DTS-HD-MAA patch is forthcoming for the PlayStation 3 to decode DTS HD Master Audio soundtracks on Blu-ray discs. To many PlayStation 3 home theater enthusiasts this is the holy grail of patches. But not so fast – this patch might not be the elixir of audio bliss after all.

For anyone with a sound system a step above Home Theater in a Box, DTS HD Master Audio will offer significant gains in audio fidelity. It offers high resolution sound gift wrapped in a lossless audio codec. You can find it on many Blu-ray movie and music releases today.

The great news for PS3 owners is that soon Sony’s gaming machine will decode the audiophile codec. Specifically that means PlayStation 3 will internally decode the audio and pipe it via HDMI to your receiver in PCM form. That’s uncompressed multi-channel audio.

Your receiver has have an HDMI input and be capable of playing back multi-channel high-bit PCM audio. The new HDMI 1.3a version isn’t required for this job, receivers with older versions of HDMI are sufficient.

Many of the new receivers like Onkyo TX-SR805 have HDMI 1.3a and are capable of decoding the new lossless audio codecs internally. Letting PS3 decode for your receiver in this case constitutes a trade off in audio quality.

Due to hardware limitations Sony’s PlayStation 3 cannot bitstream DTS-HD-MA to your receiver. That is what would be required to let your receiver do the decoding. You’re left with the built-in PS3 Digital-Analog Converter (DAC) doing any decoding for you.

The decoding of a digital format is probably the largest part of what dictates the acoustic quality outside your speakers. The PS3 may have good quality DACs built-in but as a $500 gaming machine it’ll pale in comparison to the job performed by a $2000 receiver. Bitstreaming (as is offered by only a handful of upcoming dedicated Blu-ray players) is the best sound-quality option. But hey – PS3 plays games.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, April 17th, 2008 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Audio, Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.