So, I like bass. I like loud clear sound. I have a Sony receiver which had all the bells and whistles about 3 years back. I use optical audio input and have never had a problem finding a good audio setting for anything. This includes DVD/VCR/8bit Consoles/16bit/32bit/64bit/128bit/Xbox 360/PS2/Wii, and a random arrangement of other audio equipment. Recently I got a PS3 mostly because I really needed to update my PS2 (wouldn’t read blue discs, had problems reading a lot of misc. discs and movies) and was hoping for a small video quality boost. The PS3 reads everything perfectly, and the use of HDMI gave me a minor quality boost in just about everything. What I wasn’t expecting was an audio degradation.

Excitedly I put in Shadow of the Colossus for another play through of the game. When I had last played the game (Old PS2 with optical audio out) the bass was so powerful when a colossus would fall that the bass shook a book off a shelf. With the PS3 I hardly get any bass at any point. So, after finding the bass disappointing in Shadow of the Colossus I started adjusting all the settings on my receiver that I could in relation to bass. The best I could come up with—without distorting the audio—was “weak ass” bass.

Disappointed with the PS3 I looked and asked in a few place about this, then after getting told that I was crazy and it was just my receiver, I started to do a bit of research. I headed over to AVS forums and started to scour the site. I came up with little outside of a few people mentioning the lack of bass in the God of War II thread. I did turn up some interesting information on the way the PS3 can process audio, which was my first step in getting to the bottom of this:

“When you setup audio out on your PS3, you have option to choose the sound to go out from HDMI, Optical or Multi AV Adaptor. Only one at a time.

PS3 does not currently have a 5.1 audio Multi AV adaptor. Your PS3 comes with a Composite Multi AV Adaptor which has 2 channels audio analog out. The optional Component Multi AV Adaptor also only has 2 channels audio analog out. So there is no option at the moment to have a 5.1 analog out from PS3 to connect to the 5.1 analog input of your receiver.

For lossless PCM 5.1 tracks, PS3 will output 5.1 channels through HDMI. If you select Optical or Multi AV, only 2 channels PCM track will go out. Some people has good result by using the Dolby surround processor in AV Receiver to decode the 2 channels sound for surround effect.

For TrueHD tracks, PS3 will decode the tracks internally to PCM before send out. Similar to above, all 5.1 channels will be send out as PCM if you choose HDMI. Only 2 channels PCM will go out if you choose optical or Multi AV.

I am in similar situation as you. I have an HDMI LCD TV, a PS3 and an non-HDMI AV Receiver. I connect HDMI from PS3 to LCD TV for video. And I connect optical from PS3 to AV Receiver. I setup PS3 to output PCM via the optical. I setup my AV Receiver to process the 2 channels track for surround effect. I will wait till end of year before upgrade AV Receiver as this is when you will get more choices of AV Receiver that can support HD audio properly.”

link to thread (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=769373&highlight=bass)

Then I found this: SONY PS3 Audio Set-up Manual (http://manuals.playstation.net/document/en/ps3/current/settings/audiooutput.html): The original thread (if you didn’t click on it) was based around Super Audio CDs and the Sony site states this in relation to Optical audio:

“ Audio from Super Audio CDs cannot be output from the system's digital out (optical) connector. Multi-channel content from Super Audio CDs can only be output from the HDMI OUT connector.”

Well, back to the drawing board. My only hope of finding some good information was based on the fact that I read a review (which I can’t find for the life of me) that compared the PS3 as a blu-ray player to a stand alone and said the bass wasn’t as good from the PS3 with optical out.

Trekking forward I found a link to a thread titled LFE, Subwoofers and interconnects explained (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=748147). This is a fairly confusing thread so I had to read it a few times and made a few assumptions on some of the topics, but it seems like this leads me back to another problem:

“Digital multichannel
-Player decodes, and passes all channels to receiver as-is (but ideally SACD would be aligned with a 10dB LFE attenuation).
-Player's LFE output will be 10dB low, (except maybe SACD).
-Receiver must boost LFE by 10dB and perform bass management.”

