Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

chunker

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 24, 2010
83
21
Have any of you tried doing surround sound tests from YouTube?

I know that Netflix now supports DD (Dolby Digital.... all 6 titles :rolleyes:), but did any of you try testing your setup with YouTube?

I'm assuming that YouTube needs to actually encode the audio in DD format, but I've been watching some surround sound test videos and it seems to be working.

The only thing I've noticed, is that my receiver isn't recognizing the audio as DD. Usually when a DD source is played my receiver's light turns blue and it displays the DD symbol.

As I play these vids, the audio is distributed to the designed speakers appropriately. Although they're not as clear as a true DD source (but very very close).

Does anybody know if YouTube will indeed start to decode their vids in DD? specially since more and more devices are streaming YouTube content in home theater systems.
 
Um, does YouTube support 5.1 audio? Googling around, it doesn't.

Tried to get 5.1 audio from my Mac Pro for a few years now, Apple doesn't have any audio hardware that's dedicated to signal processing, so the file must contain a 2.0 stereo track and a 5.1 DD track. For YouTube, that would mean needing to send 2 sound channels (and DD is as large as an uncompressed wav file), which would be wasted bandwidth 99.99% of the time (100% of the time if Flash doesn't support 5.1 audio).

(BTW, the only way to get 5.1 on a Mac Pro is from Plex, which will encode DD in software before sending it out, that, or flashing a GPU that supports audio over HDMI, don't know if the new Macbook Pros send anything other than 2.0 over HDMI, though. I'm pretty sure they don't, unless, again, it's already encoded into DD, like when playing a DVD).
 
Um, does YouTube support 5.1 audio? Googling around, it doesn't.

Tried to get 5.1 audio from my Mac Pro for a few years now, Apple doesn't have any audio hardware that's dedicated to signal processing, so the file must contain a 2.0 stereo track and a 5.1 DD track. For YouTube, that would mean needing to send 2 sound channels (and DD is as large as an uncompressed wav file), which would be wasted bandwidth 99.99% of the time (100% of the time if Flash doesn't support 5.1 audio).

(BTW, the only way to get 5.1 on a Mac Pro is from Plex, which will encode DD in software before sending it out, that, or flashing a GPU that supports audio over HDMI, don't know if the new Macbook Pros send anything other than 2.0 over HDMI, though. I'm pretty sure they don't, unless, again, it's already encoded into DD, like when playing a DVD).

I'm doing this through the Youtube app in ATV2. It's hooked up to a Sony receiver via digital cable.

ATV2 does support DD, and the videos I'm playing are DD 5.1 test videos, not sure how they've managed to decode them, or how it works, but it seems to be working.

There's a ton of 5.1 surround sound test vids, here's one of my favs:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gA4PlwSKj8A&playnext=1&list=PL6DAAFC2C277DC428

And another:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Jx0pEVlT3Y
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.