No way to get optical DD 5.1 / DTS out of a Switch / WiiU?

[ASDR]

Basically:

- Neither of these consoles have an optical output

- HDMI audio extractors don't work since both systems have LPCM 5.1 as their only multichannel format. It's uncompressed and requires more bandwidth than optical has, so the extractor would need to encode it into a compressed format. Apparently no audio extractor supports this.

- At least the Switch supports USB DACs / soundcards, some apparently with optical outputs, but apparently none of them do anything better than stereo.

- There's probably some very expensive piece of professional gear, an AVR with optical output, something involving a PC with a capture card that can do this, but I'm obviously looking for something small-ish in the sub hundred eurodollar range to solve this

Am I missing something or is there really no way to get any surround format on optical out of Nintendo's latest two systems?

Thanks!

[bobrocks95]

Just to check, what's your use case where optical is required? I would think the money spent on any equipment to compress the audio externally could just be spent on a used AVR instead but maybe you are running audio into something different?

[ASDR]

On a modern setup you probably have a fancy HDMI 2.1 compatible AVR that handles all this stuff just fine. That's all true. But I have multiple AV setups, some with older screen tech, CRTs, older amps that are pre-HDMI, TVs that can't output anything better than stereo, no ARC, PC speakers that take optical surround but not HDMI, etc. So it would suck having to having to upgrade several of these places to 'HDMI audio'. For these reasons, and simply the fact that I think having audio & video handled separately is way more convenient, I've been trying to keep using optical. It's just so much nicer! It works great even with older gear, switches / splitters / cables are super cheap and reliable, and you never run into dumb situations like having to spend big money to upgrade a HDMI 2.0 AVR to an HDMI 2.1 one even if the actual decoder/amp part is still perfectly fine. Virtually all consoles have optical outs or can be made compatible with a ~25EUR audio extractor, the only real exception are the WiiU/Switch consoles where Nintendo wanted to save 50c and did not license DD / DTS codecs :/ So I'd love to buy an audio extractor or a USB DAC that could get me surround over optical for these two systems :/

[PC Engine Fan X!]

The 1st-gen, 2nd-gen & oled Switch support bluetooth for wireless audio streaming via firmware update. I tried my oled Switch with a BT endowed Sony tv soundbar & it works like a charm indeed (albeit in stereo but with some good heavy bass thrown in to punch up/spice up the cool bgm tunes). I don't know of any Switch games that support 5.1 surround sound though (which would be awesome if they did).

I've got an older pre-hdmi AVR that accepts optical input and hooking up a PS3 console with optical output to it with a 5.1 surround sound speaker setup + big dedicated free standing bass speaker sure can shake up the room if it needed be. Sure packs a punch!

Nowadays, a single Sonos speaker setup replaces the older 5.1 surround sound speaker setup and outputs some serious bass which compliments a dedicated 4K UHD player along with a 4K tv that pipes out audio via optical and piped into the Sonos speaker via optical input -- it too, packs some punchy heavy bass notes bar none! It's like going to watch a 1st run movie at a multi cineplex except at home (one local theatrical movie screening room has a dedicated 18,000 watts surround sound speaker setup using Dolby Atmos -- quite plenty of audio overkill but it's all good if you want the best cinema-grade audio gear to watch a 1st run theatrical film through a Christies digital film projector setup). Can't get that uber-expensive cinema-grade AV equipment for home use anyways.

I know the 1st-gen PS4 console had optical output built in but it was removed with later hardware revisions. Blame Sony for wanting to save $$$ during production of it's later gen PS4 consoles.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[Konsolkongen]

The 1st-gen, 2nd-gen & oled Switch support bluetooth for wireless audio streaming via firmware update. I tried my oled Switch with a BT endowed Sony tv soundbar & it works like a charm indeed (albeit in stereo but with some good heavy bass thrown in to punch up/spice up the cool bgm tunes). I don't know of any Switch games that support 5.1 surround sound though (which would be awesome if they did).

Bluetooth audio probably adds a sound delay that could be noticeable, unless Nintendo are somehow compensating for this. Furthermore regular BT audio is lossy and will degrade sound quality, so I wouldn’t recommend using it on anything but headphones for portable play.

A decent number of Switch games do have 5.1 surround sound, but it isn’t as widely supported as it should be. I’m playing Metroid Prime Remastered right now, and the sound is actually pretty good.
But 5.1? Come on Nintendo… 7.1 has been around since the PS3 and the lack of back channels really make the games sound lacking compared to the competition. Hoping to see this improved on their next system, but I’m not holding my breath.

