ckelly14

Just purchased a 2015 GS with ML system. I broke out my DVD-A's including Steely Dan Gaucho and they sound great..., while in park! Any forward movement makes it play on the first 5 secs of the track and it repeats itself. Questions:

1. Will a Nav override, such as the Vais Technology system I used to have, override this issue?
2. I see the system selects the Dolby Digital tracks, and won't play the DVD-A or DTS tracks. I have heard that DVD-A tracks will not play on the new ML systems, so I was expecting this. Any work-arounds?
3. Do I want the surround sound set to off or on? It actually sounds better with it off. Does this system actually use 5.1 tracks, or is everything just processed 2 channel recordings?
4. On my 2007 LS ML system, there is a way to show a display of what tracks are being used, i.e. DTS vs DDS vs PCM, etc. I don't see this on the current system.

Thanks

99alta

You got DVD-A's to play a full song ? Are you sure there isn't a PCM stream playing on those disks or do all your DVD-A's work?
And they sounded better in 2 channel output??
Reason I ask is that the ability DVD-A was removed a couple years back and is not listed as supported media now, but you stated your DVD-A's worked ?

I tried my DVD-A's in my 2014. Once or twice I was able to get a few seconds of sound and then garbled. Went through my stack of DVD-A' and discrete 5.1 DTS disks and they do not work.

What I did find though was that PCM encoded tracks work just fine outputting true 5.1.
So it appears the system no longer handles 5.1 input, just decoded 5.1 output
Which is fine as a PCM sounds just as good as discrete DTS in most cases, but still renders our true DVD-A 's useless.

In an effort to get better sound I threw in some of my Music video DVD's and as long as they have a PCM stream they work and sound awesome. The video plays while the car is stopped, when moving the video is overlayed but the music keeps playing. And yes there are bypass systems others have used here to keep the video from being overlayed.
Here is a link to another thread on the subject. https://www.clublexus.com/forums/is-...ewer-ml-s.html

ckelly14

When I insert a DVD-A, It looks like the player is using the DD 5.1 track. Is there a display option which will show me which format is being played?

I previous burned 5.1 tracks to DVD-R and they also work fine. DTS is not supported- I can select these tracks and they play but no sound. If I sit with the car in park, it plays all the way through. If I start moving, the video goes dim (as expected), but the track starts at the beginning, plays about 5 secs, then restarts.

99alta

^^
As far as I know there is no way the system will tell use which format is being played.

Don't know why the sound doesn't continue to play? I have noticed that once in a while the ML system does strange things like your seeing, if there are multiple formats on the same disk.
Like my Eagles Hell Freezes Over video disk. I select PCM audio track and it usually functions normally. But once in a while no sound comes out and I have to reload the disk and select PCM again.

Also sometimes my Bluetooth music will just start playing along with the IPod music that was already selected, how it can play two sources at the same time is weird? I didn't do anything other than start the vehicle ??

Afrosheen

Songs with video tracks will stop, I don't know if the plugin module fixes this or not. I do have some discs that play true 5.1 without stopping but it's hit or miss.

99alta

You're saying that songs with video tracks will stop.

What do you make of the fact I can watch my Hell Freezes Over video disk then put the car into drive without the music skipping a beat? The video gets written over by the Navi screen and everything works as expected.

As per the 2014 Lexus manual the ML system will only play DVD's using DD, PCM and MPEG audio formats. Which can all be encoded to output 5.1 sound.

My guess is the disks that work while moving contain PCM and DTS formats on the same disk.

Looking at a bunch of video DVD's tonight and notice a good percentage are DD. Some have multiply formats such as PCM and DTS,DD.
PCM streams sound the best IMHO.

When you say "true 5.1" which format are you referring to?

ckelly14

I know the above was not directed towards me but I have a few questions since you seem to have some experience with this.

I have read that DVD-A is not supported. Not sure what this really means since there are quite a few options on a DVD-A disc.

Obviously for me, the DD tracks work quite fine. If ML can use PCM tracks, which I believe is the same format for CD's, why can't is use the higher quality PCM tracks that we all bought DVD-A's for? Is it a bandwidth issue (I know this was the case for the ML in my 2007 LS), or is an issue with not being able to decode the lossless compression (MLP)?

