How to get HD audio without using a HDMI cable.
Right now the two main HD audio codecs are Dolby TrueHD & DTS-MA. These audio tracks can be found on Blu-ray disk. Unfortunately if you don’t have an AV Receiver you realize you’re constrained by your TV speakers. Now if you have an AV Receiver and have had one for quite some time now you might be lucky to have an HDMI input. HDMI has become the standard cable to use when connecting Blu-ray players because it has copyright protection that all the studios want. This in turn creates some issues.
If you have an old receiver and do NOT have HDMI inputs or have HDMI inputs but it’s a pass through (only carries video NOT audio) you’re stuck. Chances are you’re either using optical/digital coax or stereo inputs (red & white). The problem with this is that since you’re not using an HDMI cable you won’t be able to get TrueHD, DTS-MA, or Multi Channel LPCM tracks from your optical/digital coax or stereo cables. The reason is because the optical cable doesn’t support such high bandwidths (not completely accurate but worth mentioning) & because of copyright protections. The optical/digital coax cables only push out 2 channels of uncompressed audio LPCM 2.0. If you have a PS3 this is why in your audio settings you can only check off 2 channels. If you are getting 5.1 audio from your blu-ray player using an optical cable it’s because TrueHD, DTS-MA, and other codecs are being down sampled to the standard dolby digital 5.1. The audio gets sent to the receiver and then the receiver decodes it as Standard 5.1 audio.
Is there a solution to this if you’re receiver doesn’t have HDMI? Yes!
Back in the day when digital cables weren’t too popular the way to get surround sound was by analog outs. Analog outs are not commonly found in today’s modern players. You can find analog outs in some high end DVD players. There are a few Blu-ray players out today that are equipped with analog 5.1ch outs. The analog outputs support sending out 5.1 uncompressed PCM audio. This is the only way to get TrueHD or DTS-MA without using HDMI. The problem is you need to find a blu-ray player that has 5.1 analog outs and a receiver that has analog inputs. If you’ve accomplished both of these make sure you set your receiver to Multi-Channel Audio and set the Blu-ray player to PCM. Now keep in mind that the blu-ray player MUST decode TrueHD &/or DTS-MA PCM to pass the audio. If the player has analog outs but doesn’t decode one or the other then don’t expect anything. Analog outs transmit the audio via PCM and NOT Bitstream.
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