Need help/guidance converting TrueHD audio track in an MKV to DTS-HD.

[fluxcapacitormb]

I have a 4K MKV file with a TrueHD audio track that I would like to play from my 4TB USB HDD on my 4K BluRay player's USB port.

My understanding is that TrueHD support via USB device is very limited and hard to find devices that are actually Dolby licensed to allow such a thing. Even if there is a magic device out there that would work, buying something is not on the table for me right now unfortunately.

I do have DTS HD Audio Suite that can take separate channel audio files to "combine" them into a DTSHDMA track, which then presumably I can throw back into MKVToolnix and remux it back to the 4K Video. Boom.

I have not messed around with any of this type of stuff for quite a while.

I am unclear exactly how to, or what program to use more specifically, to split my TrueHD track into 8 single channel files (WAVs presumably I think that's what DTS HD Audio Suite accepted IIRC?

If anyone here can point me along the right path I would be most thankful and appreciative.

[fluxcapacitormb]

Additionally I was not certain what is the appropriate Forum section to put this in please don't hesitate to check me on that. Thanks again.

[Ennio]

Often the manual of the player provides information on what A/V codecs & containers are/aren't supported on playback via USB. I would check that in the first place to avoid unnecessary work. Particularly in your case of a UHDBD player, I can imagine that the supported files or certain elementary streams have to be (UHD)BD compliant. Which for TrueHD audio mandates an embedded AC3 track. These often called "TrueHD+AC3" tracks can't be muxed in Matroska container.

Converting TrueHD to DTS-MA can't be done with freeware. If you have the DTS-MA Suite at your disposal, indeed it expects a monoraul WAV for each channel as input. Eac3to (with UsEac3to as possible GUI) can decode TrueHD into these intermediate separate WAVs.

There are other free lossless options to consider.
First off, should multichannel FLAC be supported via USB, you can convert TrueHD to that. It's a much overlooked possibility. If harddrive space is not a problem you could also opt for decompressing TrueHD to multichannel PCM.
Another keen way is to convert TrueHD into TrueHD+AC3. Again, Eac3to can do this. If you go with this you have to choose a container that supports it, like m2ts. Or alltogether author to (UHD)BD ISO/folder structure. Which tsMuxer can do.

Again, the several options at hand have to be considered against the supported files/codecs through USB playback.

[fluxcapacitormb]

Awesome thank you so much!

[johns0]

Have you tried playing the file to see if it would play from the usb with the truehd?

[fluxcapacitormb]

Yes that doesn't work. I'm fiddling with useac3to and I'll see if I can make it happen.

[fluxcapacitormb]

OK, DTS Suite is out, I can't get it working on Windows 11 nor do I have an old box with something earlier at my disposal.

I think I'll try to just convert it to PCM and see what I can come up with.

[fluxcapacitormb]

Often the manual of the player provides information on what A/V codecs & containers are/aren't supported on playback via USB. I would check that in the first place to avoid unnecessary work. Particularly in your case of a UHDBD player, I can imagine that the supported files or certain elementary streams have to be (UHD)BD compliant. Which for TrueHD audio mandates an embedded AC3 track. These often called "TrueHD+AC3" tracks can't be muxed in Matroska container.

Converting TrueHD to DTS-MA can't be done with freeware. If you have the DTS-MA Suite at your disposal, indeed it expects a monoraul WAV for each channel as input. Eac3to (with UsEac3to as possible GUI) can decode TrueHD into these intermediate separate WAVs.

There are other free lossless options to consider.
First off, should multichannel FLAC be supported via USB, you can convert TrueHD to that. It's a much overlooked possibility. If harddrive space is not a problem you could also opt for decompressing TrueHD to multichannel PCM.
Another keen way is to convert TrueHD into TrueHD+AC3. Again, Eac3to can do this. If you go with this you have to choose a container that supports it, like m2ts. Or alltogether author to (UHD)BD ISO/folder structure. Which tsMuxer can do.

Again, the several options at hand have to be considered against the supported files/codecs through USB playback.

How would I go about doing this? I tried using useac3to and selected thd>pcm and I get a 2 channel pcm track.

[fluxcapacitormb]

So I got useac3to to give me a 7.1 channel FLAC file. However, it may be too high a bitrate for my BR player.

So yeah I think I need to convert it to multichannel PCM but it is not clear in useac3to how to do this.

[fluxcapacitormb]

Got it, selecting just WAV, not WAVs, gets an 8 channel pcm file.

[johns0]

You can use audacity with the ffmpeg plugin and convert to ac3 5.1.

[fluxcapacitormb]

You can use audacity with the ffmpeg plugin and convert to ac3 5.1.

This would give me a lossy format which is precisely what I want to avoid.

PCM 7.1 works. BR Player and Receiver decode the audio just fine. But but buuuuuuuttttt.... at least on this first go through the audio is ever so slightly out of sync. Messing with the "Lipsync" options on my Yamaha receiver seems to help, but fine tuning it per movie is going to be a PITA. The movie in question is Top Gun so I'm wondering if maybe because it's old, some older films there are slightsync issues here and there. Not unique to my setup, I mean the source movie, etc.

But this is dope, getting it in sync is a manageable issue. I think I can try different options in MKV merge and look at the original file more, etc.

Thank you for all your help.

Update....it's not out of sync. Using a flash drive instead of HDD as well as another br player audio is perfect. Thanks again.

[Ennio]

Got it, selecting just WAV, not WAVs, gets an 8 channel pcm file.

WAV maxes out at 4GB. Better practice to use W64 for large pcm output.