Using Bluray player in an analogue 2.0 stereo setup.

[humptydumpty]

Dear All,

[I am reposting this, as I cannot find the new thread that I just started with this subject]

I have searched the internet and several forums, but I can't quite figure it out and wanted to know which options I have before making a purchase that I later regret. My problem is the following:

I have a stereo (2.0) set with a Marantz pm6004 and a pair of old Philips speakers, which works pretty well for me. My TV (an LG 42LA8609) has an analogue stereo output (actually for headphones), which I connected with an RCA input from the pm6004, giving me good audio results for programmes broadcasted on TV. If I could get similar stereo audio quality for DVDs and Blu-ray movies, I would be perfectly happy.

So I was wondering if I can simply connect a bluray player via HDMI with the TV, let the bluray player downmix the audio to stereo, which then goes via the HDMI cable to the TV, and which the TV then sends to the pm6004 via the analogue stereo output.

Alternatively, if the above does not work, would it be a good solution to buy a blu-ray player that can downmix multichannel sound to stereo and can then output this signal through an analogue RCA stereo output (it looks like the e.g. Marantz UD5007 and the Yamaha BD-S677 do this, but I am not 100% sure).

Or would it even be an option to downmix to stereo in the bluray player, output the digital stereo signal through an optical or coaxial output, and use this in combination with an affordable DAC?

Could Someone please tell me which (if any) of the above options would work? Or is there a risk that none of the above would provide a fullproof solution.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[stavvy]

I dont see any reason why any of the methods you have stated wouldnt work but I dont understand why you dont just try the first option you have written about and see how you like the sound? i.e. connect blu ray to tv via hdmi and as you already have tv out via RCA to amplifier should send the audio anyway?

alternatively, as you say use a cheap DAC to convert digital signal from blu ray to analogue and connect via RCA to another input on your amp.

one of these little DACs would do the job and they can be had cheaper if you look around:

http://www.richersounds.com/product/other-tv-accessories/cyp/aud3-192/cyp-aud3-192

I actually use one of these CYP products but in reverse (convert analogue via RCA to digital optical - an ADC if you will) to take the analogue out sound from my tv, convert it to digital, and feed it into my home theatre amplifier. Only do this because my TV doesnt have the audio return channel (ARC) over hdmi and I ran out of RCA inputs on my cinema amp.

 

[plastic penguin]

I had a similar issue recently. Wanted to purchase a Blu-ray but needed to connct the player to my stereo amp.

Eventually ended up with a Panasonic player which is cracking for the money, although if I had the money to spare I would've purchased Pioneer with Dac.

I have a 32" LG TV and the only analogue connections I have are inputs and thus cannot be directly connected to the amp unless you use the optional optical 'out'... again this can only be connected directly to the amp via a Dac.

Think just look for a player analogue 'out', such as Pannies, Samsung, Cambridge and Marantz (these are the ones I know about), it'll save a lot of faffing.

 

[humptydumpty]

Thanks so far, stavvy and plasticpenguin.

@stavvy: the reason why I was asking is that I simply did not know if all blu-ray players offer the option of downmixing to stereo, and if this signal is always passed on digitally. And even if so, there might be aspects or complications that are not so easy to find in user manuals, so this seemed a good place to ask and find out if I could encounter any unexpected obstacles.

@plasticpenguin: it seems that there are less and less players with an RCA output, so I prefer not to limit my options by looking just at that group of players. Thanks for your suggestion on a DAC, too.

In the meantime, I found a thread on avsforums, about whether or not LFE channels are (always) discarded in a downmix from multichannel to 2.0 stereo. I did not check on the Whathifi forums to see if there had been a similar discussion here. All in all, because of all this, I think I´ll go for a slightly cheaper bluray player (and not the Marantz UD5007), so that my budget still leaves room for a budget soundbar, just in case I am not pleased with the result of the stereo downmix. I'm currently considering the the Sony BDP-s6200 which receives consistently positive reviews, and if the result of the downmix is not satisfying, I might add the Yamaha YSP-140 (hope it won't be necessary though

cheers.

 

[stavvy]

Thanks so far, stavvy and plasticpenguin.