What this means for the PS3 is that the PS3 will decode and send all the information for the bass channels. The only thing that my receiver will be doing is managing the levels it receives. So then I did a bit of research on SotC, and it is not using Dolby Prologic II.

I am making one of two assumptions on this, and am looking for some assistance on figuring this out (finally I get to the question):

1: The PS3 is taking a stereo audio signal and digitally pumping it out over 5.1 channels and since the receiver see’s a track for the subwoofer (bass/LFE) but there’s nothing in it, my bass result is very weak.
2: The PS3 does a horrible job outputting/converting audio to the LFE/Bass channel but there actually is one.

This is basically the same exact problem, with minor differences. I’m going to go home and mess with the audio output (PCM vs Bitstream), and also see if I can’t force 2channel audio for PS1/2 games out of the optical output.

Any other input on this specific situation? Anyone who has the ability to test these things and possibly call me crazy?

No what you need to do to get back to the DD PLII bass you are used to is. Going to audio settings under HDMI and turn off all your 5.1 and or 7.1 settings. This forces the PS3 to send 2 channel audio or DD or DTS (depending on the source) This allows your Reciever to decode the signal and get you back to the booming bass, that you had before. Making these changes will affect DB movies..so when you go to watch one. turn your 5.1/7.1 options back on. This works for me. God Of War now has crazy bass when I have the PS3 set up like this so my AVR sees a DD PLII signal.

I'm using optical cables. Is this the same thing?

And, while I don't use the PS3 as DVD player (I have a pretty decent upscaling DVD standalone), I would like to keep the surround for PS3 games. Is there anyway to just alter this setting for PS2/1 playback?

Thought you said you were using HDMI. Must have been just for Video. At any rate, for optical change it to Bitstream. this will alow your reciever to See the DD signal it wants and apply. My guess is you Reciever is causing the loss of bass via optical..but thats just a guess. I dont know of any PS1/PS2 audio settings.

Thought you said you were using HDMI. Must have been just for Video. At any rate, for optical change it to Bitstream. this will alow your reciever to See the DD signal it wants and apply. My guess is you Reciever is causing the loss of bass via optical..but thats just a guess. I dont know of any PS1/PS2 audio settings.
I don't see how it could be losing bass over optical because my PS2 was outputting through optical.

I don't know if I tried bitstream or not, but that's one of the things I'm going to do later.

PS2 via optical is bitstream. I think the default for the PS3 is PCM via optical...which correct me if Im wrong, (im sure someone will) Is a 2 channel uncompressed optical. Some reciever can take this and process it back into 5.1 no problem. (mine does) some reciever dont like 2 channel PCM at all. Give bitstream a shot and let us know how it works.

I'm sure he is right, go to audio settings in the PS3 and simply change it to bitstream. I use optical out as well and that was the only way I could get my DD-EX.

Well, I went to the audio output settings and tried to adjust things, but there is no way to turn off PCM. Hell, there's really no way to change anything aside from turning off anything surround sound related, which will suck for playing PS3 games with.

I'm going to mess with just switching a few things off like DTS (something that a game will never use).

Interesting byproduct of my fiddling!

So, Shadow Of The Colossus is my research specimen, right? Well, originally my initial tests on the PS3, the very first thing that I noticed was the lack of bass. Then I noticed a few other sound problems relating to the music: when you get to a colossus the music would start slow, and when it transitions into the more epic and louder and faster music, rather than transitioning it now stops and then starts the next track. It would also not loop the music all the time so it would cut out very early. Nothing _major_ (and it only happens about 2/3 of the time) but it does disrupt the mood.

When I turned off DTS, DD5.1, and AAC from the sound options this no longer happens in the game! I also can't seem to fix the bass without exceptionally over compensating for it with my receiver (turning both the tones and the levels to +10db).