Home Theater Forum - View Single Post - New to Blu? Buy a PS3: the most featured BD hardware available...

gobrigavitch · 06-26-2008, 12:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Souders

Hi guys,

Thought I understood audio back in the day. Not now.
Can you point me in the direction of proper audio settings....

Equipment :
PS3 connected via HDMI to Onkyo TX-SR705. Onkyo out to Oulaw Amp to 5.1 setup speakers.

I want the best/highest resolution audio output naturally.

PS3 setting - Should HDMI Audio Output format be on Linear PCM or Bitstream?

It shouldnt' matter the optical digital setting since that is not connected right?

Any other PS3 settings I should worry about?

For the Onkyo....
Which 'Listening Mode' is purest? There seem to be different ones available depending on what is sent to it.

And lastly, on Blueray's... can someone rank the order of fidelity from best to worst given multitudes of what my blueray's allow (i.e. what should I pick)?

-Dolby Digital Surround
-Dolby TrueHD 5.1
-5.1 Uncompressed (48kHz/24 bit)
-DTS HD 5.1
-PCM 5.1 (uncompressed) [is this the same as 2 up?]
-DTS HD High Resolution ES Audio
-5.1 Dolby Digital Surround EX Audio

And so, on my Onkyo, should those symbols light up? and once again, the 'listening mode' to choose?

Thanks for a simple explanation to all this

Chris

PCM, DTS HD MA and Dolby TrueHD are all lossless and all equivalent. They can only be output by the PS3 as linear PCM and will show on your receiver as multichannel PCM. Most new Blu-rays have one of these, and if present, should be selected as the audio. If one of these isn't present then pick the DD or DTS track of your choice. DD and DTS tracks other than the above can be output by bitstream to your receiver. Then your receiver can do whatever processing it wants. Many receivers are limited on the processing they can do to PCM vs bitstream, so you may want to select bitstream output for these lesser tracks. For my pioneer it really doesn't make any difference, but I don't think the Onkyo can apply PLIIx post processing to a PCM signal in which case bitstreaming would be prefferable (that's assuming you have a 7.1 setup)

I'm not really familiar with what listening modes your Onkyo has. Having said that for PCM you likely won't have many if any options to choose from. When bitstreaming DD or DTS you can apply PLIIx processsing and THX processing to the signal. THX processing can tame an overly bright disc and does some other things as well. I believe it also creates a 7 channel mix from 5 channels. PLIIx is the best way to create a 7 channel output from a 5 channel source. I don't believe the Onkyo's can apply this to PCM, but can apply it to bitstream.

I hope that helps.