DBP2011 & DBP-1611 owner's thread. All questions and comments go here. - Page 9

Does anyone know if all the audio outputs will be active on the BDP-2011UDCI?


Willie

Denon is always reliable brand.I will buy this player for 3D set after Samsung c6900 3d player disappointed me.

Also the Marantz 9004, afaik.

you are correct about my loose usage

Part of the issue is that I am still in the mindset from being an early HD DVD adopter before I had BD capabilities; HD DVD players actually DID do an on-the-fly downmix to max bitrate DD (or DTS depending on the model) when decoding lossless audio.

My understanding (someone correct me if I'm wrong) is that:

1) with hi-rez DTS tracks (DTS-HD and DTS-Master), the audio is built as a "core + extension" system, with a max bitrate (1.5mbps) 5.1 DTS core track, and then the "extension packets" carrying the additional data to recreate the full lossless stream (plus the coefficients for mixing additional channels for 7.1 tracks). When output over optical, the standard DTS "core" track is outut.

2) with hi-rez Dolby Digital (e.g. TrueHD), there is actually an ALTERNATE standard AC-3 track, which can be up to 640kbps. So technically, with Dolby Digital you do not get a "core" track, but rather a secondary lossy DD audio track. (FYI - your numbers were off slighly, standard Dolby Digital goes up to 640kbps, Dolby Digital Plus goes much higher).

Either way, you will probably be hearing a max bitrate standard lossy track vs the full lossless audio. So, technically not a "downmix".... but I still contend that the difference is generally quite small, and probably irrelevant for most typical setups / listeners (said with the caveat that some people on AVS fall outside of "typical" )

Don't even mention Denon and Samsung players in the same breath. Big difference in quality.

With your more recent post, some of your usage is SO loose as to call in to question the point of this (OT) discussion. I disagree with your conclusion/opinion and won't argue/belabor that. But although we can all have our own opinions, we can't have our own facts. Ergo a couple of comments.


Ah yes I'm recalling my HD-XA2 days. But there were comparatively few HD DVDs with Dolby TrueHD (right as Universal started supporting it in fall 2007, the "war" was over in spring 2008) and barely a handful of major HD DVD releases with DTS-HD MA. So although I dig the full disclosure and understand and thank you for calling out your mindset as a way to explain the context of your thinking, I'm not sure as a practical matter of 1) how often you would have used/benefited from that functionality; and 2) any relationship between all that and lossless on BD reality.


Pardon me, my fellow pedant, but this is a confusing misnomer that should be gently but persistently corrected. It's not 'high rez DD.' There's Dolby Digital which is of course lossy. And then there's the completely different and delicious codec Dolby TrueHD.


Although this may be true on (Dolby spec) paper, the practical reality is that the DVD format only 'specked' DD out to 440 kbps. Anything higher on a format governed by the DVD Forum--namely, HD DVD--had to have the "Plus" appellation. (This is why the same 640 kbps Dolby Digital track on some of those dual release HD DVD / BD titles was called Plus on the former but just Dolby Digital on the latter: BD is not promulgated by the DVD Forum.) So as a practical matter, although DD of course goes higher than 444 and even 640, when it does it isn't called just DD . . . if it's on HD DVD. But since that format is not being produced anymore and BD studios embraced lossless earlier . . . it's an academic point.

This is the million-dollar question. I was hoping for a more detailed response from Denon, but I got what I got. According to another discussion I found on the web (sorry, lost the reference), HDMI 1.2 and up is capable of transmitting a pure DSD signal. Unfortunately, that will only be useful to those of us who have DSD-capable receivers, which I suspect most of us do not. In that case, the DSD bitstream must be converted to a PCM bitstream.

The real question is precisely what method will be used for conversion? There has been some (apparently inconclusive) debate as to whether DSD can be converted losslessly to PCM. Let's look again at Mr. Talmadge's answer:

"Full resolution DSD can be output via HDMI on both players."

As a result of the standards adopted with HDMI 1.2, this is correct, but it does nothing to inform us about how the DSD will be converted to PCM. Unfortunately, I mistakenly asked the wrong question in the first place for not knowing that HDMI already supported DSD. I should have asked specifically about PCM conversion, which I did not.

