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Auzentech HomeTheater HD Preview: Bitstreaming True HD/DTS-HD MA

 by Anand Lal Shimpi on September 2, 2009 12:00 AM EST
76 Comments | Add A Comment
76 Comments

The First Attempt: Failure

This was the email I sent Auzentech after spending a full day with the card trying to get it to work:

I've been working with the Auzen Z-Fi HomeTheater HD card for most of the past 24 hours and thus far I have not been able to get it to reliably work in the vast majority of situations. Here's what I've tried:

Under Windows 7 x64

1) On a Zotac GeForce 9300 motherboard with integrated graphics I get no video output from the Auzen card on my Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42" LCD.
2) On an Intel P55 motherboard with GeForce GTX 280 graphics card I get no video output from the Auzen card on my Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42" LCD.
3) On a Zotac GeForce 9300 motherboard with integrated graphics I get no video output from the Auzen card in my home theater setup: Integra DTC-9.8 preprocessor + JVC RS2 projector.

Under Windows Vista 32-bit:

1) On an Intel P55 motherboard with GeForce GTX 280 graphics card I am limited to 720p output from the Auzen card on my Westinghouse LVM-42w2 42" LCD. Selecting 1080p simply produces no-signal on the Westinghouse.
2) On an Intel P55 motherboard with GeForce GTX 280 graphics card I get no video output from the Auzen card in my home theater setup: Integra DTC-9.8 preprocessor + JVC RS2 projector.
3) On an Intel P55 motherboard with GeForce GTX 280 graphics card I get no video output from the Auzen card in my secondary home theater setup: Onkyo TX-SR806 receiver + Samsung 50" TV.
4) On an Intel P55 motherboard with GeForce GTX 280 graphics card I get no video output from the Auzen card on my Toshiba 42" Regza LCD TV.

In all cases I confirmed that both the LED lights (HDMI in and HDMI out) were illuminated. I tried both an HDMI cable from the GPU to the Auzen card as well as DVI-to-HDMI from the GPU to the Auzen card, neither worked. I even tried the internal HDMI passthrough jumper on the NVIDIA chipset to no avail. I used the drivers off of the CD that came with the card and then installed the updated drivers you sent Gary.

I was ready to give up on it. I went to bed, finished up The SSD Relapse the next day and tried one last thing before I gave up on it again: switch to a non-NVIDIA card.

The one thing both of my test platforms had in common was their NVIDIA graphics using the latest 190 series drivers. I swapped an ATI Radeon HD 4890 into the P55 board, installed its drivers and it worked right away; under both Windows Vista 32-bit and Windows 7 x64.

I’m not sure what the NVIDIA/Auzen incompatibility was, and perhaps switching to an arbitrary older driver would fix it but with a working setup I wasn’t about to try and figure it out. For what it’s worth, the NVIDIA/Auzentech combo did work perfectly on my Dell WFP3008 30” display; too bad it doesn’t have a built in receiver to make that useful.

The Second Attempt: Success

With an AMD GPU on the P55 board everything worked perfectly; I took the system sans case down to my theater, hooked it up and threw on a couple of BDs. I hadn’t seen Die Hard in a while and it has a DTS-HD MA track, so I popped that in to verify that it was working.

There are some UI bugs with the PowerDVD 9 control panel that enables bitstreaming these codecs. You basically have to select your audio output settings twice to get it to work; change your audio output once to something other than bitstreaming then once more to bitstreaming (Non-decoded high-definition audio to external device) to make it work.

Once playing, the thing worked as advertised:

Update: As readers have correctly pointed out it looks like PowerDVD is reporting its output incorrectly, but the card is functioning as intended here. It would be impossible to down-sample the compressed True HD/DTS-HD MA streams without decoding them. It also looks like the audio bitrate in The Hunt for Red October is being incorrectly reported.

Next up we have a Blu-ray of The Hunt for Red October, this time a TrueHD disc:

Let’s...Get...Busy Final Words
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  • 123sex - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Doesn´t look like a 24 bit disc
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...

    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...
    vs 24 bit
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...

    Which makes perfect sense considering the age of the movie

    (sorry about the other post)

  • jay401 - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Thanks for reviewing this! Auzentech has made some excellent cards and it's rare anymore to see a review of a peripheral soundcard since most folks aren't concerned enough with their sound quality or decoding to go beyond whatever onboard sound their motherboard provides.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    See anything wrong? While the output frequency is correct, the output resolution is not. If I’m correct, we should be seeing 48kHz/24-bit audio, but instead we’re getting downsampled 48kHz/16-bit audio - the same we get over LPCM. It’s close, but not technically lossless.

    I hope you realize that you're still getting whatever is in the disc, right? That's the point of bitstreaming. The error is just on PowerDVD's display. Maybe that's what you meant, but the way it's worded seems to say that you're getting something else. And, it clearly says 192 kHz, not 48 kHz.

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    I was under the impression that the discs I used contained 48kHz/24-bit tracks, I'm checking to see if I have anything else here confirmed to be a 24-bit disc.

    Either way I do not believe the output frequency should be 192kHz, very few BDs are mastered with a 192kHz audio track.

    Take care,
    anand

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Sorry, one more and I'm done.

    If you notice, your receiver indeed is telling you it's receiving only 5.1 audio both in the THD and DTS MA example pictures. And again, there's no way PowerDVD could downsample the audio without decoding it first. Then it would have to encode again. It's not just very unlikely, but there's also no reason whatsoever that they would do it, and it would take extra effort to re-encode the TrueHD and DTS MA streams on-the-fly so your receiver gets them. I don't know if it's even possible to encode those formats on-the-fly.

  • Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Wow, you're more than completely right (a night of rest and the whole downsampling without decoding thing hit me right in the face). I've updated the article, it looks like the most that's happening is PowerDVD is just providing screwy output but the card is working as intended.

    Thanks again :)

    Take care,
    Anand

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    BTW, 24.576 Mbps is exactly uncompressed PCM 16-bit 192 kHz 8-channel, which are the numbers that PowerDVD is reporting (which is what shows in your pictures). It is not reporting the bitrate of the TrueHD audio. Somehow it can't read the true specs of the THD and DTS MA streams. No big deal.

    Also, note that the movies you tested don't have 7.1 (8-channel) audio, so again, PowerDVD is clearly misreporting, and you can easily double check this with your receiver, which will tell you how many channels it's receiving/processing.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Of course, what I'm pointing out is that 192 kHz is ridiculous... the only one I know that does that (movie) is Akira. Also, the 24 Mbps audio should be a tip that PowerDVD is just misreporting.

    In any case, once your receiver tells you it's getting TrueHD or DTS MA, you're set. There is no way downsampling is being done, no matter what PowerDVD tells you. The only way would be that the card is getting the downsampled PCM output from PowerDVD and re-encoding it to THD or DTS MA, but you see how that's very extremely unlikely.

  • andy o - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    first paragraph is a quote from the 2nd page of the article, "quote" doesn't work in the comments typing field?

  • 123sex - Wednesday, September 2, 2009 - link

    Doesn´t look like a 24 bit disc
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Search/displayTitles.p...

    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=42...
    vs 24 bit
    http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...">http://www.blu-raystats.com/Stats/Details.php?u=41...

    Which makes perfect sense considering the age of the movie
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