DTS out from Laserdisc players. (1 Viewer)

[Jongyoon Lee]

I have two Pioneer LD players, CLD-52 and DVL-909. They used to work fine in the previous setup with Denon AVR-5700 some years ago. I was able to play DTS encoded titles, like Eagles Hell Freezes Over, and Denon was able to decode DTS in stunning quality.

I have scrapped the HT system since then, and stored the LD players in the garage. Recently I have started building another HT system, and I bought Sony DA5000ES receiver. I like the receiver a lot. I have a DVD player connected to it and it can decode DD and DTS tracks without any problem.

Tonight I have decided to try out the old LD player. I have been struggling to get the DTS to the receiver, but couldn't get it to work. The receiver displays "Decoding error" message on the display. I've tried both players, on both coax and toslink output, but the result is the same. When I tried non-DTS LD, the receiver recognized PCM input, so the connection seems to be ok.

Has anyone seen problems like this before?

 

[Philip Hamm]

Nope. It's a problem with the receiver. I'd contact Sony. You'll have the same problem with DTS CDs because they work the same way as the LaserDiscs.

 

[John Garcia]

I just worked on a friend's system and he has a Sony 3ES with an old Pioneer LD player and DTS via optical worked fine. Can you try a DTS CD in your DVD player to see if you get the same results? (hopefully you have one...) If you DO get the same results, it is definitely the receiver.

 

[Jongyoon Lee]

Well, it's the first time to hear the DTS track is encoded differently for CD/LD than DVD. I don't think I have any DTS encoded CD, but it would be an interesting experiment. I'll grab one and try it out tonight.

 

[John Garcia]

LD and CD use a PCM track that "stuffs" the DTS coding in the PCM stream so it can be passed digitally. The result is the same; I think it just has to do with how it is read off the disc and passed, not really that it is a different encoding.

I couldn't find anything about the encoding on CD/LD vs DVD. There are some docs that are listed, but they have restricted access.

 

[greg_t]

I agree with Phillip. I had a CLD52 and use to use it into an RCA reciever. Very frequently the RCA reciever would loss it's lock on the DTS signal and just turn to noise. I replaced it with a Pioneer reciever and it never happended again. I think your reciever is having issues locking onto the DTS signal from the ld player, but it is more an error with the reciever.

 

[Jongyoon Lee]

Silly me.. It was the receiver indeed. In the setup menu digital input was set to PCM. Changed it to AUTO, and now it can decode DTS. Still unsure how the DTS track from DVD still worked when it was set to PCM.

 

[greg_t]

As noted above, DTS is stored different on dvd than it is on laserdisc. On my RCA reciever I never lost the signal on a DTS DVD, they always played great. It was only on DTS laserdisc were the reciever would not "lock" onto the signal. Odd thing is it would work for a while, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes 5 minutes. Turning the reciever off and back on would fix it again for a while.

I replaced the RCA with a Denon reciever and it had a specific DTS Lock mode that you could turn on to "lock" onto the DTS signal. It had a little write up about why it may be needed in the owners manual. I know have a pioneer elite reciever and it has no lock mode but never has any issues with DTS laserdisc.

 

[Jongyoon Lee]

Yes, it does seem that way as I find more about this. I bought a DTS transfer of Diana Krall's Love Scenes for testing. Using the same DVD player, and the same digital connection to the receiver, the DTS tracks from this CD were not recognized by the receiver. But when I played DTS track from DVD, such as War of the worlds and the Gladiator, the receiver recognizes the encoding correctly as DTS and DTS-ES. It appears CD and Laserdisc have slightly different encoding scheme for DTS.