I have in fact gotten my DTS mix disc to work. I will explain how. I now believe that I am getting the bit accurate data from the K Player (I have a K Player 5000) to my Meridian 861 processor.
I want to first clear up any confusion there might be over how I believe a DTS CD can in fact prove whether or not you are getting bit accurate data out of a player.
The DTS format on CD (not DVD or Blu Ray) is encoded into the regular, standard CD "Red Book" format. Any CD player will see and play a DTS CD- but to get output that we would like to listen to requires a DTS decoder. If you don't have one, and you use the normal decoder in a CD player for the analog output then you will just hear static. If you can take the digital output from a CD player, and send it to a DTS decoder, it might take a second to lock on to the signal, and then you will get DTS playback.
See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5.1_Music_Disc
The DTS-CD, DTS Audio CD or 5.1 Music Disc (official name) is an audio Compact Disc that contains music in surround sound format. It is a predecessor of DVD Audio. Physically, it conforms to the Red Book standard, except for the way the music is encoded on the CD. Where regular CDs store the music as linear PCM, the DTS-CD stores music using the DTS format, with the same fixed bitrate as 16-bit linear PCM, namely 1,411,200 bit/s or roughly 1,378 Kib/s.
As opposed to other surround formats, such as Super Audio CD and DVD-Audio, which require a specialized player, a DTS-CD is compatible with most standard CD players with a digital (S/PDIF) output. CD (and DVD) players recognize the disk as a standard audio CD. The only requirement is a receiver that can decode DTS audio.
I have several DTS CDs ripped to my computer and I can just put files on to a CDR as an audio CD and those DTS mix CDs will play fine via any CD player with a digital output to a DTS decoder like that which is in my 861. My 861 takes a moment to lock on to the DTS signal and before it does there is a brief harsh digital kind of noise.
We all live complicated and busy lives, and one of the best things about the Kaleidescape, whether it be for music or movies, it helps keep things more organized and simple. Its especially useful with the little ones and movies they might like to watch.
Anyway, in my case, when I got the Kaleidescape music system, I decided to test it out with my processor using my DTS test. Remember if there is any resampling, it is done with the assumption that the PCM data is not something other than just the standard CD audio. DTS is encoded in this PCM format but resampling of any kind would destroy the DTS data and result in static on playback.
Originally I had my KPlayer 5000 hooked up to my processor with the digital coax connection. And the K system passed my DTS test with flying colors. Which is why I believe the data it was sending was bit accurate.
So why would some more audiophile and knowledgeable people such as yourselves say it sounds terrible? My guess- and thats all it is- is maybe the K system has more jitter than higher end sources.
The 861 has a lot of dejittering processing in it and my music tastes are kind of progressive rock, classic rock and general pop music as well as some orchestral. But my favorite test discs are Michael Jackson History- it sounds so good- and Earth Wind and Fire as well as some Yes and some Rush. Way back when I tried these artists' music the result was very good in my system (KPlayer 5000->coax->Meridian 861->coax->DSP 8000s and 7000s).
So you could have a situation where my choice of music could hide jitter problems more easily and my processor could minimize these kinds of issues.
If you had more sensitive equipment to jitter and listened to more demanding material its possible that you would expose things I wouldn't notice.
And then you have the listener. I think I have a good ear but Im no expert.
So we get from this state of affairs to the fact that I try my DTS again and now with my DTS test mix it does not work. What happened. I forgot that I moved my system to HDMI.
Strangely it seems that DTS CDs will work over HDMI but only if the metadata says its a DTS CD- which is what one of the other posters was saying about the headers (sorry I dont have your name handy right now Ill correct this soon). My theory is if the K system sees its a DTS CD it will just pass the PCM data straight out with no processing. So one thought is to get the K system to think every CD is a DTS CD! But on a random DTS mix that the system does not recognize- I just got static. The PCM data was resampled.
I ask why? Why would you do this?
The answer came from a very helpful fellow at Kaleidescape: (My interpretation of this is: its in the name of convenience and easy to live with features- its nice to seamlessly blend one song to the next when listening and also to normalize the volume for the kitchen speakers- but this is not good for the audiophiles here!)
The noise problem you are experiencing with DTS Audio CDs can be likely be remedied.
The Kaleidescape System will import a DTS Audio CD (5.1 DTS Music Disc) successfully. In order to play it back without white noise, you will need to disable both normalization and cross-fading in the Preferences tab of the Web Utility {this is the USER one, not the installer one- Jerry}. To do this, uncheck the boxes for "During music playback: Adjust the volume ..." and "When going from one song to another: Fade out ...". The Kaleidescape Player must be connected using a digital audio connection (HDMI, Coaxial or Optical) to a receiver/processor capable of decoding DTS audio; playback from the analog outputs will result in noise.
With the default "Automatically detect audio capabilities" setting selected for HDMI audio, no sound is output from DTS Audio CDs. To play a DTS Audio CD using the HDMI output:
1. Open the Installer Web Utility
2. Select the "COMPONENTS" tab
2. Click "SETTINGS" for the desired Player
4. Select the "AUDIO" tab
5. Select "Always send multichannel audio (Dolby Digital/DTS)"
6. Click OK
(This is an article from the Kaleidescape Knowledge Base
http://www.kaleidescape.com/support/...0000000LTQ9AAO
Tom Barnett
Manager, Technical Marketing
Kaleidescape, Inc.
+1 650 625 6345
tom.barnett@kaleidescape.com
I did these things and tried it again. And again I got noise using the HDMI connection.
After thinking on it for a moment I decided to try both the optical and coax connetions. Guess what- those pass the DTS data just fine. Remember the DTS signal is embedded into the PCM- so if its passing this out its passing out the unmolested PCM from the source. (Unlike on a DVD or Blu Ray where its done in bitstream).
Then I tried my music player and..... it worked from that too- again over coax or optical.
I didnt do any long listening comparisons between the music player and the Kplayer 5000 because I just dont have the time but if they are both passing out the proper PCM data then I would think they would be similar.
However, I did try listening to the system the other day when I was going over HDMI and wondering what was going on and I felt the sound was too flat and something was off and that was really bothering me.
So bottom line- there is some extra processing going on with PCM data over HDMI output. Audiophiles should use the coax or optical outputs (I prefer coax as optical can cause more jitter).
Here are pics I took- sorry for the bad camera phone pics- you can see that my processor is decoding DTS and my screen shot shows this is a homemade DTS mix. Also when I skip tracks my processor loses DTS lock for a second- which is good here because reestablishing it shows its simply taking a millisecond to process that this is in fact PCM that contains DTS data.