Comments on: PlayStation 3 and DTS HD Master Audio, not all it’s Patched up to be

By: Wayde

Wayde — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 18:02:14 +0000

Okay, I can see what you’re saying… and perhaps I have been prejudice against the use of mass-produced equipment converting my audio signals to anything… digital/analog or otherwise.

I will admit that since further researching this issue I have to agree that there’s probably no audible difference between the PS3 ‘unzipping’ to PCM your codec vs. a multi-thousand dollar piece of high-end receiver doing same.

But I would personally feel about having my receiver perform any decoding duties, after all that is what it’s made for.

By: Gizmo n00b

Gizmo n00b — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:40:04 +0000

Yeah Wayde, you admit that the PS3 is sending the uncompressed signal to the receiver in the digital domain, yet you are arguing about digital to analog converters.

By: Gizmo n00b

Gizmo n00b — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 17:38:40 +0000

Wayde,
You are misunderstanding the process.

When the Playstation 3 decodes a codec to multi-channel PCM, this is a Digital-to-Digital conversion. There is only one way to perform this. Correctly or incorrectly. This is like unzipping a .zip file on your computer. The quality of the decoder doesn’t really matter. They all work the same. Now, digital jitter on the HDMI output is another story beyond the scope of this discussion.

DACs do make a difference! But they perform are called Digital to Analog Converters (DAC). I’ll repeat. Digital to Analog! This is when the multi-channel PCM is converted to an analog signal that your amplifier sends to the speakers.

By: Wayde

Wayde — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 23:08:06 +0000

Decoding is taking place inside your PS3 not in your receiver.

The best sound quality possible would be if your PS3 could bitstream the high-res audio codecs to let a high-end receiver’s DACs perform the actual decoding.

Can there be any dispute of this?

Bryan Greenway of the HomeTheaterBlog.com says:
“…in the case of the PS3 the next-generation audio codec’s are decoded internally and sent out as multi-channel PCM.” (linked in the article)

Multi-channel PCM simply means the decoding is finished… PS3 sends uncompressed audio in the digital domain to your receiver.

Hey, I’d be the first to admit that I’m wrong.

To challenge the article means you don’t believe audio DACs contribute to acoustic quality.

You may argue DACs have no bearing on sound quality - you’d be wrong. You could argue the difference between DACs is negligible and you may have a point, especially with most consumer grade audio systems on the market.

But high-end DACs like those made by Wolfson or Burr-Brown contribute to a much better acoustic experience.

By: Gizmo n00b

Gizmo n00b — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 21:05:56 +0000

This author of this article is totally misinformed for the reasons mentioned by earlier posters. However, the author is correct that you need a processor capable of receiving audio via HDMI.

By: tjarls

tjarls — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

The conversion from DTS-HD-MA to multichannel PCM is digital to digital. It is a simple lossless transcoding. The receiver DAC still ends up having to perform the digital (in this case multi channel PCM) to analog conversion.
Note that a PS3 doesn’t have multichannel analog output so if you were to use its DAC you would be stuck in stereo

By: Gizmo n00b

Gizmo n00b — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

There is no tradeoff in quality in letting the PS3 decode any of the newer audio codecs to multi-channel PCM. The process is analogous to unzipping a file; it doesn’t matter where the file is unzipped; the final information is the same, and the digital-to-analog conversion is still done at the receiver/pre-pro.