@ASDR: I don’t know of any device that can transcode 5.1 LPCM to DD/DTS unfortunately

I will say that if you ever do want to upgrade your AVR, you will hear an improvement using LPCM over compressed DD or DTS.
For what it’s worth I have an HDMI 2.0 receiver and at least for my setup I find that PS5 > TV > AVR (eARC) works just great in getting 7.1LPCM while still having 4K@120Hz/VRR. I was worried that it would cause all sorts of issues but I haven’t had any yet.

There are also devices that can extract HDMI audio from 2.1 sources like the HDfury 8K VRROOM so older HDMI AVRs could remain useful. Looks like a neat device but I don’t have any personal experience with it.
https://hdfury.com/product/8k-vrroom-40gbps/

[ASDR]

The 1st-gen, 2nd-gen & oled Switch support bluetooth for wireless audio streaming via firmware update.

Didn't even think about that, huh. But unless there's some new low-latency codec that's probably not terribly useful for gaming due to the latency. I remember when the iPad Pro dropped the headphone jack and Apple told everybody to use BT audio a lot of musicians where like, I can't make music with 100ms audio lag.

I don't know of any Switch games that support 5.1 surround sound though (which would be awesome if they did).

Quite a few do, but it's spotty. For instance Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is stereo only but part 3 has surround!

I know the 1st-gen PS4 console had optical output built in but it was removed with later hardware revisions. Blame Sony for wanting to save $$$ during production of it's later gen PS4 consoles.

The PS4 Pro still has optical, just like the XBox One X. I think there are some slim 360/PS3 models and maybe the PS4 Slim that dropped it, though.

Bluetooth audio probably adds a sound delay that could be noticeable, unless Nintendo are somehow compensating for this.

Switch games have usually another frame or two input lag due to the dock and whatever controller issues they've got, so maybe it'll all work out in the end

@ASDR: I don’t know of any device that can transcode 5.1 LPCM to DD/DTS unfortunately

I figured I was hoping that there's maybe a Switch compatible DAC / USB soundcard that can output DD / DTS?

I will say that if you ever do want to upgrade your AVR, you will hear an improvement using LPCM over compressed DD or DTS.
For what it’s worth I have an HDMI 2.0 receiver and at least for my setup I find that PS5 > TV > AVR (eARC) works just great in getting 7.1LPCM while still having 4K@120Hz/VRR. I was worried that it would cause all sorts of issues but I haven’t had any yet.

I had some real BS problems with modern high bandwidth video + HDMI audio, I really liked keeping those separate :/ I could upgrade some AVRs to HDMI capable ones. I mean I'd only need HDMI 1.4 for Switch/WiiU so I could get something used and cheap. Still feels really dumb to throw out perfectly good setups just because there's these two Nintendo consoles that have neither optical nor will work with an HDMI audio extractor.

There are also devices that can extract HDMI audio from 2.1 sources like the HDfury 8K VRROOM so older HDMI AVRs could remain useful. Looks like a neat device but I don’t have any personal experience with it.
https://hdfury.com/product/8k-vrroom-40gbps/

HDMI 2.0 extractors are quite cheap and reliable, but I've heard mixed things about the 2.1 solutions. I probably won't need those anyway. The only 2.1 device I have is the PS5 (One X is 2.1, but doesn't need it) and I either connect it to an old display that can't do 4k120 etc. anyway and a 2.0 extractor is fine or I connect it to a modern TV and that screen can output surround over optical.

[Gunstar]

It's a shame there isn't a small device that encodes LPCM to Dolby Digital, I love using headphone virtual surround sound with consoles that support DD 5.1. Kind of surprising considering how well-catered most audio scenarios appear to be

[Konsolkongen]

Bluetooth audio probably adds a sound delay that could be noticeable, unless Nintendo are somehow compensating for this.

Switch games have usually another frame or two input lag due to the dock and whatever controller issues they've got, so maybe it'll all work out in the end

Lol yeah maybe it won’t be noticeable

Nintendo should just sell the DD license through their store if they don’t want to pay for it themselves. Cheap asses :/

[ASDR]

It's a shame there isn't a small device that encodes LPCM to Dolby Digital, I love using headphone virtual surround sound with consoles that support DD 5.1. Kind of surprising considering how well-catered most audio scenarios appear to be

It's frustrating, isn't it. One solution for pre-HDMI AVRs I've seen are these audio extractors:

Spoiler

They're just HDMI 1.4 (4k30) but they spit out analog audio. Older AVRs have analog in, so you could hook them up that way. REALLY clunky solution, though.

