The official "Theta" thread - Page 115

From Wiki: >>HDMI can use HDCP to encrypt the signal if required by the source device. CSS, CPRM and AACS require the use of HDCP on HDMI when playing back encrypted DVD Video, DVD Audio, HD DVD and Blu-ray Disc.<<


What is the operational difference between the easy way and the alternative way? HDMI operation is not a matter of interpretation.


If the HD audio on the BD is 48 kHz sample rate, what is the Lumagen doing to make it look like 192 or 96 kHz?

As Lumagen "should", as Lumagen "is" doing, as I explained above, in my demoing last night, all blu rays HDMI into the Lumagen and coaxial out, had no sound. Thats not even downsampling. Thats nosampling. Bot non-HDCP music discs of whatever resolution, input into the Lumagen via HDMI, when output via coaxial were output hi rez!!!@@

What may be going on here is this: When you play SACD you are sending encrypted PCM over HDMI. The lumigen decrypts this signal and send it to the coax output without downsampling (in violation of the HDMI license). When you play a blu ray you are probably bitsteaming HD-DTS. Being a video processor, The lumigen cannot decode this, so nothing is send to the coax out. You can set your Compli to decode the HD-DTS to PCM and see what happens. If this works (i.e. gets you non-downsamples output on the coax), the lumigen is the accidental HDMI encrytion hack.

Doesn't the HDMI license only concern blu ray, not SACD?

When the Theta Compli Blu or Oppo blu ray players output SACD as 88 kHz PCM only over HDMI, the only decryption is for the SACD to PCM, and I don't think that any further encryption is added. Otherwise, I wouldn't be getting full 88 kHz PCM for SACD out of the Lumagen's digital coaxial output.

As for blu ray, good idea. I will shortly try your suggestion, setting Theta Compli Blu to output PCM for blu ray. Lets see what I find out.

I admit I lost the licensing plot a little bit. If SACD is not subject to licensing restrictions, why doesn't Oppo / Compli simply send 88/24 PCM from SACD sources to their own coax output?

SACD and DVD-A are protected. Because HDMI uses HDCP is the only reason Sony allowed the transmission over HDMI.

Again you are wrong. HA!

I set the Theta Compli Blu to do the PCM decoding.

On blu ray of Avatar, HDMI shows "48.0" (funny, it was "192.0" when CB3 HD did the PCM decoding), digital coaxial also shows "48.0", but with player doing the decoding we have audio/sound (with SSP doing decoding, on digital coaxial,we had no audio/sound).

On blu ray of Neil Young, player set to output PCM, HDMI shows "192.0", digital coaxial shows "48.0", but no audio/sound. Also, player set to output PCM up to 192 kHz.

WOOPS! Maybe you are right some of the time.

Blu ray of The Police Certifiable, HDMI shows "96.0", and digital coaxial shows "96.0" with sound, on both hi rez stereo and 5.1 tracks. WOW!!@@@@ Same for blu ray of Roy Orbison A Black and White Night!!!

Now, set player to output PCM up to 96 kHz. (Funny. Now I can play both audio tracks on the blu ray of Neil Young, when I had player set to output PCM up to 192 kHz, whether player decoded to PCM, or SSP did the decoding,
I could only use one of the audio tracks.) The first LPCM Stereo track, over HDMI shows "192.0", over digital coaxial shows "96.0". The second LPCM Stereo track shows "96.0" for both HDMI and digital coaxial. And I am always getting sound on digital coaxial.

COOL!

I suggested a simple test to try to understand what is going on in your lumigen. What was I wrong about?

Since avator is probably a native 48 Hz signal and the lumigen coax now gives you 48 Hz on Blu Ray sources, it could still be the case the Lumigen sends audio to the coax without downsampling, but simply is not capable of processing 192/24. It would be interesting to try a Blu Ray with native 96/24 track and see what comes out of your coax.

Funny, I was typing in the previous post while you were doing the expiriment I suggested. So the lumigen is effectively an non HDMI licence compliant HDCP hacking machine.

Yea, that was funny!!

Now play a movie with the coax of the Lumagen going into the Gen 8 instead of the output from the Casablanca. You will lose crossover and delay settings but see which is the bigger sacrifice.

You can set cross-over and delay in the Compli.

Not the slopes he's using or crossover option. Of course he can use the players rudimentary controls but I thought that went without saying.

The Oppo's crossover and delay settings operate only on the Analog outs. They do not affect the Digital outs. Is the Compli different?

It's actually the Lumagen which would be the source of the digital out. That's what I was thinking when I made the post about losing slopes and delays. The Compli-Blu is input into the Casablanca LPCM so you still get to use the Casablanca for processing. I am sure you are right about LPCM not having delay and crossover settings. However, a JVB modified player should have those capabilities. Just a guess but I believe the instructions I saw tapped the digital at the dac input, which is the source of the processed analog outs. Edorr and I have been discussing that player so that may have been what he was thinking.

Quite right. A JVB player's digital outs are affected by the Oppo speaker controls.

My original Problem with CB3HD has returned. Loss of all audio until power cycling CB3HD. Tried power cycling all devices (Lumagen, Display, Oppo 95, Dune, HTPC) to no avail. I power cycled (main power switch on back) the CB3HD and once again had audio.

I put on a Blu-ray of Johnny English Reborn, and lost audio again about 2/3 of the way through the movie. I Power cycled (via remote) CB3HD once more, still no audio. Pressing the remote for volume up, would only show the bars on the display for one bar increase. Subsequent presses on remote resulted in no response of the front display.

