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Question about PCM

post #1 of 5
3/9/09 at 7:19pm
Thread Starter 
Hi all. Im very new to the whole home theater thing and am a little confused.

My current setup is as follows
Pioner vsx-918 receiver
Sharp BD player
Klipsch Cinema 6 speaker set.

When my Xbox360 is hooked up, my receiver shows DD5.1, but when I watch blu ray, my receiver shows up as PCM. The blu ray has a dolby hd decoder, but my receiver doesn't. Does the PCM mean that my receiver is just "passing through" HD sound or do I still need to have a receiver that decodes that itself? I can tell that there's a HUGE difference in the clarity of the sound from my blu ray, but wanted to make sure I'm getting the best audio before I go spend $800 on a new receiver and realize I don't need it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you so much for your posts.

Jeremy
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post #2 of 5
3/10/09 at 4:23am

Re: Question about PCM

You've got two issues there. First, there is probably an option in the audio menu of your blu ray player (BDP) to select between bitstream and pcm. You want bitstream. This will allow the BDP to send dolby digital to your receiver via the right connection (HDMI, optical audio or digital coaxial audio). You'll get your 5.1 this way. You will not however get Dolby True HD or DTS HD with these connections because your receiver can't decode them. That's the second issue. The only way to get those new audio formats if your receiver doesn't decode them is to have a player which has 5.1 or 7.1 analog audio outputs and a receiver that has 5.1 or 7.1 analog audio inputs and connect it that way. That is what I am currently doing since I didn't want to replace my receiver.
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post #3 of 5
3/10/09 at 5:46am

Re: Question about PCM

Jeremy,

First, welcome to the forum.

I did a quick search for your receiver and found that it does come w/ HDMI inputs *and* sounds like it can handle multi-channel PCM thru HDMI even though it doesn't decode the new lossless formats. If that's correct (and there certainly are quite a few entry level receivers like that), then you just need your BD player to internally decode the new lossless formats and pass the multi-channel PCM sound out thru the HDMI connection to your receiver. In that case, you probably *do* want to set your player to output PCM, not bitstream (so it'll decode internally for you).

If that's how you have things set up (and that might well be the case considering the results you're hearing), then you should be good to go and won't need a new receiver that handles the new lossless formats -- I'm guessing most recent (and future) BD players can do internal decoding and output multi-channel PCM too.

The only other thing I can think of is whether your player can decode DTS-HD/MA, not just Dolby TrueHD. Some (older) players cannot process DTS-HD/MA. And I have no idea about Sharp's players.

_Man_
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post #4 of 5
3/10/09 at 11:12am

Re: Question about PCM

Thanks for cleaning up my mistake.
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post #5 of 5
3/10/09 at 9:58pm
Thread Starter 

Re: Question about PCM

Thanks for your help guys. You're right on the blu ray too, it doesn't do dts-ma. But if I can get ddhd I guess I'm fine for now. If I did decide to up the receiver, I was thinking about the Pioneer Elite 01 or 03txh. Any recommendations?
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