Doesn't help you if you got an all-in-one speaker system or headphone surround kit that only takes optical, though :/

Nintendo should just sell the DD license through their store if they don’t want to pay for it themselves. Cheap asses :/

Knowing how modern companies think they'd probably sell you a DD 'subscription'. Maybe transcode the audio server-side


So, regarding USB sound adapters and the Switch, here's a list on Reddit:
https://old.reddit.com/r/NintendoSwitch ... 0_edition/
But from what I can tell none of these do any multichannel audio, only stereo?


Regarding using Bluetooth, I've seen those gizmos:

Spoiler

Reading the product page on Ali I couldn't even figure out if that thing sends or receives Bluetooth, or if the USB/Optical is an input or output Do multichannel audio BT->Optical adapters even exist?

[Guspaz]

You're unlikely to ever get anything but stereo audio over bluetooth. The Switch has substantial lag with bluetooth audio, but I'm not sure anybody has measured it. I noticed it. When I look online, I see people saying anything from unnoticeable lag to half a second of lag. However, bluetooth audio support on the switch is flakey and unreliable, and competes with the controllers, meaning you can cause input drop-outs and it reduces the maximum number of controllers you can use.

You can buy dolby digital encoders like the Dolby DP-569. They can encode uncompressed digital audio to dolby digital, and cost as little as $50 used. But they have (according to the specs) from 178ms to 450ms of lag. And you'll need to use a separate device to convert the input signal to AES3 digital audio, the uncompressed digital audio used for this sort of thing (it's digital audio over BNC). And you'll probably need a separate device to get the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio out of the MPEG transport stream and into a toslink output.

Or you can use a PC with an HDMI capture card and toslink output and do the transcode in software. There's opensource AC3 encoders. I'm sure latency will be large.

Ultimately, HDMI audio is your only realistic option for PCM 5.1. It's by far the simplest/cheapest no matter what your setup, even if you've designed your setup around toslink, because the alternatives are kind of insane setups using a bunch of broadcast gear strung together with tons of lag.

[ASDR]

You're unlikely to ever get anything but stereo audio over bluetooth. The Switch has substantial lag with bluetooth audio, but I'm not sure anybody has measured it. I noticed it. When I look online, I see people saying anything from unnoticeable lag to half a second of lag. However, bluetooth audio support on the switch is flakey and unreliable, and competes with the controllers, meaning you can cause input drop-outs and it reduces the maximum number of controllers you can use.

You can buy dolby digital encoders like the Dolby DP-569. They can encode uncompressed digital audio to dolby digital, and cost as little as $50 used. But they have (according to the specs) from 178ms to 450ms of lag. And you'll need to use a separate device to convert the input signal to AES3 digital audio, the uncompressed digital audio used for this sort of thing (it's digital audio over BNC). And you'll probably need a separate device to get the Dolby Digital 5.1 audio out of the MPEG transport stream and into a toslink output.

Or you can use a PC with an HDMI capture card and toslink output and do the transcode in software. There's opensource AC3 encoders. I'm sure latency will be large.

Ultimately, HDMI audio is your only realistic option for PCM 5.1. It's by far the simplest/cheapest no matter what your setup, even if you've designed your setup around toslink, because the alternatives are kind of insane setups using a bunch of broadcast gear strung together with tons of lag.

Yeah, that's what I meant when I said I didn't look into professional gear or using a PC, those solution just seemed impractical. Cheaper / easier to just buy a used, old AVR with HDMI 1.4. Wireless anything sucks, and if the WiFi performance of the Switch is any indication, especially on that console.

I've looked a bit at the USB sound card thingies, and it seems this one is both confirmed to be Switch compatible according to the list I linked and supports 5.1 output:
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... l/overview
But it's also out of production and not on sale anywhere and the description also says "The Micro II USB Sound Card Adapter is also capable of supporting Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound when used with an optional driver on a Windows based system.", so probably no DD encoder in hardware :/

I wonder if a jailbroken firmware could add DD 5.1/DTS output?

