Questions about HD audio

[JCHout]

I have several questions about this new True Dolby and such coming out on the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs and this forum tends to be extremely knowlegable. First of all, I have a 7.1 receiver that can do all the Dolby and DTS modes, but those new sound formats are not listed. If I were to buy a Blu-Ray or HD-DVD player that supports that format, could my receiver properly play it? What does all of this 'uncompressed' sound mean? Will the HD discs still have the basic Dolby and DTS tracks on them? As you can see I am really confused about all of this and am about to take the plunge on one of these players, but I cannot seem to find a place that can explain this to a moron like myself.

[JCHout]

I realize that I am bumping myself, but after doing some research I have discovered the answer to this seems to be yes based on my receiver. It is a Pioneer Elite VSX-82TXS and that should do it for what I read. Nevertheless, what I read I certainly did not understand, so if anybody can answer this in a way that could be understood, it would make a blossoming audiophile very happy indeed.

[wuzzzer]

To answer your question about uncompressed sound, newer formats are using HDMI which allows a much higher amount of video and audio information to be sent to a TV or receiver. Its like how with MP3 formats you can have recordings with a very low bit rate (poor quality but doesn't take up much room on the hard drive) or with a very high bit rate (sounds much better but takes up a lot more hard drive space).

[Professor.Ham.Slap]

Essentially in order to get the full DTS HD or Dolby Digital TrueHD you need an HDMI capable receiver. The good news is it doesn't matter if the receiver processes the new surround formats because all current generation players decode the tracks and output it as multi-channel PCM so you get the full stream without any degradation. However, if you don't have HDMI in your receiver you can still get a somewhat higher quality stream through an optical connection. The Toshiba player will encode it as DTS 1.5mbps (the highest bitrate optical can carry) so you'll still get a decent benefit, but that being said I love the current generation HDMI receivers (I have a Yamaha and my father has a Harman Kardon, both of which are nothing short of incredible).

[JCHout]

First of all, thanks alot for the replies. Would there be anything I needed to do to the receiver in setup to get it as the PCM or would it automatically accept the higher bitrate? It does have both HDMI and optical inputs that are open.

[MatrixDweller]

Your Pioneer Elite has HDMI 1.2a which allows linear PCM to be read from the cable. I think in the player you need to set the audio output as PCM rather than bitstream. I have a Toshiba HDA2 and a Denon 3805 (no HDMI) and pass the DTS bitstream to my receiver. It sounds great, although it seems muted slightly compared to regular DD or DTS output.

I too am wondering how much better the new lossless formats are. I have a hard time telling the difference between MP3's encoded higher than 256Mbps and the original CD.

To open up this discusson further, has anyone done a side by side comparison of Dolby True HD, Dolby Digital Plus and plain Dolby Digital? Are the new formats really worth it, outside of their better white paper comparison?