HD audio decoding on older A/V receiver

[AKMH]

Dear Forum Members, I will be extremely grateful for some advice regarding my following query.

I have just purchased a Sony BDP-S790 blu-ray player for use with my Sony HTSF2300 amplifier/receiver. I have been hoping to utilise the twin HDMI outputs on the 790 to feed a direct 3D video signal to my TV and send the audio via the second HDMI to the receiver. I have made the neccesary adjustments, such as activating A/V separation in the 790 audio menu settings, and video is working fine. As the HTSF2300 receiver cannot decode DTS HD-MA or Dolby TruHD audio, I was hoping to have the onboard HD audio decoding on the blu-ray player. However, after changing the HDMI audio setting output from "Auto" to "PCM", the sound through the receiver and speakers becomes distorted and muffled (the display on the receiver shows PCM audio). If I change it back to "Auto" , the sound is restored but there does not appear to be any HD decoding. The receiver display in this case shows DTS or Dolby Digital, depending on the format of the blu-ray disc, but this is only decoding the core audio stream and not the HD audio. With my previous blu-ray player (Sony BDP-S760), the display on the receiver would be grayed out, assuming that onboard HD audio decoding was occurring, and the receiver was being used as "pass-through". Also, to allow blu-ray player onboard decoding, should the audio setting be set to "BD-Mix" or "BD-Direct", assuming that this is required? Any advice on this issue would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

 

[professorhat]

Looks to me like you've got it setup correctly - I think the BD Audio Mix setting should be set to Off. If this doesn't work, all I can suggest is playing with the Dolby Digital / DTS, DTS:Neo 6 and Downmix settings as well to see if this makes a difference.

If this doesn't help, I'd suggest taking it back to your dealer to make sure it's not a problem with the Blu-ray player.

 

[AKMH]

Thank you for the reply professorhat! I have adjusted the "downmix" settings to PCM and made a few adjustments on the receiver to apply "Auto-Format Detect" and Auto Decoding (Dolby/DTS/PCM) rather than PCM decoding. The PCM decoding now seems to be working with the receiver displaying "PCM 48KHZ", and the sound from the surround speakers is no longer distorted with muffled dialogue. However, I was wondering if the blu-ray player is decoding to 2 channel linear PCM or multi-channel PCM? The reason I ask is that, in the manual for my previous BDP-S760, it states that if switched from "Auto" (external decoding) to "PCM" (internal decoding), the HDMI audio is output as 2 channel lPCM. However, the manual for the BDP-S790 does not clearly specify if stereo or multichannel PCM via HDMI. Although I can experiencing multichannel audio, I'm not sure if the Sony receiver is converting the stereo PCM audio via HDMI to multichannel or processing the decoded multichannel PCM audio received from the blu-ray player? Thanks once again for any advice!