What's the trick to ripping a DTS-CD for Plex?

General Discussions
1

I’m ripping CD’s, and found one old DTS-CD that I’d love to include in my collection in full 5.1 surround. But I haven’t figured out how to rip it properly.

I’m using dboweramp, but am open to something else for this disc. After searching through the Plex forums, I’ve seen a few possibilities. I’ve ripped it as a WAV (both default WAV and a 5.1 WAV) and Plex either won’t play it at all, or just plays static. Some people have said to rip it to mka, but I haven’t found the best software and technique to do so. I tried renaming the .WAV to .DTS, just in case, but that was ineffective, too.

Has anyone successfully ripped a DTS-CD and can play it in full surround? (And hopefully have it transcode for non-DTS-capable devices?) If so, how did you do it?

Thank you!

2

I ripped it with Exact Audio Copy to WAV format.
That is all.

Since WAV files usually don’t support meta data, you’ll have to use folder organization and file names to tell Plex all relevant info.
See https://support.plex.tv/articles/200265296-adding-music-media-from-folders/

3

Nothing special, just straight rip to WAV with default settings in EAC? If so, wonderful. I’ll give it a shot tomorrow and see how it goes.

4

Here is an example for my only DTS-CD album:
The (sub-)folder structure and the verbose file names are very important.

    Folder: E:\HD and 5.1 Music\Sting

Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
d-----       08.02.2018     13:11                Sting - Nothing Like the Sun [dts]


    Folder: E:\HD and 5.1 Music\Sting\Sting - Nothing Like the Sun [dts]


Mode                LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                -------------         ------ ----
-a----       09.07.2012     17:34       48615884 01. Sting - The Lazarus Heart.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           2974 01. Sting - The Lazarus Heart.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:36       58976444 02. Sting - Be Still My Beating Heart.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           2604 02. Sting - Be Still My Beating Heart.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:37       47174108 03. Sting - Englishman In New York.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           2246 03. Sting - Englishman In New York.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:38       54166604 04. Sting - History Will Teach Us Nothing.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           3322 04. Sting - History Will Teach Us Nothing.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:40       72124124 05. Sting - They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo).dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           4406 05. Sting - They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo).txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:41       41995004 06. Sting - Fragile.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           1486 06. Sting - Fragile.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:42       51762860 07. Sting - We'll Be Together.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           3062 07. Sting - We'll Be Together.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:43       41395244 08. Sting - Straight To My Heart.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           3168 08. Sting - Straight To My Heart.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:44       47404604 09. Sting - Rock Steady.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:08           5434 09. Sting - Rock Steady.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:45       41806844 10. Sting - Sister Moon.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:09           1494 10. Sting - Sister Moon.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:46       53472764 11. Sting - Little Wing.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:09            814 11. Sting - Little Wing.txt
-a----       09.07.2012     17:46       21737228 12. Sting - The Secret Marriage.dts
-a----       23.12.2015     18:09           1266 12. Sting - The Secret Marriage.txt
-a----       07.09.2009     03:28          22214 folder.jpg
-a----       09.07.2012     17:49          11272 Sting - ...Nothing Like the Sun [dts].log
5

Did you do anything to convert your WAV rips to be .DTS? Or simply rename them?

Also, are the .TXT files important? I didn’t have TXT files ripped with the disc.

I attempted to rip the DTS CD into WAV format. Was successful with no errors in EAC, AccurateRip confirmed that it matched other copies. However, regardless of whether it’s named .DTS or .WAV, it doesn’t show any information in Get Info, and playback errors out on PlexWeb:

Playback Error
An error occurred trying to play “Message in a Bottle”.
Error code: s1001 (Network)

On the Roku it just silently fails.

Any advice? This disc is my white whale, I’d love to get it successfully ripped into the collection. I appreciate your help.

6

I simply renamed them from .wav to .dts

You might want to perform the Plex Dance after renaming the files.

Make sure your server has the DTS decoder. Get your self a movie with dts audio and play it back in the web app. This should trigger the download of the codec. The server needs internet connectivity!

7

I can try the Plex Dance in a few, thanks, that’ll be my first move. The server is definitely connected to the internet, and plays movies with DTS regularly. Just checked to play it safe, and yep, a movie with DTS 5.1 just played.

8

No luck. Here’s my Get Info and the XML for one of the files. This is just a straight WAV rip, renamed to .DTS. Both VLC and MPC-BE play the file successfully and list it as 5.1 DTS. Any ideas?

dts-cd
dts-cd722×359 15.5 KB

<MediaContainer size="1" allowSync="1" identifier="com.plexapp.plugins.library" librarySectionID="6" librarySectionTitle="Music" librarySectionUUID="32e2df06-ad8d-4de1-b3a6-f438189903bc" mediaTagPrefix="/system/bundle/media/flags/" mediaTagVersion="1531968318">
<Track ratingKey="13346" key="/library/metadata/13346" parentRatingKey="13343" grandparentRatingKey="13342" guid="local://13346" librarySectionTitle="Music" librarySectionID="6" librarySectionKey="/library/sections/6" type="track" title="Message in a Bottle" grandparentKey="/library/metadata/13342" parentKey="/library/metadata/13343" grandparentTitle="The Police" parentTitle="Every Breath You Take: The Classics [DTS]" summary="" index="3" parentIndex="1" ratingCount="3316139" grandparentThumb="/library/metadata/13342/thumb/1533154754" addedAt="1533154691" updatedAt="1533154819">
<Media id="19456">
<Part id="19542" key="/library/parts/19542/1533154236/file.dts" file="E:\Music\Police\Every Breath You Take - The Classics [DTS]\03 Message in a Bottle.dts" size="51395948">
<Stream id="43900" key="/library/streams/43900" streamType="4" selected="1" codec="txt" format="txt" provider="com.plexapp.agents.lyricfind" displayTitle="Unknown (TXT)"/>
</Part>
</Media>
<Extras size="0"> </Extras>
</Track>
</MediaContainer>
9

And that doesn’t change after you trigger an analysis manually?

10

When I click “Analyze” (for either the band or the album), nothing happens. No request for confirmation, and nothing shows in the server’s status section.

11

Then I think we need to take a look into the log files.
Do you have debug logging activated? (please not ‘verbose’)

12

Luckily I did indeed keep debug logging enabled (Verbose is never enabled!). If you don’t mind, I’ll PM you the logs for privacy purposes. Will do so shortly.

13

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