Audio Problems (1 Viewer)

[jcrilley3]

I recently bought a Pioneer BDP 51FD Blu Ray Player. I have it connected directly to my Sony LCD tv via an HDMI cable. The picture is fantastic. However,when I connect the audio from the Blu Ray player to my Pioneer Elite VSX 24TX via an optical cord I can only get compressed 2 channel sound.
The Pioneer receiver is about 8-9 years old and does not have HDMI inputs.
I have opened the on screen menu to audio set up but it won't allow me to switch from compressed 2 channel to dolby digital. The optical cable from my cable box to the receiver works fine as 5.1 channel so I tried that cable and it still was coming from the Blu Ray player as compressed 2 channel audio.

Any thoughts?

 

[Greg_R]

What on screen menu, the receiver or bluray player? In the Pioneer you'll want to set the audio output to the option that has 'LPCM' (not 'bitstream'). LPCM will cause the player to decode the format and send the audio to the receiver. Bitstream would send the encoded stream to the receiver which would require the guts to decode the audio.

 

[jcrilley3]

This is the on screen menu for the Blu Ray player.

 

[Ed Moxley]

I thought it had to be "Bitstream" to work over optical cable?

 

[jcrilley3]

Problem solved. I bought a digital coaxial cable and it worked! How sweet the sound. And I don't have to spend $500.00 to buy a new receiver with an HDMI input. Although I would like to.

 

[gene c]

When using a toslink or coax connection for audio (and hdmi for video only) the HDMI High Speed Output has to be set to Off in the 51's Setup Navigator Menu (This is wrong! See the edit below). This should also be true when using a coaxial digital cable. The audio settings in the manual are very confusing .

Edit: After playing around with it some more, it appears the High Speed setting doesn't have anything to do with it. It seems as though when you make a change in the Setup Navigator (like choosing between HDMI, Digital and Analog audio out) you have to complete the entire Setup Navigator process (which only takes a minute) for the changes to be completed. Ending the process early seems to cause the settings to revert back to what they were. I have to go through this process every time when switching from 7.1 to Digital out. Again, it doesn't take very long, but still.... Strange.