@stavvy: the reason why I was asking is that I simply did not know if all blu-ray players offer the option of downmixing to stereo, and if this signal is always passed on digitally. And even if so, there might be aspects or complications that are not so easy to find in user manuals, so this seemed a good place to ask and find out if I could encounter any unexpected obstacles.

@plasticpenguin: it seems that there are less and less players with an RCA output, so I prefer not to limit my options by looking just at that group of players. Thanks for your suggestion on a DAC, too.

In the meantime, I found a thread on avsforums, about whether or not LFE channels are (always) discarded in a downmix from multichannel to 2.0 stereo. I did not check on the Whathifi forums to see if there had been a similar discussion here. All in all, because of all this, I think I´ll go for a slightly cheaper bluray player (and not the Marantz UD5007), so that my budget still leaves room for a budget soundbar, just in case I am not pleased with the result of the stereo downmix. I'm currently considering the the Sony BDP-s6200 which receives consistently positive reviews, and if the result of the downmix is not satisfying, I might add the Yamaha YSP-140 (hope it won't be necessary though

cheers.

ah! sorry, I thought you already had a blu ray player and were asking how best to connect it up to the amp, didn't realise you were looking to buy, sorry! *smile*

 

[Glacialpath]

Hi humptydumpty how are you?

I'm pretty sure it is a requirement for all entry and mid level DVD and BD players to have analogue stereo outputs on the back.

The others are rigt, you shouldn't have a problem sending everything via HDMI to the TV and as you have the headphone output connected to you amp the sound should come out like it does when you watch broadcast TV signals.

VIA HDMI the player should recognise it isn't connected to a multichannel receiver and adapt accordingly. All 5.1/7.1 audio streams have to be able to downsample. If there is ever an issue with down sampling it might be the disc. This wouldn't warrent you sending a disc back however as the next one you get will be exactly the same.

This is unlikely to happen as people have been watching 5.1 audio streams through even mono set up let alone a stereo set up without a problem for years. The only difference being your source will be a blu-ray player instead of a DVD player.

All players have a DAC in them otherwise you can't have analogue out. Same for your TV. You just decide which is best.

If you stick with HDMI to TV then you will still only have the one cable going into the back of your amp and that's the one from the TVs headphone socket.

Something that might help you get slightly better sound is if a BD or DVD has a stereo audio option then use that instead of the multichannel. It doesn't matter if it's Stereo PCM, Dolby Digital, DOlby TrueHD, DTS or DTS HD-Master. The player should be able to decode them all and send them to you TV.

Last thing. When you get a player set the audio out to PCM and either Downmix or Lt Rt and you will be fine.

Hope that doesn't confuse you. Ask me if it does.

 

[humptydumpty]

Stavvy, no problem; your answer was helpful anyways ;-)

Glacialpath, I'm well, thanks And many thanks for your detailed answer. I did not realize that some discs also offer the opportunity of selecting a stereo channel. I´ll also keep your advise in mind of selecting PCM for the downmixing - that might save me from a headache and unnecessary frustration ;-) Now let´s see if I manage to buy the right player - hopefully tomorrow.

 

[plastic penguin]

Have a read of my thread, Mr. Humpty. It was long and drawn out but may help as regards where my loyalties lay.

 

[humptydumpty]

Took me a little while to respond, but yes, thanks for referring me to your thread, Plastic Penguin. Funny and interesting to read, although I kind of scanned through the parts about scart connections, and something about an engineer.. Oh and something about a 200 pounds school uniform...

I did not yet purchase anything, because other things came inbetween. In any case, I have to say, that Pioneer BDP450 that you bought first certainly looks interesting (specs-wise), even though it doesn't have analog outputs (which in my case isn't directly an issue, as Glacialpath and Stavvy pointed out earlier So I think I will even put that on my shortlist. Checked online and even seems to play ISO in addition to DIVX as well as XVID. And it's affordable because it is a 2013 model.

I also appreciate your point that it is more fun if old movies have some noise in them and ar not razor-sharply upscaled to HD (or higher). They should add a filter (or layer or whatever it would be called) to bluray players or TV's (even if it were just for fun) to give old movies back their old authentic look.

In any case, I'll still have plenty of time to make up my mind, because the funfair will start outside tomorrow, and until it is gone I won't have a single evening suited for watching a movie no matter what the quality would be.