[bobrocks95]

Would have to be done in software probably which might mean lag concerns, and considering we're over 20 years since HDMI 1.0 released with 8 channel LPCM support, I think you're going to have trouble finding a developer interested in adding it...

[Taiyaki]

It's a shame there isn't a small device that encodes LPCM to Dolby Digital, I love using headphone virtual surround sound with consoles that support DD 5.1. Kind of surprising considering how well-catered most audio scenarios appear to be

I use the same setup. I have a BeyerDynamic headzone I believe it's called. Takes in optical and outputs virtual surround and the end result is incredibly convincing. I say this as someone who also has a 7.1.2 setup in my film room. It sounds fantastic.

It's a pity Nintendo is still doing things this way but fortunately the Stereo sound still sounds excellent in good headphones.

[Guspaz]

5.1 on the Switch is already quite finicky over HDMI as it is, I wouldn't count on it (5.1) working at all with a USB soundcard. Surround support is missing from most Switch games in general, though.

[ASDR]

I got some high-end Sennheiser cans, makes me want to try out virtual surround with these. I think the PS5 has something similar to those virtual surround processors already build in. Do I still need to send a picture of my ear to Mark Cerny?

5.1 is hit and miss on the Switch even with notable system exclusives like Astral Chain and Xenoblade 2 missing it, but then again plenty of games like Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade 3 do support it. I'd love to play BotW2 with surround! I also got a handful of still-exclusive WiiU games left to play. Not sure how the surround support is there.

If only Nintendo would've paid those 50c to Dolby for a compressed codec option. I can't get myself to buy one of those stupid HDMI 1.4 extractors with build-in decoders and analog out...

[Konsolkongen]

No need to send earshots to Cerny (poor guy’s inbox must be flooded). IIRC there is an audio test where you select the option that sounds best to you. I think there were five levels to choose from, but I found it a bit confusing as to what I was listening for. I think one of them sounded different enough compared to the rest, so I guess that’s the one I should choose, but I was never sure.

I don’t like playing with headphones myself, I find them fatiguing so I couldn’t comment on how it sounds.

For all the audio bragging during Cerny’s Road to PlayStation 5 I think it’s super disappointing that 3D audio has been focused entirely on headphones and TV speakers. I wonder if they will ever support it in some capacity for real surround setups, like how about supporting Dolby Atmos? :/

[RebeL9]

Apart from Gamecube Nintendo have always cheapen out on their sound.

[Konsolkongen]

Apart from Gamecube Nintendo have always cheapen out on their sound.

Did Nintendo have to pay a license for Dolby Pro Logic II on the GameCube?

[ASDR]

I tried the PS5 3D audio once with a 2.1 studio monitor setup, didn't really work well. I heard from others that the speaker pseudo surround doesn't work nearly as well as the headphone implementation. Will give it a try. Should I just use the headphone out on the DS5 or do I need something fancier?

PS5 has been a lot of hype with little delivered so far. No Dolby Atmos / Dolby Vision, features like VRR and 1440p support took them years to implement. Little to no exclusive software. Everything I've played on it had perfectly good PS4 ports, plenty even reasonable Switch versions. I basically only bought mine due to FOMO and since I had the opportunity to get one at list price. Should've probably just waited for a PS5 Pro/Slim.

[bobrocks95]

Apart from Gamecube Nintendo have always cheapen out on their sound.

Did Nintendo have to pay a license for Dolby Pro Logic II on the GameCube?

For any game that explicitly advertised support, which was most 1st-party titles, yes they did. If you see the Dolby logo, they paid a licensing fee. At least for most companies it would work this way- you never know for sure that they didn't strike a long-term deal with a one-time fee or something like that.

Now I've heard there are SNES games that supported Dolby Surround (4.0 AKA Pro Logic I) but didn't pay the licensing fee. Could be the same for PLII on the GameCube/Wii, it's hard to tell. Don't know of a scientific way to confirm surround support given the limits of the tech.

PS5 has been a lot of hype with little delivered so far. No Dolby Atmos / Dolby Vision, features like VRR and 1440p support took them years to implement. Little to no exclusive software. Everything I've played on it had perfectly good PS4 ports, plenty even reasonable Switch versions. I basically only bought mine due to FOMO and since I had the opportunity to get one at list price. Should've probably just waited for a PS5 Pro/Slim.

Most all their exclusives have been timed and come to PC later right? I can't think of much that's stayed on the console. I mainly want it to fix some PS4 games' poor performance, but that's not worth $500.

