John-Michael Del Valle’s Blog

I’ve seen so many blogs post about the new firmware upgrade coming to the Playstation 3 which adds DTS-MA support not explain what this means. Hopefully I’ll make this a clear as possible for people who don’t know much about audio.

There are two different ways the PS3 sends audio: Bitstream or PCM.

There are two main different types of HD Audio: Dolby TrueHD & DTS-MA

The way bitstream works can basically be compared to the idea of “zipping” up multiple files into one. This means that all the audio tracks are basically put into one file by the PS3 and sent off to a receiver. The receiver then “unzips” the file and sends all the tracks to each speaker.

The way PCM works is all the audio tracks sent directly from the PS3 to the receiver. The receiver doesn’t do any work to the tracks and straight to the speakers.

Now that you understand the basics we have to introduce the different cables and what they do & support. Starting with the basic cables that come with the PS3 (composite cables) yellow ‘video’, red & white ‘audio’. The red and white cables are the audio and the yellow takes care of video. Hopefully you guys with fancy HDTV know NOT to use these cables, in other words you won’t see your games or movies in HD with using these cables. Now with using the red and white cables you will only get stereo sound (two audio tracks left and right).

Next is the Optical cable (TOSLINK) for audio. We all generally know this cable when working with home theater set ups. The thing that most people don’t realize about the optical cable is that it has limited amount of power. Now if we were watching a regular DVD that has dolby digital 5.1 or even DTS we’d get surround sound. Now whats the problem and makes this so complicated? Well the problem is that the new formats, Dolby TrueHD & DTS-MA, that are available on selected blu-rays take a lot more to process than the old basic Dolby Digital or DTS tracks. What are options in the end with the optical cable? Bitstream is available in the audio settings while using an optical cable. This allows for the basic DD & DTS tracks to be sent in their “zipped” format to the receiver and decoded at the receiver level and sent to the speakers. Now if you notice if you select PCM you’ll see you can check PCM 2.1 but PCM 5.1 and 7.1 are dimmed out. This is the MAJOR problem that you run into. The cause is the fact that optical cables can only send 2 PCM tracks. Your receiver will only be receiving two channels of audio and then filling in the rest of the surround speakers with its best guess to what should be heard in the rears and center. If using an optical cable you SHOULD use the bitstream method to get 5 separate tracks of audio sent to your receiver via that “zip” concept.

HDMI is the best way to fully take advantage of what the high definition world has too offer. This cable is capable of sending all the video and audio signals in one cable. This supports the 1080p video and PCM 5.1 & 7.1 audio. As easy as you think this would be it, IT IS NOT. Many few people today have receivers with HDMI inputs. Not to mention probably a decent amount of people who do have receivers with HDMI input only support what is called HDMI Passthrough. Pass through means it only supports video with the HDMI cable and NOT audio. Now lets assume you have a new receiver that does support audio over HDMI. This means that you are now able to support PCM 5.1 and 7.1 from your PS3. The catch is that if you do pop in a blu-ray with either TrueHD you can only use PCM and NOT Bitstream to send the audio to your receiver. This means that the PS3 CAN NOT and DOES NOT support BITSTREAM via HDMI. Pre-Patch the Playstation 3 could ONLY do TrueHD via HDMI using the PCM form. With the NEW update the Playstation 3 WILL SUPPORT DTS-MA via HDMI using the PCM form.

If you got all that I congratulate you because you are now one of the few.

Now if you decide you want to learn more and want to know more, here it is.

Since you have a basic idea of what Bitstream, PCM, TrueHD, DTS-MA, and HDMI we can go in a little deeper. There are 3 different types of HDMI receivers out there: ones that have HDMI but are passthrough, ones that support HDMI audio but can not decode TrueHD nor DTS-MA, and the ones the VERY FEW which support HDMI audio and can decode TrueHD & DTS-MA. The last two are why you see some receivers starting to cost around $400 without speakers & cables.

Now that we know that the Playstation 3 can ONLY use PCM to send TrueHD & DTS-MA we can make shopping for a receiver and home audio a whole lot easier and cheaper. Since all the audio gets decoded at the player level (PS3) we know that the receiver we plan on getting only has to support HDMI audio and NOT HAVE TOO decode the “zip” file. Some examples of receivers that do NOT decode HD audio tracks but DO support PCM Audio via HDMI are the Onkyo 604 & Sony 1000.

For the real audiophile unfortunately we can NOT take advantage of the fancy receivers out there which can decode TrueHD & DTS-MA. The Playstation 3 is doing all the dirty work and all that money you spent on some audio processor is spent for nothing because all it is playing the tracks sent by the PS3. Yet now we all cheer for (including me) is the fact that atleast we can now take advantage of DTS-MA using PCM where before we wouldn’t beable too.

Too help you understand why some blu-ray players are priced as high as over $600+, the reason is that they support TrueHD & DTS-MA via PCM & yes even TrueHD & DTS-MA via Bitstream. The serious audiophile pays this much for the blu-ray player because they want their HD audio tracks set via Bitstream to the receiver so their expensive receiver which can decode both TrueHD & DTS-MA and put out the best sound possible in todays consumer world. This is the main reason you hear so much about the Panasonic 50 blu-ray player it supports all the audio formats via PCM & Bitstream.

Hopefully this was easy to comprehend as informative. This is not by any means perfect and lacks some details but made to make this as simple as I could put it.

-JM

Technorati Tags: DTS-MA, HD Audio, HDMI, Playstation 3, Playstation 3 firmware, TrueHD

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