Odd "Secondary Audio" Problem in Total Media Theater

[JayX]

I put my copy of 'The Hangover' in the other day, to see it's Picture in Picture commentary mode, and even though the software confirms it's playing an English secondary audio track and I can see the PiP video feed... I can't hear it. The normal movie audio plays as it should.

I have the HTPC hooked up to my receiver using an optical connection, and the software is set to send everything over S/PDIF and this has worked fine for everything else.

Anyone had this problem, or know of a way to sort it? Can post screenshots of the Dolby/TrueHD settings pages when I get home if useful.

[BIslander]

Secondary audio is not part of the movie soundtrack bitstream. The soundtrack has to be decoded into PCM and run through a mixer in the player, where the secondary audio is mixed in. Then, the mixture is output as PCM (downmixed to stereo over optical) or re-encoded as DD 5.1 or DTS.

Many players have a setting to engage secondary audio. Otherwise they just send the movie soundtrack without the extra audio. Other players automatically mix in secondary audio when set to a PCM output. So, you need to look at the manual for your equipment and see what it says about handling secondary audio.

[JayX]

Ah cheers for that, when I approached it like that I realised there's an option to change the mixing mode (Original, DD, DTS). I've set it to DTS and it worked fine, will try do some comparisons to decide whether to leave it like that for everything or to change it just for discs that need it.