Blue Ray DTS not good! (1 Viewer)

I recently purchased a Sony BDPS-480 to replace my DVD player. It is connected to a Sony 55" LED HDTV via HDMI and the audio from the TV via Pioneer Elite VSX82 Receiver using a optical cable. I'm not completly new to home theatre but since the addition of BD things don't sound good at all. With all video displayed on my system the stereo receiver displays DIGITAL in the GUI/Front Panel. When playing a Blu-Ray disc the audio defaults to DTS (displayed from the BD player) and the Pioneer receiver defaults to DD-ProLogic II. The speaker system is a matched set of Infinity speakers configured in a 7.1 setup. As I unterstand it, DTS is the default audio for Blu-Ray. DTS audio is greatly diminished and not near as robust as DD DIGITAL on my system. If I change the audio output in the BD player to DD DIGITAL 5.1 which sounds much better to me than DTS, there is a narator's VOICE in the audio describing the actors movements on the screen. What am I doing wrong? I'm not at all impressed with the audio from the BD player in the DTS mode (standard default) and I can't get the naration voice to go away! My assesment: DTS sucks! and I guess I'm not all that impressed with the picture either. My video source is DirecTv which is full 1080i. The 1080p via the BD is just a little sharper but the accompanying audio is bad. Some help to select the correct set of input choices would be great if somebody knows the soulation. I've been through the setup manuals for the varrious components over and over but no joy! Thank You.....wellvideo

Originally Posted by wellvideo

It is connected to a Sony 55" LED HDTV via HDMI and the audio from the TV via Pioneer Elite VSX82 Receiver using a optical cable.

Click to expand...

Well, there's part of your problem right there. Virtually all TVs will downmix any multichannel audio to analog stereo before being output via the digital optical connection. You're losing up to 75% of the audio information from Blu-Ray (8 channels in, 2 channels out) by running the audio through the TV.


Secondly, you should understand that since your receiver does not decode the lossless audio formats that are available on Blu-Ray discs, the best you can do is get the lossy DD or DTS core tracks, which are still usually encoded at higher bitrates than DVD, but are not going to be night and day different.


In short, your receiver is hindering your ability to fully realize the benefits of Blu-Ray.


You should connect your Blu-Ray player to your receiver with an HDMI cable, then run a second HDMI cable out from your receiver to the TV. Your receiver is HDMI 1.2 compatible, meaning that it can process audio via HDMI, however it does not include support for lossless audio, so you will may need to configure your Blu-Ray player accordingly.


FInally, hopefully you've read the manual and done the MCACC setup. That will properly calibrate and configure your system.


Whether you choose to come back to the HTF or not (we hope you do!), it's not accurate to assess a technology without taking the due diligence to make sure you properly understand and set up the technology in the first place.


IMO, nothing about Blu-Ray "sucks" (except maybe the load times...). The audio improvement, to me, was enormous. The picture improvement was significant, though I have a much larger front projection setup that revealed the flaws inherent in DVD to a much greater degree.


Cheers!

Thank You Jason for your reply. I probably should have stated my frustrations in an other way. I have reviewed my manuals and along with your sugestion have reach the conclusion that there is a much beter way to connect my components to try and capture Blu-Ray in a better manner. I have allowed my DirecTv receiver to take over my setup. As I mentioned, my TV (Sony KDL-EX723) is 3D and in order to get the 3D to work I had to run the DirecTv receiver directly to the TV. My Pioneer AVR will not pass a 3D signal! nor does it have audio by-pass so I just let the TV do the switching instead of the AVR. What I'm about to do is cable the Sony BDPS-480 Blu-Ray player directly to the HDMI input of the AVR and cable the AVR HDMI output to the TV as you suggested. I'm hopeing that my AVR (Pionere Elite VSX-82) AVR will decode the inhearant DTS audio format of the Blu-Ray and thereby enrich my audio while playing Blu-Ray. My DirecTv HD receiver will remain connected directly to the TV for 3D. With my system connected the way it was caused me to be very disapointed in the hype about Blu-Ray but now maybe I'll be happier. Thank you again for your input. Regards......wellvideo

Lyle,


I can understand your frustration. One other drawback to the advent of Blu-Ray was a seemingly exponential increase in the number of audio "settings" and "options" that are simply confusing and scattered among both the player and the receiver.


One more thing you should probably do is from within the Blu-Ray audio setup menu, disable "secondary" audio (if that's an option). Secondary audio refers to things like Blu-Ray menu clicks and some of the special features audio (like commentaries) that are mixed "on the fly" by the player, but by doing so, generally sacrifices the lossless audio.


Most of us choose to simply keep this feature disabled until such time as you decide you want or need it.


If connecting via HDMI gives you problems, you can always opt to keep the HDMI connection from Blu-Ray to TV for video, but run the optical cable from the Blu-Ray player directly to an input on the receiver for audio. The end result should be the same, but it's not as simple a hookup as straight HDMI.


Good luck.

Thank you all the same.