 

[humptydumpty]

Sorry guys, I can't let it go just yet.

When I check the user manual for the Panasonic DMP-BDT-460, it says the following about the ability of downmixing to stereo: "The audio output will be in Stereo in the following cases: (1) AVCHD playback (2) Playback of secondary audio (including the button click sound)."

Now, I am not quite sure since when AVCHD was used for DVD-video, but wasn't there a pre-AVCHD time for DVD-video's. Will the 460 not be able to downmix multichannel audio from those older DVD's?

And the Marantz UD5007 specs say the following:

Decoder: Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD: o / o / o

Decoder: DD / DTS / DTS96/24 / SACD: o / o / o / o

DSD from SACD via HDMI: o

Multichannel downmix: DD/DTS/SACD: o / o

So for the Marantz, does DD/DTS cover "Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD"?

Or is it safe to assume that when a Blu-ray player says downmix to stereo "yes", and that it decodes certain formats, it will always be able to downmix the decodable formats to stereo.

Sorry if I take this a bit far, but this seems the best place to ask..

 

[Glacialpath]

Sorry guys, I can't let it go just yet.

When I check the user manual for the Panasonic DMP-BDT-460, it says the following about the ability of downmixing to stereo: "The audio output will be in Stereo in the following cases: (1) AVCHD playback (2) Playback of secondary audio (including the button click sound)."

Now, I am not quite sure since when AVCHD was used for DVD-video, but wasn't there a pre-AVCHD time for DVD-video's. Will the 460 not be able to downmix multichannel audio from those older DVD's?

And the Marantz UD5007 specs say the following:

Decoder: Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD: o / o / o

Decoder: DD / DTS / DTS96/24 / SACD: o / o / o / o

DSD from SACD via HDMI: o

Multichannel downmix: DD/DTS/SACD: o / o

So for the Marantz, does DD/DTS cover "Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD"?

Or is it safe to assume that when a Blu-ray player says downmix to stereo "yes", and that it decodes certain formats, it will always be able to downmix the decodable formats to stereo.

Sorry if I take this a bit far, but this seems the best place to ask..

Not a problem.

What I think it means is that what ever multichannel audio codec you feed it to down mix you will either get DD 2.0 Stereo/mono or DTS 2.0 Stereo/mono.

With the AVCHD I suspect that is to do with when you put and SD card in that contains that video file into your player or if it has an input for a HD camcorder that uses the AVCHD format when you shoot something on it.

"Decoder: Dolby Digital Plus / Dolby TrueHD / DTS HD: o / o / o" So that's when it's playing BD

"Decoder: DD / DTS / DTS96/24 / SACD: o / o / o / o" I think that's when you play a DVD or SACD and are using optical or coax to send the audio to the AVR as the HD formats can only be sent via HDMI

and the last bit is self explanitory.

DVD as far as I know has always been MPEG 1/2 AS I don't think AVCHD would have been around when DVD came out as it's a HD format. BD is MPEG 4

I hope this doesn't confuse you but all the multichannle codecs have a core audio. For example DTS HD -Master 5.1 will have a core audio of DTS 5.1 so it will be that core audio that gets downsampled to 2.0

If they didn't people who don't have an AVR that can decode these codecs wouldn't be able to watch the disc that comes with only a DTS HD-MA audio.

Hope that helps.

 

[humptydumpty]

Thanks a lot, Glacialpath, that did help. Sounds like the Marantz will probably downmix every movie, and for the Panasonic, it remains a bit vague, because of how they described it in the manual. Good chance though that that one will also do the job. Your statement about the core audio signal confirms what I read elsewhere, and also makes it a bit more clear. This would imply that even my TV (the LG 42LA8609) that decodes DD (dolby digital) and ¨regular¨ DTS could have decoded and downsampled the HDMI signal from a Bluray with a DTS-HD audio-stream.. Oh well..
In any case, although the Marantz (still) seems to be a great player, I decided to go with something cheaper, which leaves room for an additional streaming videoplayer that supports ISO and VIDEO_TS. So I ordered a Sony BDP-S6200. The manual of this one clearly states how to set it for downmixing to stereo, so I trust it will work. And I paid a little extra so I can still return it within 4 weeks, if I'm not pleased with the way it works anyhow.

