Here's how I understand matters, keep in mind I'm no expert here so my ultimate conclusions are questionable;
The new audio formats were, by design, never intended to be decoded anywhere other than the originating players. Because of this they can't mix multiple audio streams, one of the formats features, if you're bit-streaming audio. So various aspects can end up running without sound. It's worth noting HD-DVD didn't even allow for bit-streaming in its spec.
Now, there were a couple of interconnected problems here.
- Customers were (and still are) unwilling to go along with player decoding, they irrationally fear that player decoding will somehow be inferior to receiver decoding.
- Many receivers won't process PCM input with its equalizing presets, only sending the raw unaltered audio feed. This is the only aspect that can alter the actual sounds you hear.
That second problem is what trips a lot of people up. They may interpret it as the receivers decoder being superior. What's ironic here is that if ill-informed consumers hadn't pushed for crippled bit-streaming then receiver manufacturers could have fixed their PCM processing to allow for equalization. (which may have happened by now anyways, IDK. It seemed to stagnate to me). Instead they add needless and expensive decoding capabilities.
There are also other incredibly obtuse reasons like wanting to "get their money's worth" from their receivers or "the DTS logo
has to light up on the receiver's display."
To sum up; Don't worry about it.
