Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler High def audio sync problems

John, You are correct, I do realize why it doesn't show.

Peter, I do have the latest updates for all my equipment and it appears as though Denon has already stopped doing any updates for the 3808, at least judging by the 3808 threads on AVS .

If the 3808 is to blame I wonder why so many other people with other systems/avr's etc. have similar problems, a quick google yields a dizzying array of HD audio syncing issues. I would be willing to pick up a new avr if I knew it would fix this issue, but agian judging from the myriad complaints covering pretty much every avr out there I can't see how this would help.

Listening to the PCM vs. HD audio tracks, I felt that the PCM version seemed a little less lively, some of the bass from some of the slightly less high impact scenes didn't feel the same as they did with the DTS-HD audio track but his could just be me.

Very few BDs have PCM tracks. Really it was only the first batch before the lossless codecs were finalized. You could probably count on one hand the discs that had PCM and a lossless track. Once the dust settled and the HD codecs were well supported everyone stopped including the PCM tracks because they took up so much space.

If you're saying that you're hearing a difference between sending the HD bitstream to your receiver vs. sending the decoded PCM, you're wrong. (That's why double blinds studies are so important.) That's like saying the program ran better because someone sent it to you in a Zip file, rather than them unzipping it and sending you the raw executable.

It doesn't matter if the player decodes the audio to PCM or sends the bitstream, and the receiver decodes that to PCM. It all ends up being the same bits in the end. Just you don't get the HD light on the receiver as it can't tell the original format.

I'm wholly against bitstreaming. It serves no purpose, and actually slows the adoption of new audio formats (everyone waits for receiver to gain support rather than just letting the players with support for the new format do the work). It's a hack left over from laserdisc days, that lived on too long through DVD. It should have died when BDs came on the scene. Players don't bitstream the video to the display. They decode the compressed video into full frames and send them. Why should there be any difference with audio?

Think if the receiver had to support every audio codec known to man. That would be silly. No, if you have a computer hooked up to your receiver it decodes the Vorbis, AAC, MP3, FLAC, Monkey, Shorten, WMA, etc. and then sends the audio as PCM. That always works.

And that's my rant for the week.

Someday I'll remember the difference between the two. In the meantime, it's helpful to see the rant every few months or so.

I am obviously going to stick with the PCM output especially as there is no real difference in SQ, the sync issue is just too annoying to deal with. I did a little more research and it appears the newer Denon's are receiveing better support and the sync issues are virtually non existant(had to search prettyy hard to find anything) other than with the initial release of whatever movie is causing a problem or poor cable boxes, for some reason(I would suspect the almighty dollar) Denon is leaving us 3808 owner's out in the cold when it comes to proper updates.