 

[Glacialpath]

Wehay result.

Glad I could help. And yes your TV would have been fine. But here's to a decent set of speakers giving you the sound instead of pointless TV speakers.

Let me know how it goes with the Sony.

 

[humptydumpty]

Hi Glacialpath,

Bit of a late reply, but I had to watch a couple of movies, to get a clear impression.

So this was eventually the setup:
Bluray (Sony BDP-S6200), connected with HDMI to TV (an LG 42LA8609), and the TV connected via analog stereo output (headphones output - mini stereo jack to stereo RCA) to the RCA input of my stereo receiver (a Marantz pm6004).

Well, in short, I am very pleased with the sound! (as pointed out earlier in this thread by Stavvy, I selected PCM output instead of bitstream in the bluray-players audio-settings menu).

I watched (on DVD): Sin City and Spiderman 2 (the Doc Oc episode with Toby McGuire) and on Blu-ray: in 3D, episode 1 from the Hobbit.

I read somewhere (I believe I mentioned that earlier in this thread as well) that the subwoofer (LFE) channel would be eliminated in a downmix. Of course, I did not have a 5.1 cinema set with a subwoofer at my disposal, to make a direct comparison, but hearing the movies in my stereo setup, the basses sounded just fine. I heard deep basses in scenes with explosions in the Spiderman movie. I have to add though that my speakers are capable of delivering very deep basses. Music sounded great too, as well as speech. So actually everything sounded good. On a couple of occasions, some sounds (speech by some dwarves in the Hobbit 1) sounded a bit distant, but I think that was just about right, because the dwarves were standing a bit further away; I suppose that in a normal setup, this sound would have come at a low volume from the rear speakers, creating an actual perception of distance. Of course this 2.0 setup cannot compete with a good mulitchannel home cinema setup, but I would not be surprised if this sounds a fair bit better than a cheap soundbar. For now, I'm really pleased, so that gives me time to save up for a top notch soundbar if I ever decide to take one after all.

On a side note, I am still in doubt if I will keep the Sony BDP-S6200: the Hobbit 1 in 3D looked great, but the subtitles looked funny: at the end of every subtitle, it seemed to disappear first for one eye, and then for the other. Or maybe something else happened. Anyways, it looked a bit weird and not too great. Not sure if it was caused by the TV or by the Sony player. Neither do I know if this could be fixed by changing any settings. Everything else in the Hobbit movie looked awesome and perfect though (better than in the cinema, the way I remember it). DVDs looked great, too, but there was a brief moment of mild choppiness in a panning scene in a long trailer from ¨The Amityville Horror¨, as well as in the Marvell intro with the moving bars and comic-images (Spiderman), and also in the scene where Spiderman was chasing the metro, where you see buildings disappearing in the background. I'm surprised that Whathifi made no mention of this in their 5-star review, but maybe they just watched the right movies. This would be possible, because the entire Sin City movie was displayed without any choppiness and looked really great, as did the whole Spiderman DVD, actually, except for these 2 or 3 brief moments. (I'm not going to talk about the design, because it has already been discussed in the owners thread ;-)

Anyways, thanks a lot all, for your help. Maybe I'll still change the Sony for a higher-end player, or maybe I'll just live with it's imperfections. You still saved me a lot of money because for now, I will not need a soundbar, nor an extra large TV stand for accomodation of a soundbar.

Cheers.

 

[Glacialpath]

Only kidding you should see some of my posts.

You are quite welcome though and I'm glad I could help.

Even if the .1 channel is discarded from the downmix there should be plenty of low end still in the mix and the fact you seem to have very capable speakers helps too.

I think the LFE track is discarded for space reasons. As you must know the lower the frequency the more space it needs to exit the speakers. This is why some big sounds (EX Explosions) can dip in volume and also this can effect things like dialogue too getting lost, this may account for the dwarfs. I haven't seen the film so I can't comment.

Sounds like you player is very good at down-mixing. With DVD sound that is less information and is compressed compared to it HD counterpart that is uncompressed I think the down mix will be easier.

I wold suggest not watching a film on a friends surroundsound system then watching the same movie on yours as this might bring to light the pitfalls of not hearing the 5.1 stream as its intended. If the down mix sounds great to you and you are non the wiser you'll stay happy.

