Perfect Audio? Optical or HDMI Cable

CTU_Agent

Hi, Quick question, perhaps someone has a quick answer. When watching a BLU-RAY and to achieve optimum sound quality should I connect the blu ray to my AV reciever with HDMI cable or optical audio cable?

Idleater

Depends on the Blu-ray player and the audio processor.

The optimum from the BDP-83SE is 8 analogue connectors to the corresponding analogue section on a capable Processor.

Without knowing what equipment you have, then it is an impossible question to answer, because your amp may not even accept Audio over HDMI meaning Optical would be better.

In theory though, yes, HDMI allows for full uncompressed bitrate HD audio whereas Optical maxes out at DTS@1.5mb/s.

CTU_Agent

fair point.

My blu ray player is sony bdp 360

Connected (presently) via hdmi to yamaha rv367 outputting to a set of 5.1 speakers and a 1080i TV

As far as I know, av reciever doesnt do DTS HD decoding but as long as the source i.e blu ray player does I should be ok...I think...Sorry for the complete noviceness but HE is such a minefield these days and when I trying to get to an optimum setup I want to make sure i have everything connected right...:o

Idleater

The 357 doesn't decode HD Audio nor does it accept uncompressed LPCM, the HDMI is switching only (convenience - so you only have to run one cable to the TV and plug everything into the 357).

Therefore, you want to use Optical for audio and HDMI for video. If there are settings in the 360 to downmix HD audio to full bitrate DTS you should pick that option - I know the PS3 does this so I presume the other sony's do.

CTU_Agent

Ok...now im officially confused. You reference the 357 model of av receiver, im using a 367...are we reading from the same hymn sheet....

CTU_Agent

found this piece of info, may be useful...

."What you will be missing with this receiver is any sort of native high definition HDMI audio decoding. This means no HD audio codecs like Dolby TrueHD and DTS HD Master Audio. While the RX-V367 can still accept uncompressed multichannel PCM over HDMI and standard definition audio, it can't decode any of the high def audio codecs internally. While for some this isn't much of a problem, those that prefer to do all the decoding at the receiver will need to step up to a higher model...."


So if I am to understand, this receiver (367 yamaha) although it doesn't do HD decoding, if the source (bdo 360), handles decoding I dont need to worry about that...am i completley wrong?

Idleater

CTU_Agent wrote: »

So if I am to understand, this receiver (367 yamaha) although it doesn't do HD decoding, if the source (bdo 360), handles decoding I dont need to worry about that...am i completley wrong?

Apologies, you may be correct. The link I was working off was this which doesn't let me download the manual without logging in. Also, I referred to 357 instead of 367

But yes, if it supports LPCM, then get the player to decode the audio (which the specs indicate it does) and you will have to use HDMI.

CTU_Agent

thanks. I have now set the player to play direct and it now indicates output for audio at DTS master HD 3/2/1.0.

Receiver is showing signal to be PCM 3/2/1.0 48KHZ over HDMI so I guess thats probably as good as im going to get????

Thanks for the help !

Idleater

Yeah, although the max resolution of hd audio tracks is 192 khz, most are encoded @ 48, with the odd one @96.

Btw, there's nothing wrong with player decoding, It's the same quality as bitstream decoding in the amp.