I'm regretting my upgrade. I had zero problems since the day I bought it until the upgrade.

Time to contact John again. *sigh*

Send it back to Theta. Maybe at this point the problem should be easy to replicate. Are you sure you are regretting the upgrade?: ). You sure do not seem to want to send it back.

At the video processor forum of AVS, the Lumagen Radiance XD/XE thread, it came out per Patrick Harkins of Lumagen that HDMI cables of less than 6 feet have reflection issues that can cause weird things to happen. A number of us Radiance owners went and replaced shorter HDMI cables of less than 6 feet with at least 6 foot cables and our problems virtually disappeared. Might try this.

Thanks Steve. I already have cables 3M in length. As a fellow Radiance customer, have you had any issues that I have described at all?

It was sent back one time for mods, and updates. I left John an email to see what we can do.

I regret having problems is a more accurate statement. I am frustrated.

I did have some funky HDMI issues, both picture and audio. A few months ago, I replaced some shorter HDMI cables with 6' HDMI minimum length; and I also
routed from all sources HDMI cables first to the Radiance XE; and from the Radiance XE, first HDMI out goes to CB3 HD, and second HDMI out (from Lumagen) goes into a Atlona AT-HD-V12 (1 HDMI in, 2 HDMI out) HDMI splitter, which goes to both my Sim2 C3X 1080 projector and to my 2nd display a 32" Sharp HDTV.

I still get an occasional glitch, but much better than ever before. E.G. maybe once every two weeks, when I turn on system and DirecTV HR24-500 DVR,
no sound. To get sound, I had to unplug and restart (or restart in the menu) the HR24-500, then all was fine. HDMI is very, very funky!!!@@

Do you ever lose audio mid show?

No sense doing this for movies.

My purpose in using the Lumagen to take in HDMI from Theta Compli Blu and for Lumagen to output digital coaxial, is so that I can play SACD and keep it at 88 kHz rez into the Gen VIII Series 3 DAC. It does that. I am ecstatic.

Whenever I go from player/source direct into the Gen VIII DAC, I first go into Gen 8 menu and set it to "None" where the Gen 8 is playing the stereo source input into the Gen 8 direct (as opposed to setting the menu of the Gen 8 at "Front Left/Right" so the Gen 8 acts as the CB3 HD's front left and right channels). So for blu ray movies, for which masters are at 48k anyway,
there's hardly any sense trying this. Plus, if I try this, I lose center, surrounds and subs, because using the Gen 8 direct gives me only front left and right, the latter being fantastic when it comes to pure music.

However, for those few blu ray music discs which are higher rez, like The Police blu ray concert disc which is 96-24, I certainly may decide to listen using the coaxial on something like that.

I've had this happen but not recently. More likely, turning on system, no audio, reboot HD DVR, and that hasn't happened for like 2 weeks now. HA!

Yeah I have had the CB3HD 'freeze' mid-way when watching bluray/tivo ~2/3 times; I had to remove power cord and plug it back in to reboot.

Not often/enough to make me complain yet. My wireless router requires more reboots

~K

Sure, if you use the method that you currently use, you will lose center,subs and surrounds. You would have to do as I suggested and use the configuration with the digital input not from the Casablanca but from the Lumagen for the front left and right. Perhaps, I am missing something? Does the Lumagen output the left and right or some kind of mix down? Does it also at the same time feed audio to the Casablanca via HDMI? Of course, for it to work, the Compli-blu would need to be set to output LPCM so you don't have double decoding. Blu-ray masters are at 48/24 and the Casablanca's output should be 48/16. I have never compared the two but I notice that reports about the 44/16 Beatles recordings are that they are not as good as the Apple 44/24 release even from the same master, when both are sourced from USB. It depends on who I ask but some industry professionals tell me that would rather have the extra 8 bits than have extension to 96k.

It the Lumagen will not work, I will wait for the test on the JVB Oppo to see if it is capable of sending out LPCM and feeding an external dac all in sync at all at the same time. Seems I am the only one not willing to concede that the 8 bit difference does not matter.

The Lumagen, from its HDMI input, and out its coaxial digital output, does output the front left and right channels.






I haven't tried that, but I think the answer is yes.

However, I will never do this. Last year, I set up my CB3 HD and the Gen VIII, then Series 2, DAC, so that I could effectively use the front left and right out of the Gen VIII (with the Gen VIII's menu set to "None" for external channels) with the center, left and right surround, and my three Aerial subwoofers. I was doing this for hi rez SACD and DVD-A that I played with the Theta Compli, as I connected a coaxial digital cable from the Compli to the Gen VIII, and also HDMI from the Compli to CB3 HD.
But my Gen VIII DAC ended up burnin' up its volume cards (4).

My guess is that somehow this "unusual" configuration led to that. So I am not trying anything like that again.








Oh - I have no doubt that 48-24 sounds better than 48-16. I have some 48-24 DVD-Audio discs and they sound great!

I am not crazy about JVB. I had a Pioneer DVD player modified by them with a SDI output. Worked fine with my first Lumagen video processor
(no HDMI, all analog). Then when I got the newer model Lumagen with SDI input, wouldn't work. Sent both the Lumagen (not my current Radiance XE, but whatever the model was prior to the Radiance) and Pioneer DVD player to Lumagen. The Lumagen was fine,problem was the JVB SDI mod has too much jitter. Lumagen did their own SDI mod for me on the Pioneer free of charge, and everything worked fine after that.

Hi Steve

I am in the process of (likely) getting a Theta. Did you keep the PS Audio? How did the Theta DAC sound quality compare to using PS Audio as a DAC?

Thanks