Also, where in the manual are you finding this information about supported files?

Thanks.

99alta

It's all good, welcome to the conversation.

All it means is that the DVD-A format itself is not supported. As you mention Disks made for DVD-A often have other formats recorded on the disk for compatibility purposes. Without the system telling us, we really have no idea which format is actually playing

I believe the hardware (including the DSP chip) is capable of playing most formats including DVD-A.
From what I gather from reading other threads the ML system has lost functionality since it first came out. It now plays only the basis formats,only.
Why would Lexus do this? IMHO to save paying royalties on all the various Codecs needed to make the various streams play through the hardware.

Page 444 of the main manual, lists the playable formats.

P.S. Acura did the same thing, my 2005 TL plays DVD-A and supports a ton of other codecs. No so with the 2015 model. I think the costs add up paying royalties on the various codecs, so it one way of saving $$

Afrosheen

I'm no expert on this, just have a little experience beating my head against the corporate wall to get some surround formats playing on a system that advertised 5.1 surround.

In my case, I've gotten movies to play 5.1 DD if I choose it from the setup menu prior to playing the disc.

For audio discs, once I choose the mix on David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust DVD-A (the 5.1 mix specifically), it will play without skipping during driving. However, it chooses a 2 channel stream if you don't explicitly pick the audio stream after inserting the disc.

Led Zeppelin's "How the West Was Won" is also 5.1 DD and also skips during driving. Same thing happens to Bjork's Vespertine and Depeche Mode's limited edition 5.1 presentation of Violator. The one thing all these discs have in common is that they were authored with the audio embedded in an mp4 stream, which is of course video, and the player doesn't like that when you're driving.

I think the David Bowie disc is the only one that works properly because it's not trying to play video. It may be a PCM stream without video and that's why it works.

As to bandwidth concerns, the 2013+ ML systems don't have the bandwidth limitation of earlier ML systems. The DACs can easily handle 24/192 audio at very high bitrates, so that's not the issue. I know this was a problem on the last generation systems but it's something they addressed.

If it were up to me, I'd add multichannel ALAC and FLAC playback to the system. DVD-A is a stillborn format that never made it very far. SACD is also pretty much dead and the ML system won't recognize them anyway. I've tried ripping 6 channels from some of my discs and using a real Dolby 5.1 encoder to create a new DVD-A disc without video and the head unit just spits it out. I don't know if it's looking for an encrypted bit to keep the stream secure or what, but it doesn't like anything I make and feed it. My computer doesn't care.

Anyway, I guess the wait continues for a viable surround solution in a car with 17 speakers, 880 watts of power, and a head unit that is supposed to decode 5.1 formats.

ckelly14

I have been poking around past posts and I came upon a solution for my problem. I went to the main menu > settings > audio >DVD settings and turned off the "Auto Start Playback" function. Someone in 2012 posted that this would help the track restart problem and Bingo! This worked. I can now drop in Steely Dan Gaucho and have it play the DD 5.1 surround sound track while driving.

Try it!

Here's the link to the previous thread

Afrosheen

That sounds excellent, I'll give it a try alongside the other stuff I'm experimenting with (again). Will report back later.

ckelly14

I saw that responded to my other thread, thanks.

I tested the above with all my DVD-A's (all ten of them) and this solved the problem.

Afrosheen

I can confirm this is true. The skipping stopped, I just chose the 5.1 DD presentation in the menu and started driving. This is a fix! I hope this get stickied.

ckelly14

Awesome!

Afrosheen: I found good step by step instructions on how to rip the PCM 5.1 data from the DVD-A disc, but not sure what file type would actually be readable on the ML stereo. WAV?

Afrosheen

Yeah it can be made into a Dolby Digital wav after being extracted from an AC3 5.1 stream. You'll need something like SurCode to do it which I couldn't get to install on Windows 7. I have a Dolby DTS encoder and made a DTS CD and it failed to play. The head unit recognized it but there was no sound. Stuck with DVD-A but that's better than nothing. There are tools to author your own DVD-A discs but I'm not sure what the options need to be, the HU seems to be fairly picky.