Listen to DTS-encoded FLAC audio files with VLC for Linux.

[renedrive]

Hi everyone.
I tried looking for another discussion about this topic but couldn't find any.
I hope I'm not asking a duplicate question.
I'm looking for ways to play FLAC files containing audio encoded in DTS 5.1 using VLC in Linux.
They are audio files that are extracted from Audio CDs in DTS 5.1 format.
For those who don't know the format, an example is "A Telarc 5.1 Sampler" printed by Telarc in 1998 (ASIN ‏: ‎ B00000F1BK).
Besides this there are many other Audio CDs in DTS 5.1, for example Dire Straits have also made some.
These can of course be extracted as WAV files, but then also compressed with FLAC.
VLC seems to read and play WAV files correctly and decode the DTS stream correctly but not FLAC files, for these the result is digital hiss, therefore not decoded.
This happens both on OpenSUSE Linux PCs, but also on NVIDIA Shield with Android TV, which behaves in the same way.
These same DTS FLAC files can be listened to correctly if read by foobar2000 using WINE.
In my case VLC and its libraries are installed from VideoLAN repositories, but also the VLC libraries from Packman repositories and the official SUSE ones behave exactly the same way.
Does anyone happen to know why DTS 5.1 encoded FLAC files cannot be decoded by VLC?
In VLC DTS works perfectly not only with WAV audio files but also with any video format.
I thank in advance whoever will provide me with information to resolve this issue.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

I hate to state the obvious but FLAC is meant to losslessly compress linear audio, not already compressed audio. So no, VLC won't magically guess that you did something silly like "compressing" encoded DTS if it is not explicitly flagged.

That would be up to your external amplifier.

[renedrive]

Hi Rémi.
Sorry if I didn't reply sooner, but your reply wasn't notified to me and so I didn't realize you replied.
Thank you for the information.
When something doesn't work as I expect in VLC I try it alternatively with foobar2000, as I did, and as I mentioned, and I expect that if foobar2000 works as expected VLC will also do it as well, if not better.
But obviously this is not the case.
For some reason VLC doesn't seem to inspect the files it decompresses from FLAC and assumes that they are only ever encoded in linear PCM.
It doesn't matter, I'll have to get used to using foobar2000 instead of VLC.
Thank you very much for your information and I send you a warm greeting.