[ASDR]

Most all their exclusives have been timed and come to PC later right? I can't think of much that's stayed on the console. I mainly want it to fix some PS4 games' poor performance, but that's not worth $500.

Last year's stuff (Gran Turismo 7, Horizon Forbidden West, GoW: Ragnarok) obviously doesn't have any ports yet, but even 2020's The Last of Us 2 & Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart don't have PC ports either. It seems there's a good chance for most exclusives to arrive on PC, but it seems you'll have to wait 3+ years. PS5 is little more than a PS4 Super Pro so far, but at least some devs are dropping PS4 ports now so the results should hopefully get more impressive from now on.

[Einzelherz]

I've been looking for an HDMI PCM 5.1 to DD/DTS converter for years with little luck. My situation is an older surround receiver that I don't intend to replace (as its comparable HDMI receiver variants are quite $$$).

The Switch is the only console I have that creates this problem as I don't have either of the other two modem consoles.

https://www.amazon.com/Optical-Toslink- ... 084T4QDFP/

This appears to work based on its reviews? It's hard to tell if it's just passing DD through from HDMI to Toslink or if it's doing any conversion. I suppose for $20 it might be worth the experiment though.

[Konsolkongen]

I don’t think that would work. With Switch there is no Dolby sound, so you would need a transcoder that converts uncompressed LPCM into compressed Dolby Digital. Such a device would require a license from Dolby, which is why the cheap audio extractors do not support this.

At best I think that audio extractor could do stereo LPCM through toslink.

[Guspaz]

There may be some latency, but you can find a soundcard that supports Dolby Digital Live encoding like the Sound Blaster ZxR, which goes for $85 USD on eBay (and you need the daughterboard) and some sort of HDMI capture card that supports PCM 5.1 input, and then use a PC to do the transcoding. Or just use the same thing (a PC with a Sound Blaster ZxR or similar DDL capable soundcard) to emulate the Switch.

This problem is only ever going to get worse, though, as consoles will probably eventually move to uncompressed or lossless audio formats not supported by toslink, so it's probably worth starting to think about modernizing your AVRs.

[Fudoh]

I don't know of digital multichannel LPCM to DTS/DD hardware encoder, BUT if you really want to accomplish this, it can be done by combining a HDMI to 5ch analog converter (cheaply available) with 5ch analog to DD or DTS encoder. The later have become REALLY rare though. There was a relatively cheap noname converter available until a few years ago (in the $50 range) and there was a standalone converter box by Creative something like 15 or 16 years ago. These both work really well, but sourcing either one today would at least require quite some patience.

[Einzelherz]

I don't know of digital multichannel LPCM to DTS/DD hardware encoder, BUT if you really want to accomplish this, it can be done by combining a HDMI to 5ch analog converter (cheaply available) with 5ch analog to DD or DTS encoder. The later have become REALLY rare though. There was a relatively cheap noname converter available until a few years ago (in the $50 range) and there was a standalone converter box by Creative something like 15 or 16 years ago. These both work really well, but sourcing either one today would at least require quite some patience.

I've seen some that just output to multichannel analog which would be great except that my PC currently is feeding those on my receiver.

In my case, it's very low importance and I take a look into it once every year or so. This year it popped up cause a refurb Creative external amp showed up on sale that mentioned decoding switch audio with an optical out.

[Gunstar]

I don't know of digital multichannel LPCM to DTS/DD hardware encoder, BUT if you really want to accomplish this, it can be done by combining a HDMI to 5ch analog converter (cheaply available) with 5ch analog to DD or DTS encoder. The later have become REALLY rare though. There was a relatively cheap noname converter available until a few years ago (in the $50 range) and there was a standalone converter box by Creative something like 15 or 16 years ago. These both work really well, but sourcing either one today would at least require quite some patience.

Do you have pics of the no name converter or a model number/name of the creative device? shame that they are rare now

[Fudoh]

That's the Creative one (DTS-610): https://www.ebay.com/itm/285239055408
some info on it: https://www.audioholics.com/audio-techn ... technology

Can't find the generic one right now, sorry.

[Gunstar]

Thank you, Fudoh. Never seen three analogue inputs cover 5.1 like that before, that's great, less cabling the better

[Osirus]

Thank you, Fudoh. Never seen three analogue inputs cover 5.1 like that before, that's great, less cabling the better

The connectors are all TRS so they each contain 2 separate signals with a common ground.