On my Odroid C2 I was able to Direct Play (using Plex) files with various high definition audio technologies even though my player didn’t support it. I assume what it did is just strip the additional information or convert it down? Anyway, my question is whether it is the same with the Vero 4k+ or not? E.g. am I able to Direct Play say Dolby TrueHD even though my TV/AV setup doesn’t support that?
I know that I obviously won’t get additional quality, all I want is that it can Direct Play files without needing the Plex server to resort to Direct Stream or even transcoding.
Thank you
EDIT: TV is UE55NU7170UXZG, will probably directly connect the Vero 4k+ with HDMI.
TrueHD and other HD audio formats still always provide a “core” track which is what will be used if the V4k or any of your other devices do not support said format explicitly.
Not sure that’s true of TrueHD, certainly is for DTS-MA HD. TrueHD just comes up as unsupported for me. I always make sure I rip the associated DD track with TrueHD whereas with DTS-MA HD you can just keep that as it already contains the DTS core.
For a more detailed explanation have a look here under “Which passthrough formats are supported by OSMC devices (not all are supported by all devices) and which of them can be passed through via S/PDIF or HDMI?”: Audio setup and information
It seems BR players will treat the separate TrueHD track and DD track as a single entity and decode the one it supports, however for all intents and purposes they are separate tracks, so you can try and stream a TrueHD track to a receiver that can’t decode it as there is nothing it recognises it. DTS-MA HD has extensions on the core track to enable the lossless part to be recognised/decoded which is why the core track is always decodable by DTS lossy decoders.
My Oppo BDP-93 would report unsupported media stream for TrueHD whereas DTS-MA HD it’ll recognise the DTS core.