PS3 to Onkyo 604, Optical or HDMI for audio?

Originally Posted by blak

I currently have my PS3 hooked up to my Onkyo with an optical cable and to my Samsung 61" DLP via HDMI for video.
I have to either buy another Optical cable to replace the one I took from my STB, or buy another HDMI cable and run the audio and video through my amp and switch the optical back to my STB.

From my research it looks like the advantage of using the HDMI for video/audio is that when PS3 releases a firmware upgrade to incorporate "HD" sound HDMI will be the only way to achieve this with my receiver?
I have 5.1 at the moment but I'll be upgrading to 7.1 within the next month or so.

So am I on the right track?

Originally Posted by Bob Pariseau

Kind of, except that there's no need to wait!

The new, higher quality audio on Blue Ray discs is shipped as uncompressed, high bandwidth, multi-channel digital audio in a form known as PCM. The PS3 will take the PCM tracks and ship it over HDMI to an HDMI V1.1 (or higher) receiver TODAY, and if that receiver is able to handle high bandwidth multi-channel PCM as HDMI input then you are good to go.

The new audio on Blue Ray discs is *ALSO* shipped in "zipped up" formats such as TrueHD or DTS-MA. The underlying audio in these is just a PCM track, but it takes up lesss space on the disc. What the PS3 currently lacks is the ability to decode a TrueHD track into PCM so that it can send it out over the HDMI connection.

Right now this is no big deal because most discs with TrueHD tracks are shipping THE IDENTICAL audio track "zipped up" into the TrueHD format. However, since TrueHD takes up less space on the disc, studios are able to ship a BETTER quality PCM track "zipped up" into TrueHD than they could fit on disc as straight PCM. So that's why you want your PS3 to be upgraded at some point.

In either case, what comes over the optical audio connection is not audio of that quality. It is a lower quality, "compatiblity with older or less capable receivers" format. In essence the player takes the high quality track, reduces it in bandwidth (quality) and re-encodes it in a format the receiver already knows how to handle -- usually good old DTS as found on standard DVDs. And that's what gets sent over the optical connection.
--Bob