Sony BDP Players...question.

[pearsall001]

A good friend of mine has an older Denon AVR (non-HDMI) & asked me to find out the following. Does either of those two players pass DTS HD Master Audio (he specified that it has to be Master Audio) thru a 5.1 analog connection. He knows that HDMI will pass it on but he's not sure about the 5.1 analog. Any info would be appreciated.

[rdb2001]

A good friend of mine has an older Denon AVR (non-HDMI) & asked me to find out the following. Does either of those two players pass DTS HD Master Audio (he specified that it has to be Master Audio) thru a 5.1 analog connection. He knows that HDMI will pass it on but he's not sure about the 5.1 analog. Any info would be appreciated.

You can not past anything digital though analog. He wouldnt be able to pass DD or regular DTS through analog. With analog you could only get like pro logic. He would need to update his receiver to get DTS master audio or Dolby True hd

[polkie4life]

The BDP-S550 passes the hi-def codecs through analog. It has on board decoders for DTS-MA and Dolby tru-HD.

The Bdp-s350 doesnt have onboard decoding and is of course a little cheaper.

[pearsall001]

Hey guys, thanks for the responses. Only one problem...one answer says yes & the other answer says no. Now I'm more confused. Which answer is correct.

If my memory serves me, I think I read that 5.1 analog does in fact pass the DTS HD MA. Then again, I'm not too sure. Any more info to share?

[mark090852]

You can not past anything digital though analog. He wouldnt be able to pass DD or regular DTS through analog. With analog you could only get like pro logic. He would need to update his receiver to get DTS master audio or Dolby True hd

Just to clarify, if the Sony BDP-S550 internally decodes DTS HD Master Audio and has 6/8 channel analog outs then your friend would be fine with his existing receiver as long as it has 6/8 channel analog inputs. The Blu-ray player would be doing the decoding and the receiver would be doing the amplification of each channels analog signal. I have the new Panasonic BDP-BD55 and that is exactly how I use it with my Harman Kardon AVR 645 receiver.

[cheddar]

Or put another way. For TrueHD and DTS-HD MA you need:

Digital Encode (bitstream) --> Decoded to PCM (AVR can now process the signal digitally with surround sound modes etc.) --> Converted to analog for amplification to the speakers

The higher end blu-ray models take care of the entire process in the player allowing for compatibility with older systems without HDMI connections. For an AVR to receive a digital signal you need to use HDMI to pass it as either bitstream or decoded PCM. You aren't really 'passing' DTS-HD MA via analog as that's just the compressed digital form that's gone at the PCM conversion step. And anything digital is gone by the time it reaches the analog outs.

[Pepi28]

The BDP-S550 passes the hi-def codecs through analog. It has on board decoders for DTS-MA and Dolby tru-HD.

The Bdp-s350 doesnt have onboard decoding and is of course a little cheaper.

If the player has on-board decoding and analog outs, he will be able to pass the DTS-MA or TrueHD through them as long as his receiver has analog inputs. He just wont see it on his rec. screen as DTS or Dolby.:cool:

[dkg999]

I have the Sony BDP-S550. It will decode all the new formats internally and pass them through either 5.1 or 7.1 analog outputs to your AVR. I am using mine with a B&K AVR 507s2 that has 5.1 analog inputs. I can highly recommend the PQ, upconversion, and the SQ via analog or coax outputs. What you might find is that the SQ output via the non-HD coax is pretty darned good and you might not even want to mess with the multi-channel analog output! You will have to boost your sub about 10db when using the multi-channel analog output, either via your AVR or that little knob on the back of the sub (or buy a new Polk sub with remote!).

[cheddar]

...What you might find is that the SQ output via the non-HD coax is pretty darned good and you might not even want to mess with the multi-channel analog output! You will have to boost your sub about 10db when using the multi-channel analog output, either via your AVR or that little knob on the back of the sub (or buy a new Polk sub with remote!).

Blu-ray's vanilla DD at 640kbps and DTS at 1.5mbps are a good improvement over DVDs that are typically recorded at half that rate, but if you've got good equipment, you're wasting it if you go through the trouble and expense of getting analog outs and just settle for the old school formats.

The 10db boost problem is common with HT audio not decoded in the AVR. HT audio has the LFE channel purposely recorded -10db to conserve interconnect bandwidth. If the AVR decodes the audio, it knows it has to add 10db to get back to calibrated levels. However, with multichannel PCM (hdmi) and multichannel analog (analog outs) the AVR has no way of knowing if the signal is from a HT decode or something like SACD which doesn't require the boost (many AVRs come with a -10db adjustment just in case something in the chain boosts a music disk's LFE by mistake). So although a pain, to make sure you're hearing the proper +10db boost, you have to confirm that:

a. The equipment in your chain doesn't already boost the LFE on multichannel audio inputs. Some manufacturers have firmware updates to take care of this or the AVR adjustments below.
b. If not, then you have to find a way to do this manually as stated by the post above. Many AVRs allow you to specify LFE level for each input individually. Or you can manually adjust the sub, but that should be a last resort.