how to convert DTS HD/TrueHD to FLAC, then play back?

[spiroth10]

hey, I have no receiver and an analogue setup using a sound card, and i think its criminal and controlling of the market to do something like microsoft has done.

I have been looking into ways to break the secure audio path -- and I find it difficult so far.

I was thinking that converting to multichannel FLAC would work -- however ALL audio that plays concurrently with video in windows is downsampled, even DVD-A.

for one -- what software should I use to do the conversion?

and two -- How can I then play back the converted .mkv with FLAC audio? Do I need to use Linux to get past the downsampling at this point?

thanks

PS: for anyone who wants full quality DVD-A, you sacrifice the video content available on the disc, but it IS possible as is in windows -- use Foobar2000 media player with the DVD-A codec -- the sound is the most important on these discs anyway, and it WILL bypass the downsampling -- it just will ignore the video -- but you still get crystal clear music!

[Ceremony]

eac3to, though im not sure if it does truehd yet with the open source codecs.

either way, you are correct:
license encumbered and restrictive codecs are a bad thing, no matter how much superior they are. as for audio, they aren't even superior in quality, just more compatible with hardware (due to licenses and mostly sony pushing and requiring them for BDs).

flac tends to compress better than both dtshd and truehd, while opus smacks every other lossy audio codec around like some dead fish.

i am really hoping for daala to do the same to h265/hevc or whatever comes after this. this monopole has to end and we need to push open codecs.

[Sparktank]

multichannel ... downsampled

Do you mean "downmixed" to stereo (or lesser channels than original)?

Or do you mean "downsampled" to a lower sample rate than original sampling rate (48KHz to 44.1KHz)?

[huhn]

lavfilter decodes both codecs to PCM just fine.

[Asmodian]

eac3to, though im not sure if it does truehd yet with the open source codecs.

All lossless codecs can now be decoded with eac3to "natively" using open source libraries. DTS-HD MA was the last hold out but it is possible now.

edit: well, all the ones that might be found on a blu-ray at least. :o

I was thinking that converting to multichannel FLAC would work -- however ALL audio that plays concurrently with video in windows is downsampled, even DVD-A.

eac3to.exe "audio.thd" "audio.flac"

eac3to.exe could use the audio track directly from the source mkv if desired as well.

If the audio is the second track in the mkv (video as the first):
eac3to.exe "audio.mkv" 2: "audio.flac"

After using mkvtoolnix to create a new mkv watch it in MPC-HC or similar (any direct show based player) with LAV filters installed. :)

I am not sure what you mean by Windows always downsampling? Depending on your sound card/drivers Windows might need to downsample but it is usually possible to avoid any downsampling, at least when using LAV.

[Ghitulescu]

With so little details the OP gave, it's difficult to see what he did wrong - but there is at least one possibility to have bit-perfect transfers of audio data within the PC system.

Surely he'd find himself this and many more if he'd searched for bypassing kmixer and stuff :)