dolby digital and dolby true hd on the dark knight sound the same.

[Alsone]

professorhat:Okay, have tried this out now - whilst the Dolby Digital core certainly is louder, there's no where near as much detail in the track.

Still no official What Hi Fi Test on this. Surely this is quite fundamental to BD as its one of the major buying points and also one of the most important setiing decisions?

Unfortunately Prof, I don't have the Dark Knight BD to try it out on but on National Treasure there's definately more sound detail on downscaled DD even after flash conversion:

http://www.vimeo.com/2417407

At the start when the soldiers come on listen to the horses and the sounds of the walking, they're not only louder but more fine detail in the sounds of the boots in the gravel etc are retreived.

As I said before, this isn't DD vs True HD but True HD vs DD internally converted from the True HD track by the BD35.

Still a mystery to me though why converted True HD sounds better than True HD.

 

[Anonymous]

Regarding a few people saying the dialogue was a little quiet in parts, this was how it was at the cinema too. I watched the Dark Knight in 2 different cinemas, and there was a section at the beginning and towards the end where the dialogue was too low.

As for standard DD being as good as HD codecs.....sorry, but no.

 

[jase fox]

gooner26:in fact the dolby digital soundtrack sounds louder! maybe they made a mistake swapping the audio around.First of all gooner26 do you have the DRC (dynamic range control) set to either "auto" or "on" on your AMP & BLURAY PLAYER by any chance? id check to see if you have or not, if so then on both your amp & player turn them off ! as when i first got my amp id left the DRC to on & i felt the same way you did that standard dolby digital sounded better than True HD etc but i can assure you that True HD is far more superior, ive just recently watched the dark knight & the soundtrack is fantastic its certainly up there with the best ! i could honestly say that since watching movies on bluray that this movie is one of the best if not the best for a reference quality bluray experience in both in terms of PQ & SQ i was totally blown away by it & id recommend anyone to watch it as it will let you know just how good your set up actually is. Highly recommended.

 

[gooner26]

hi, for the record im listening to the dark knight through my hi-fi system and i still actually prefer listening via the dolby digital option. i aslso have bladerunner and numerous other blu-ray discs and i would be the first to say what a massive difference true hd is over plain old dolby digital, but with the dark knight the dd option sounds every bit as good as the true hd track. it must be some kind of fault on the disc. p.s. i have DRC set to off.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, just watched it and the soundtrack blew me away.

I suggest some folk need to sort their systems out. There were no dialogue issues, explosions were room shaking and the surround effects and detail were outstanding. This was with volume at -30db - see sig for kit list.

My only gripe was with occassional PQ issues.

 

[Anonymous]

I agree i think the Dark Knight is one of the best examples of an HD soundtrack that i have heard, granted you have to turn the volume up over the DD version, but the dynamics were excellent.

 

[Anonymous]

It appears to me that with the various setting options available both on the Blue Ray players and AV amps they make noticeable differences to the soundtracks.
Also I suspect the type and quality of speaker package (5:1, 7:1) along with whether they are a 'Style' or 'Full size' Stand mounted or Full size all adds to the sense of the performance in the room.

If all this is not a 'can of worms' I don't know what is!

I have got my system sounding really nice and am very happy with it, but it doesn't stop me still reading something on here and fiddling with the settings to see if I am missing something!

For me I prefer my PS3 set to bitstream and the Onkyo 875 does the processing in DD THX 5:1.
I have my PS3 Set up to the following.....
Have attached profesional comments to some of the settings.

BD/DVD menu:

Cinema Conversion: Automatic

Upscale: Normal

BD/DVD Video Output Format : Bitstream

BD 1080p 24Hz output (HDMI): Off
Most Blu-ray discs are encoded at 1080p/24 (1,920x1,080 pixels @ 24 frames per second. Many HDTVs cannot accept 1080p/24, however, and many more can but don't get any benefit from this setting, and can look choppy or otherwise incorrect. Unless your TV is designed to accept 1080p/24 signals--this includes most LCD models with 120Hz processing, as well as select plasmas with different refresh rates--you should leave this setting turned off.

Display Settings menu:

Video Output Settings: Ticked boxes up to 720p, I let my Onkyo upscale from there.

Cross Color Reduction Filter: Off
This setting only applies to S-Video and composite-video output, not HDMI.

RGB Full Range (HDMI): Limited
This setting controls the range of information output via HDMI. Contrary to what you might think, this setting is best left on Limited for video-based material like Blu-ray and DVD for the majority of HDMI televisions. Some newer HDTVs can receive a slight benefit from Full if calibrated properly, but in general Limited is the best choice, and we use it in the lab to ensure compatibility of the reference player with all displays.

Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr Super-White (HDMI): On
This setting controls whether the PS3 will pass blacker-than-black and whiter-than-white parts of the video signal. It's really only useful during calibration, which is why we leave it turned on. Many discs don't contain material in above white or below black.

