HD Sound from new set up?

[admin_exported]

Hi Everyone,

First post but been reading the mag and these forums for ages now both of which have helped me buy some fantastic gear over the last couple of years. I had a PS3 as my blu ray player and bought an Onkyo 577 amp with KEF speakers and all was well, I understood that the PS3 decoded the HD sound and sent it to the amp as PCM (I hope I understood that correctly anyway 😛) and all was well.

I have just treated myself to a Samsung UE40B7020 LED TV which is awesome and I also bought a Sony BDP 370 Blu Ray player. I am however, a bit confused about the sound now. My amp is still showing as PCM so I assume the Sony is decoding the HD sound and passing it to the amp? Trouble is, none of the sound options on my amp sound correct anymore, when using the PS3 I had Multichannel selected on the amp which the manual says is the mode for use with PCM miltichannel sources. This option is not available with the 370 so the only obvious one to use is Dolby Pro Logic 2 but that sounds pretty bad in comparison.

I therefore thought I'd force the amp to do the decoding so that it would show the HD source on the amp instead of PCM but I can't work out how to that either. Anybody got any suggestions? The picture is brilliant and the sound should be but it's not as good as it used to be and I can't work out what to do.

Thanks in advance.

Edit...I read on another forum that you should turn off BD audio MIX setting in the audio options for the 370 and it will not decode and let the amp do the work but i had already tried that and no joy, justtried again, still the same, doesn't give the HD sound.

I'm stuck [🙁]

 

[Anonymous]

Is the Bluray player set to Bitsream audio? That should be the problem

 

[Anonymous]

Yep, turning off BD audio MIX setting in the audio options does that, but it still won't work.

Unless anyone can suggest anything it'll have to go back, I've tried every setting on the player and my amp and there appears to be a problem between the two, I honestly can't see that there is anything I've missed, although after 5 hours of trying to sort it out I'd be extremely happy if someone could find the problem for me.

 

[Anonymous]

Appreciate I'm being a bit impatient here but if I can't get this resolved today it's going back tomorrow as it doesn't appear to work correctly, at least not with my amp. Anyone have any ideas before I send it back?

 

[The_Lhc]

You didn't answer the question about whether you've got the player set to bitstream or not.

There's nothing wrong with the player or amp, you just need to set them up properly.

 

[Anonymous]

Yes I did?

It is set to bitstream.

 

[The_Lhc]

have you turned the secondary audio off? It's probably exactly the same issue the S360 owners used to get, can't remember what it was now though.

 

[The_Lhc]

What about the "Audio (HDMI)" setting? What's that set to?

 

[Anonymous]

Here are the settings (the options) and what I have selected.

Audio HDMI (Audio/PCM) Audio

BD Audio Mix Setting (On/Off) Off

Dolby Digital coaxial/optical (Downmix PCM/Dolby Digital) Dolby Digital

DTS coaxial/optical (Downmix PCM/DTS) DTS

Audio DRC (Auto/Standard/Wide Range) Auto and also tried Wide Range

Downmix (Surround/Stereo) Surround

If connect my PS3 and play a blu ray my amp goes straight to PCM multichannel which is playing the HD sound.

Regardless of what I do with the BD player it never goes to PCM multichannel and it never shows the HD formats on the amp, only Dolby PL II.

 

[Anonymous]

Problem solved fixed.

After taking me through a whole host of tests with the 370 and the PS3 to narrow down the problem a very helpful guy on another forum established that the problem was with the BD player and suggested a factory reset as a last resort as this can sometimes fix these inexplicable problems.

Tried that, put the settings back exactly how I had them before and now the amp displays the HD sound indicators and plays correctly. No idea what caused the problem or why that should fix it but it's working correctly, so i don't really care.

For those who have posted before asking whether a dedicated player is a worthy upgrade over a PS3 I can give a definite yes in respect of this player. The PQ is much clearer and sharper and the sound too.

Thanks to those of you who tried to help (you gave up too easily

)

 

[Anonymous]

I've had similar fun and games with an S370 and a Yamaha RX-V3800. After many happy hours, I have found the culprit in the bitstream problem. I watch more SD than HD content so still have a CRT on the end of my amp - it just looks better with SD. I tried everything in this thread to no avail including the factory reset. All I got was "PCM". I'm using the component out from the S370 and S-Video from the amp. HDMI is doing the audio only.

It seems that the Sony will only allow bitstream (or detect the amp correctly) when I have an HDMI connected TV on the monitor out of the amp and switch over the S370 to use the HDMI out for video too. If I plug that in, I get DTS-MA and Dolby HD after a couple of seconds of silence and some negotiation. If I drop back to component video I get PCM again.

I'd be interested if anyone has seen similar issues with other players, though I realise I may be in a minority with component video. Whether this has anything to do with HDCP, or the autonegotiation on the Sony is suspect, I can only guess. How about adding a "bitstream" option to the next firmware to manually force the output, rather then just "auto" & "pcm" in the current version. Yes, it is the very latest download from Sony and not the firmware that shipped.

I hope this might help others with the player. Apart from the bitstream issue, I'm pretty happy with the box and it sounds fine even if the amp isn't doing all the decoding work.