At the risk of going pretty far off topic (again), I am wondering if anyone knows whether lossless DSD to PCM conversion is possible. Certainly in terms of pure bits, the BD multichannel audio standard is sufficient. 24/192 gives us 4.608Mb/channel as opposed to DSD's 2.8224Mb/channel. Unfortunately, conversion is about more than pure bits, and comparing DSD to PCM is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. There does, however, appear to be a lot of headroom with the higher bit ceiling in BD PCM to allow for a lot of innovative attempts at lossless conversion.

Considering how much improvement in sound quality I gain from my receiver through digital processing, I am not very interested in paying double for the 2011 just to feed DSD through the analog outs to my receiver's analog ins. Purists, however, will have to discover for themselves whether - even if the conversion is lossy - there is a noticeable difference in sound quality between DSD sent through analog or converted to PCM through HDMI.

Thanks, I'm considering another player, but it will probably be another Oppo. At least I know I'm getting 24/88 from it via PCM.

Being kind of a noob to SACD this is confusing. Am I to summize that with analog outs I'd get full resolution from the player going directly into the Denon ext in connections? In addition would I get full resolution if I bought a DSD capable reciever and went HDMI?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that the Denon players will manage to convert the DSD signal to 24/192, but I have no solid information that would allow me to assume this. While pure bit count is not sufficient to determine whether an effective conversion can take place, the bits per second from 24/88 (2.116Mb/s) is significantly below the number of bits per second for DSD (2.8224Mb/s).


Yes, that's right. The 1611 will be equipped with analog stereo outs, but you will have to go with the 2011 to get analog 7.1 surround outs. What I find as a drawback to using the analog inputs on my Denon AVR-1910 is that I don't appear to have access to the digital processing features such as Dolby PLIIx when I use the analog inputs. I certainly like the sound of DVD-A through HDMI as interpreted by Dolby PLIIx more than I do the pure direct sound of SACD. Thus, my own personal preference is to have a player that can at least send DSD through HDMI.



From what I understand at this time, that seems most likely to be the case. However, I am seriously wondering whether it is worth going that far. I am strongly of the opinion that CD audio has held on for so long simply because the typical listener cannot hear the difference between a 16/44.1 signal and analog. We're all on this particular forum because we KNOW we can hear the difference, and optimal audio equipment within our budgets is extremely important.

However, I have to question whether I would be able to tell the difference between a DSD signal that has been converted even in a slightly lossy way to PCM and an unconverted DVD-A signal that went directly from PCM to PCM. The typical listener's ability to distinguish audio is I think surpassed by CD-quality audio. Each of us who are unimpressed by CD will have our own threshold of perception. I know that when I record my vinyl at 24/192, I can just barely tell the difference. However, my DVD-A player (Denon DVD-1920) only plays back at 24/96. I have a strong feeling that if I move to the 1611 which is capable of 24/192 output, I will be unable to distinguish between my records and the DVD-A's I create from them. Alternately, my hearing and cognitive faculties might be such that replay bit depth will have to reach 32 bits before I perceive a digital signal in the same way as an analog one. Of this, I'm uncertain.

At this time, I'm skimming a paper about DSD/PCM conversion.
http://grad.uprm.edu/tesis/latorrenavarro.pdf
The author makes three interesting claims:
1. Lossless conversion is impossible.
2. A good lossy conversion does not lead to audible differences.
3. Sony during the remastering process actually uses PCM anyway and converts it to DSD for the final product.

There was another study designed to see if people with attuned hearing could consistently detect auditory differences between SACD and DVD-A.
http://old.hfm-detmold.de/eti/projek...paper_6086.pdf
The results essentially determined that people couldn't consistently do this, and in fact the overall results showed that the participants' answers were statistically about the same as guessing. The subjects were mostly music students. There was a tiny number of participants who apparently could make such a consistent distinction. That kind of discriminatory faculty is I think very rare, and I'm pretty sure mine just isn't that good.

One thing I would love to see is some of these tests cross-referenced with an intelligence test. I predict that those of higher intelligence will tend to be better at discriminating among various audio sources.

Thanks for all the info. The audio portion of my living room set up is only 2 channel with Paradigm Studio 10s, the Denon AVR-789, and the BDP-83. I'm considering stripping the Paradigm Studio 10s away for a dedicated music system with new amp (HK-3490) and a SACD capable player. Given I'm only 2 channel the 1611 would suffice, but another BDP-83 is also in the running.

Been in contact with denon Jeff about this and this was his response:


It is under investigation at this time, but most likely at launch the unit will not have this function.