Hope this is of help.

 

[jase fox]

ajeffo:I agree i think the Dark Knight is one of the best examples of an HD soundtrack that i have heard, granted you have to turn the volume up over the DD version, but the dynamics were excellent.I agree that the dark knight is a great soundtrack, however have you heard "the mummy returns" in DTS Master Audio?? If there was ever a reference for Sound quality on bluray for master audio this would be it? It is absolutely fantastic & its certainly what i would use as a demo for sound.

Every speaker is used to its full potential, amazing surround spot effects, accurate placement etc i cant praise it enough, even if you dont like the movie itself i advise you check it out for the soundtrack alone so youll be able to see just how good your system really is?

Highly recommended !!

 

[professorhat]

Trevor - have you tried letting the PS3 upscale your DVDs to 1080p recently? There was a firmware update a few months ago which improved the DVD upscaling and I did a comparison between letting the PS3 upscale and my Onkyo 905 (though I have to say, I set the PS3 to 576p when doing this test). The PS3 was very noticeably better once the firmware was applied.

Worth a go

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Prof,

Yes I remember the update, however I only play Blue Ray on mine which I get 4 a month off Love film.
An interesting observation!

 

[professorhat]

But that Samsung is a 1080p model isn't it? So by setting the PS3 to 720p when playing Blu-Rays, you're losing detail. You should definitely have the PS3 set to output 1080p otherwise when playing Blu-Rays, the PS3 is downscaling the native 1080p picture to 720p and then the Onkyo or TV is filling in the missing detail to get the resolution back up to 1080p...

 

[Anonymous]

Yes it is a Full HD set, I have tried it both ways. Letting the PS3 put it out @ 1080p (this way it passes straight through the 875 to the TV) or allowing the 875 to do the processing up from 720p.

The Onyko does a slightly better job of it to my eyes so I let it do the processing. Not much in it mind you.

 

[professorhat]

Well, if it looks better to you, fair enough, but it doesn't really make much sense how this can possibly be. Remember, with Blu-Rays, the PS3 is not upscaling or doing any processing on the picture - Blu-Rays' native resolution is 1080p. So by setting it to 720p, you are downscaling the picture and thus actually losing detail from the native picture. You're then asking the Onkyo to fill in or make up the detail which was lost in the first step...

Then again, I also can't really understand how you prefer the standard Dolby Digital and DTS tracks over the native Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD Master Audio tracks so maybe it's just me!

 

[Anonymous]

I'm not that geeky that I fully understand all the technicalities, but on A/B testing I have very keen senses. Bitstream rather than LPCM is I find Superior. Also as I do some gaming the 720p setting is the best.

* You get better focus on each subject.
* There is greater depth in the image.
* You can hear musical instruments playing continuously and independently of everything else - you hear them concurrently, not sequentially.
* Musical instruments become joined-up and coherent, instead of independant and unrelated.
* The timing of music is improved, because the gaps between notes are filled with delicate decays and reverberations.
* They were there on purpose when the piece was produced, played and recorded.
* Without this small-signal fidelity, you just hear sound - pause - sound - pause etc, which is empty and boring, there's no flow, pace or variety.
Perhaps with the Reon chip doing the rebuilding it's a shorter path to the TV screen which gives the picture an hand.
Here is an explanation as to why by someone who knows what he is talking about......

Firstly, there's no reason why bitstream should sound the same as LPCM. The digital audio replay architecture is different, and that means the sound may be different. I'd better explain that, quick.
A digital audio signal has two elements - a data stream and a timing stream. Both end up at the DAC to create the analogue audio signal, and both need robustness and fidelity.

These streams are quite distinct, and take different critical paths:
The data stream starts at the disc, and ends up at the DAC.
The timing stream starts at the master clock, and also ends up at the DAC.

The bitstream decoding process ONLY affects the data stream, and I think we are all pretty confident that that is lossless, so the DAC is receiving the right data, whichever decoding architecture is used.

However, this architecture MAY affect the path of the timing stream . This isn't necessarily the case, but my experience with the Onkyo suggests that it is. With LPCM, the clock is in the transport, and the path takes the HDMI connection to the receiver and too the DACs.
This is a tortuous path, and is full of degradation - like toslink but worse.
With bitstream, there's no clock associated with the data because its compressed, and the clock is regenerated in the amplifier, just as it is with DD and DTS. This places the clock right next to the DAC, with robust and direct connection, which is ideal. This doesn't eliminate interference, noise and jitter, but its a very big help.

So with bitstream there is an opportunity to minimise jitter, though this is only achieved if the amplifier doesn't generate its audio clock from the players video clock, in the same way it does with LPCM. For a year, I've never known which it was, but I think that question has now been answered in my mind, now. Of course, my observations may not apply to other amplifiers, like Pioneers, which have different architectures. I'm itching to find out....

 

[professorhat]

Jeez, I'm glad you're not that geeky...