With the subtitles in 3D it could be many things. The authoring of the disc, the delivery of the subtitles to the authoring houes, the player setting or your TV and maybe even the HDMI cable (I'll likely get shot down for that one) But is sounds like the timing is out of sync for the 2 subtitls stream (1 in each eye as you know) This will mean changing your player won't make any difference. I would try a whole stack of other 3D titles and tune the subs on. If you get the same issue then it's the player then Sony might be able to issue a firmware update to correct it.

If WHF played the 3D title in the player when they reviewed it they would have seen the same issue but would have been able to put it on many other players to see if it was the disc. That's the trouble with compatibiliy issues if they don't check them then they can't tell the manufacturer to correct it in their player if the authoring house know it's fine their end.

With regards the stutter, this could be a setting on your TV. Have a look in the picture settings and make sure anything like "Motion Flow" is set to OFF and any other gimicky things. If you come across "Overscan" or "Fit to Screen" (I can't remember what it's called on LG TVs) then set that to OFF also. if you don't know, this will mean you get 100% of the 1080 res picture. If you upscale your DVDs too you will also see the full picture. I can explain if you don't understand what overscan is.

If you are unsure about yourTV setting post a list on here, even the advanced ones (a screen shot might be quiter lol) and I can suggest what they should beset to. The same for your player picture/display settings.

Glad you are enjoying your set up know.

GP

 

[humptydumpty]

Hi Glacialpath,

I did not have the time to watch a new 3D movie, hence the delay this time.

Hopefully tomorrow I'll find the opportunity to watch one. Thanks for your suggestion that it could also be the TV itself. If I get the same subtitle issue again, I'll go and fiddle a bit with both the TV's and the Bluray-player's setting.

I have a setting called Tru Motion on my TV but it was off. MPEG Noise suppression and some other settings were off, as well. I think the most likely cause is the player itself, because that one does the upscaling for DVD. Anyways, if I manage to get proper subtitles for a 3D movie, there is a good chance that I will stick with this player. If, on the other hand, the problem persists, it will go back to where it came from.

Yeah, I know my posts can be a bit lengthy ;-D And also noticed that I am not the only one here with that tendency ;-) But it is great that there are people that I don't even know who have the patience to read all of it and are willing to go into such detail to help.

Anyways, I'll check your post again, once I start to fiddle with the 3D bluray, and let you know when I have the result.

 

[humptydumpty]

oh, I forgot one thing.

So yeah, I was indeed a bit surprised to see you mention the HDMI cable as one of the possible causes for the subtitle issue. The cable that I have was 20 Euros and it was only 100 cm. So it wasn't ridiculously expensive but not too cheap, either. Would there be another possible way besides signal degradation how the cable could cause the subtitle issue?

 

[Glacialpath]

I still think the issue is the authoring of the disc. Until you get to check the disc on someone elses 3D set up to see if it happens on theirs too you won't be able to rule that out.

I mention the HDMI cable as they carry either picture, audio or both so with an AV receiver you have the one from you player carrying both then the one from your AVR just carrying video. To be honest if vide and audio are generally in sync with all other discs then it's going to be just a compatibility issue with your player on the autoring of the disc it's self.

I'm sure your player is fine and if it's a compatibility issue then an firmware upgrade should fix it. That involves contacting the manufacturer of the player to see if they can get over the issue.

Sorry if I repeat myself. Hope you get to the bottom of the issue soon and come up with some resolve.

 

[humptydumpty]

Hi,

Thanks again for your ideas, GP. I tried two more 3D movies (The Hobbit II and Frankenstein 3D), last Friday, and tried a bunch of different settings on my TV and player. Nevertheless, I had the same subtitle issue again and did not manage to eliminate it. So I went back to the TV-store yesterday, and the guy there gave me more or less the same explanation as you did (so probably a disc-authoring issue, rather than a player issue). He said that subtitle issues in 3D can even occur with high-end players. Just the same, I returned the Sony, which wasn't a problem. The thing is, I also could not wait much longer, because of the 4 week trial period in which I was allowed to return it. The facts that I also saw some choppiness in the upscaled DVD-movies and that it looked quite ugly on top of my other components contributed to the decision. Your idea of trying the discs on someone else's player was excellent, of course, but I did not have the opportunity to do that any time soon. Anyways, back to square one (but with some more knowledge and experience). I'll put another post here once I have watched another 3D movie on a new player.

cheers.

