The Official Sony BDP-S350 Owners Thread - Page 46

How is yours set up! Are you going threw HDMI and drc to wide! If so that is what I amd doing now and it still sound the same on both DD and DTS HD!

There must be something wrong then because the HD formats should sound different.

Anyone know the answer to my ?

Take the 405 South to Slausen, get off at the Slausen cutoff...

99+% of people can't tell the difference between lossless audio and good old DD at 640kbps or DTS at 1.5Mbps (especially the latter). Some people have set up blind listening tests and confirmed that, often to their surprise. Even when someone can tell a difference it's extremely subtle.

Remember that if any disk has both lossless and legacy tracks and they sound obviously different (once the volume has been matched), then the difference is not due to the codecs, it's in the way they were mastered (i.e. you are listening to two different tracks).

This is not really surprising, because mathematically the lossy codecs at a high bit rate produce a result so close to the original that there is simply not much room for improvement.

I give up! I know that the bdp-s350 sound good even on dolby dig and dts hd or tru hd! It just show that the dd on the 350 is better than on the ps3!

Can someone answer a question for me please? I'd like to play Underworld in dolby digital and I can't. Does it not have a dolby track? Also are all of my dvd's going to be in PCM at 48Khz? I have some Dolby Digital EX movies that wont play as such. I am trying out my Gladiator dvd with has DTS-ES track on it and I can't get that one to play either. Should I set Blu-Ray audio to mix or direct? I don't have a receiver with HDMI if this makes it easier to answer.

Can anyone confirm that using an optical cord, you can put the setting on HDMI or Optical and it will still play out of the surround sound? Because I can put it on either ( using fiber optical ) and I still receive sound out of my speakers. Anyone?

Ok I'm gonna try fielding this question. Yes you can hear audio from both even if you have HDMI and Optical hooked up. But if you want to lets say use a Digital EX or DTS ES track from a dvd you'll have to go into the menu and switch the audio output priority to Optical. Because I don't have a receiver with HDMI this is what I had to do to get the best sound for my current receiver. But yes in short I hear audio whether it's set to HDMI or Optical.

Urlacher, I have mine set to optical/coaxal, and I see DTS on my receiver screen now. ( Not sure if I'd see if I went into the menu and put it on HDMI, but who cares I guess. ) I just wanted to make sure it's possible to get sound out of your speakers using optical into a receiver and HDMI into the tv and have the menu audio set to HDMI still, cause like I said, I was still geting surround sound when the menu was on HDMI for audio. But now that I know it's normal, Thanks!

If anyone is using the Optical port for their audio just be careful. The Optical jack seems extremely fragile.

I just hooked up a Sony S350 Blue-ray player to a Denon AVR2309 via HDMI. I'm watching a disc with a 5.1 Dolby True HD soundtrack (and I selected that sounctrak) and the display on the 2309 says "Multi Ch Input". Is this correct, or is there a setting on the S350 that I missed? I would think it would say "Dolby True HD", or is it an issue with the Denon?

If you want the player to decode(and see True HD on the display) make sure you select 'direct' in the s350 BD audio setting menu. Default is 'Mix', btw. Also, you might want to set the audio DRC(dynamic range compression) to 'wide', default is auto. At least that did the trick for me on my AVR2308

The S350 can decode or bitstream Dolby TrueHD, can't it? In this case, I think your player is decoding it and sending it as LPCM. You need to select bitstream to see your player's TrueHD light come on.

How do you set it to bitstream?

Try setting the BD audio setting to 'direct', instead of 'mix'.

Isn't "direct' the default setting?

No sir, it's 'Mix'.

Thank you sir, sorry for doubting you. Will setting it to 'direct' also help us who dont have receivers with HDMI?

Yup - that did it. Thanks.

I see now Urlacher5454, I have my bdp-s350 on HDMI and you are going threw optical. It might sound diff that way but threw HDMI it sounds the same. My brother and I was doing test and he thought the same thing that on the new die hard we was checking dolby dig and then dts hd hi and they both sound the same. But then we took the movie out and put into my ps3 and they both sound diff. It was like You mute the dolby dig on the ps3 and then when you hit dts hd it would get 10 times louder. I know it is strange but that just tell me that the audio on the 350 is better than the ps3 on normal dolby dig

I keep reading that the 350 doesnt do to well when playing normal non-HD DVDs...is the upconversion really *that* bad? I will be upgrading from a $100 Magnavox DVD/VHS combo unit....I can't imagine that I would be taking a step backwards for normal DVDs, but I wanted to check before I take the plunge.

Also, any word on whether the 550 will have better upconversion for normal DVDs?

Once you compensate for the difference in volume the PS3 and 350 will sound the same. And you can always have the PS3 bitstream the old codecs for the receiver to decode if you want to. When comparing audio, the louder track always tends to sound better even if they are really the same.

I am sure it will be a big step up from what you have. I wouldn't worry about it.

I'm sorry....I don't agree with the first part of your statement at all.

I just played a demo of Dave Matthew's through my PS3 using Dolby TrueHD via PCM and the sound quality versus regular Dolby Digital is like night and day!

The sound is much clearer. It's almost like a veil has been lifted. Other people who I've played Blu-Ray discs for have also commented on how good the sound is.

I thought somebody would dispute what I said much sooner . I had a link to a good description of a blind testing, although I can't find it at the moment.

But what you're listening to when you select Dolby Digital is a different track, and one that's quite possibly mastered differently. It may not just be a DD 5.1 encoded version of what you're listening to on the TrueHD track (and in fact it almost certainly isn't, if it uses the max bit rate and there's still an obvious audible difference).

For years most people have been telling us that DTS at 1.5Mbps is transparent to the original master, and Dolby claimed the same for DD at 640kbps. Even if "transparent" is stretching it a little, there's no way the difference can ever be "night and day".

I think the good thing about the hype over lossless audio on Blu-ray is that it makes it more likely a studio will go all out to do a great job mastering the audio track, instead of just slapping an inferior recording on a DVD as they sometimes did. It's not the HD codec itself that's mainly responsible for great sounding BDs.

Not sure where you got your information from but NO the PS3 cannot Bitstream to the receiver, and will never be able to no matter what firmware updates. It is limited as Sony designed the PS3 with a crappy old outdated 1.0 HDMI spec and so bitstreaming is impossible. The most the PS3 can do is decode the HD codecs internally and send them out as PCM. That is why I'll never own a PS3. Not to mention how incredibly ugly the thing is!

Actually the OP was talking about Dolby Digital (not the new high-def codecs). PS3 can bitstream DD and DTS just fine, and I prefer to do that on mine just to rule out any decoding wierdness in the PS3 (there should be no problem, but sometimes things change or get broken when you update PS3 firmware).

Ahh, I got ya. My bad on the misunderstanding.

Good afternoon, I have the sony 350 hooked up to the Pioneer PDP-5040 that has PureCinema. According to the manual PureCinema automatically detects a film based source(orginally encoded at 24 frames/second), analyzes it, then recreates each still frame for higher definition picture quality.

When I set the 350 output 24p to "on" and my pio to adv purecinema the screen is blank. The sony shows the blue light on the front panel "on" but no picture.

I have the sony hooked up through the onkyo NR905 via HDMI sot sure what else to look at.

THanks