Best regards,


Jeff

Has Denon in the past added functionality and improved performance in their products WITHOUT additional cost?


Willie

Alright, I have waited long enough. Where is my 1611 and when can I get it?

Patience my young padawan, they are not scheduled to be available until June 2010
Oh, yeah maybe its July now, maybe August

I wrote to Denon USA customer service asking about support for Hulu Plus. They responded that the DBP-1611UD will NOT support Hulu Plus.

Bummer. Guess i will be using the PS3 for Hulu Plus.

Looking at the sheet for the 1611 on the Denon website, I noticed the conspicuous absence of a button for group selection for DVD-Audio. I ask which control would be used for group selection and was informed that since technical information about the player is limited at this time, they didn't know.

It would be really sad if these players don't support selection of groups for DVD-Audio. Nearly all of the disks I have burned are arranged into groups.

What the heck is "group selection"?
Never heard of it before.

+1 on the group selection. Never heard of it before.

Forgive me, but enough already. Your steady stream of (negatively) speculating about arcana instead of just waiting for the players' (in the case of the 1611, delayed) arrival is getting vexing. You're concerned about possible playback of DVD-A consumer media in a manner that's not your personal preference?!?

I think you might be losing sight of some of the big picture. I think it's positive that we'll soon have these additional Denon (and Marantz) decks that play BD (and of course CD and DVD) along with DVD-A and SA-CD. It seems premature and misplaced to opine about how "sad" the possible development you refer to might be.

Can we pretty please just wait until the deck is on someone's test bench instead of making these kinds of comments?

wonder if they have too many 2010s and 1610s to sell!

Amen.

Crutchfield claims the 1611 is expected on 7/26/2010, the 2011 is not on their site yet

Is the ABT2015 on the AVR-3311 the same implementation as the DBP2011? Has anyone witnessed how this chip handles hybrid progressive/interlaced video?

Audio tracks in DVD-Audio format can be arranged into albums called 'groups.' There can be up to nine groups on a disk. The Denon DVD-1920 fully supports group selection. However, I am not aware of any commercially manufactured DVD Audio disks that took advantage of this feature. While I have found this to be a really useful feature of the format, it's a pretty easy feature to forget about for most users, especially those who don't make their own disks.

I seem to recall the Elvis Presley DVD-Audio having more than 1 group (but I could be remembering wrong!)

Here's some more info on DVD-Audio groups:
-----------------------------
The DVD-Audio specification defines a hierarchical structure and units of access, with the focus of continuing with the same style of operations used with familiar previous audio discs. As in the past, one song corresponds to one track. However, since one 12 cm single-layer disc holds 4.7 GB and is thus has the capacity to hold multiple CD albums, it is possible to record many tracks on a single DVD.

To improve accessability, the DVD-Audio specification combines multiple tracks which should be played sequentially into a newly-defined access unit called a Group. A Group is a logical unit, and can form a large structure of one or more sequential Audio Titles (ATT) as a single playback unit. This logical unit can be played continuously with a single operation. Audio Title is a logical structure which is equivalent to a Title in DVD-Video, and is comprised of the presentation data to be played and the navigation data which determine the playback sequence.

http://www.sharewareguide.net/articl...io-format.html
-----------------------------

I don't know if it's already been mentioned in this thread, but according to german AREA DVD both 2011UD and 1611UD will have fast loading mechanism .


Die Universal-Player verfügen über einen Schnelllade-Mechanismus, der auch komplex-programmierte Blu-ray Discs in Rekordzeit einlesen und abspielen können soll.

DK_Titan

This sounds like marketing:

"The universal player should have a fast charge mechanism, which can also read complex - programmed Blu -ray discs in record time and play ."

I've seen other manufacturer's market the speed of their players only to come up significantly short. There are several players currently on the market that have established themselves on the speed front so I'm taking a wait and see attitude on these new Denon's since the previous models were slugs.


Willie

The owner's manual for the 1611 is now posted on Denon's website, but I'm having a little trouble downloading it.

I keep following this thread so I know the day it goes on sale so I can buy one.

P.49 audio output table and footnote do not mention DSD-PCM sample frequency.

Like all other BDPs, 5.1 192kHz dts-HD MA is output as 5.1 96kHz. Why can't BDPs do full rate decoding when the PS3 can?

PAL/NTSC
480i/576i
No VCD