I have mine set to 192khz, however as the Arcam doesn’t have a sample rate display it is impossible to know exactly what I am getting. Audio quality via the Sony and Arcam combination is good though nonetheless. Bluray is an excellent format IMO, a shame things are not more widely released on it.

PS hope you are enjoying The Later Years set - thinking about getting this myself to cheer myself up as my city is currently in Local Lockdown…

Is an extractor the same as an HDMI splitter ?

Thanks

Ian

They generally allow you to have hdmi in and optical or coaxial out for systems that don’t have hdmi for audio.

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THX, I was interested as I have a Pioneer UDP on order (a good one) and I use a UnitiQute 2 as DAC

As I understand it - and I may be wrong - hi res audio on dvd/blu-ray is restricted to HDMI and anything sent directly from these media over coax/optical is downsampled. It’s to do with HDMI licensing issues.

From Google :

‘Bluray players will down sample copy protected high resolution audio on their coax spidf output but will not do so on its hdmi output. Use a hdmi de-embedder device to retrieve the high resolution signal from the hdmi out and convert it to coax’ .

My DAC displays the sample rate. Straight off the blu ray player I get 48khz; through the extractor I get 96khz. Maybe your Sony gets around it somehow… A look at the manual may give the answer.

Thanks, it’s a heck of a lot of money but you get some great stuff. I’ve only played the gig dvd for The Division Bell concert so far. It’s fantastic. As Obsydian says, adding the visuals really does enhance the experience. My Melco server has just come back after upgrading so I’ll be loading the cd’s any moment :slight_smile: I got it as a lockdown pick-me-up, too - it’s working and I recommend it.

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I think so. But my search for the right unit suggests a splitter will take more than one HDMI signal in and allow you to select whichever one you want to be sent to your viewing/listening device. Units like the Lindy with just one HDMI-in don’t seem to be referred to as splitters. I also bought following so I could take both the TV feed and the blu-ray feed and choose the audio for which one I wanted to send to the DAC; also useful to have both Toslink and coax outputs :

But I can’t, yet, get it to output the hi res audio; only 48khz. I’ve asked them where I’m going wrong or if the unit just can’t do it.

This is the other one I bought. It’s not a splitter because there’s only one HDMI in. But it works and is kicking out the 96khz of my disc :

Err - didn’t realise the URL would throw up so much detail; hope it’s ok Richard but I’m sure you’ll deal with it if not…

Many thanks, I will have a closer look

A simpler solution is simply to connect the BRD player to the TV and then take an optical out from the TV to your DAC. Set the TV to output LPCM and in most cases, regardless of the stream the arrives at the TV via the HDMI cable, you will get LPCM downmixed out of the optical.

I do this with zero difficulty on both my Sony TVs. No additional boxes or gadgets. Just an optical cable. You won’t necessarily get DTS-MA as 192/24 but for viewing in stereo, you will get either 44.1/16 or 48/16 downmix which, I think, is good enough if you aren’t going full hog AV setup.

Yes I used to do this. Works fine but you can’t get the hi res audio. It’s worth having on my system.

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