 

[Glacialpath]

No worries.

So it's the forced subs that you are having trouble with. Otherwise you don't need subs for the rest of the movie. Could you not try your disc on some other players in the shop? I know it wouldn't be your TV unless they have one in store. I'm sure the shop won't mind.

Is the player stacked directly on top of your other kit? Idealy you wan't gaps between them. I know Hi-Fi gear is fine when stacked, Mine is as you can see from my avatar. Though saying that my Sky box is sat directly on my BDP. Not what I want but I don't have a choice at the mo.

 

[humptydumpty]

I had to look up the meaning of "forced subs¨ ;D

The problem is that I am Dutch, and we watch all foreign movies with subs. Our country is simply too small to do voice-overs. So subs are in fact a big deal to me. The other problem is that I own none of the 3D movies that I watch. I actually rent them (an ancient concept that you may have heard of ;-). I really had to search to still find a real movie-rental service in my town, as virtually all have gone bankrupt in the past couple of years. But maybe your idea is a good one actually. I think I'll just ask if they have some 3D disks available in the store, so they can do a quick demo before I purchase a new BDP.

My gear, without BDP only consists of the pm6004 and an old CD player, but they are indeed stacked on eachother, and I am aware that I need feet between them. That said the Sony was very light, and it stood on top of the CD player, which does not have any air-outlets for dissipation of heat, so it wasn't a big deal. But it looked downright ugly. Your gear looks very consistent and nice, but having components of different brands, colors and sizes on top of eachother does not always work too well, aesthetically.

It will take me a week or so before I can proceed but I will let you know how it worked out.

 

[Glacialpath]

Hello again.

Well for someone who is not English you sure write very well and not in the way other European people do.

I did wonder, that's why I asked.

Sorry, I'm guessing you found out Forced Subtitles are a stream of subs automaitally activated when there is text on screen that is relavent to the plot so a subtitle appears to translate it when watching in a different language to the original.

I must admit I don't recall doing many titles with Dutch audio when I was working. They was always a subtitle stream though.

So are there people in your household that do not have a strong grasp of the English language, so that's why you use the subs?

I have quite a few movie that are in a different language from English. I like them of course but I am a little slow at reading the subs. Sometimes I have to rewind then pause each sub to read them. I feel most languages other than English speak mush faster, though the Americans speak really fast. Maybe us Brits are just lazy *scratch_one-s_head*

With regards to your kit. Even though there are no vents there will still be quite a bit of heat build up so yes some kind of spacers might help.

I know what it's like having all different components and they can look a little odd when put together but if they do what you want them to then it doesn't matter. My Sky box does look a little ugly sat on top of my BDP but the shelf above has my center speaker on it.

Well good luck finding somewhere to rent movies. I used to love going to get a hand full of movies out.

My wife and I have a huge BD/DVD collection so we don't really need to rent them. Rarely do we by a film that we haven't seen and not like it.

 

[humptydumpty]

Hi GP,

Thanks So you'll probably be surprised, but I'm actually the only person in my household. Although I usually understand spoken English quite well, too, it's always a bit harder than written English. On top of that, there are always moments when a colloquial expression is used or an accent which is a bit harder to follow. And I notice that when there is no subtitle, I tend to over-focus on what is said, which usually does not work, and makes watching the movie anything but a relaxed experience. I'm a slow reader myself, but I've been seeing subtitles since a very young age and it helps when you also understand most of what you hear.

Anyways, the next bluray player that I am going to take will probably have feet. It looks like the absence of feet on the Sony was bit of an exception. You are right though, when it works, it works. So if I had been over-all pleased with the Sony, I would have kept it anyways, even if it didn't look to pretty on top of the other components.

Btw I did in fact find a movie-rental shop, but it is further away than I'm used to. Going there by bike takes me more time than going to the previous one on foot some years ago.

We've gradually drifted off topic a bit, but I don't believe anyone really minds ;-) In any case I'll put another post here when I have a new player.

HD