| Kazaam's Blog / January 08, 2009 |
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| Streaming DTS-CDs Wirelessly With iTunes
Apparently, it's possible to wirelessly stream a 5.1-channel DTS CD using iTunes and an Airport Express. But does it work well enough to warrant using? My Airport Express was already being used as a 'music server', and it typically works great for regular CDs. So I figured, why not give a DTS-CD a try? The gear was already hooked up with an optical digital cable, so it was mostly just a question of whether or not the DTS bitstream could stay intact after being sent wirelessly. So with iTunes running, I ripped the song "As I Come Of Age" from the DTS-CD release of Stephen Stills' "Stills" album. Lossy formats such as MP3 resulted in just static of course, but I found that it worked (sort of) when I set iTunes to rip it as either the Apple Lossless format or else as an uncompressed WAV file. It sounded good and was clearly 5.1 surround sound, but operation was a little 'glitchy'. For instance, I discovered that the volume control in iTunes must be turned 'up' all the way or else all that is heard is static. I also discovered that the equalizer control in iTunes must be turned 'off' in order for it to work. No big deal. These were issues that I could easily handle. Unfortunately, there was a major problem for which I couldn't seem to find a working solution. For some reason, at least with my system, I had issues switching back and forth between DTS-encoded songs and regular non-DTS songs. Manually selecting and starting each individual track usually worked OK, but if I were to create a playlist consisting of both kinds of files, and if I were to run it automatically in 'shuffle' mode, then eventually playback would fail. It would work initially, but after playing the first DTS song the receiver appeared to get stuck in DTS mode. Hence, any of the non-DTS songs that would follow resulted in nothing more than silence. So I don't think this is something I'll be pursuing, at least not with my current gear. That said, for academic purposes, it was a fun experiment. *** Update 2/9/09: I decided to go ahead and rip all of my DTS-CDs and import them into iTunes despite the operation being somewhat glitchy. What I've done as a bit of a workaround is to run seperate playlists, one just for DTS-CD files and the other for regular non-DTS files. |