what does PCM mean?

[paultimm]

I bought the new insignia bd player and i have an old yamaha receiver. It has either digital dolby or dts. But sometimes i can get the PCM light to come on. I am pretty sure this is umcompressed signal coming into the receiver, but it sounds miked very low and not as good as DD or dts. And from what i learned, this is supposed to be better sound. I hooked the insignia up to the receiver using digital output, cause it doesnt have hdmi inputs. I was wondering if i should just leave it off PCM and and bitstream from the player to the receiver. Because it just sounds so much better that way.

thanks for any help on this matter

pt

[jw]

Originally Posted by paultimm

I bought the new insignia bd player and i have an old yamaha receiver. It has either digital dolby or dts. But sometimes i can get the PCM light to come on. I am pretty sure this is umcompressed signal coming into the receiver, but it sounds miked very low and not as good as DD or dts. And from what i learned, this is supposed to be better sound. I hooked the insignia up to the receiver using digital output, cause it doesnt have hdmi inputs. I was wondering if i should just leave it off PCM and and bitstream from the player to the receiver. Because it just sounds so much better that way.

thanks for any help on this matter

pt

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-code_modulation
I believe its lossless audio, and yes PCM is the best way to listen to it

[crackinhedz]

when you are using optical, the most you will ever get from Lossless audio is 2.0 PCM.

Basically stereo sound...which would not sound as fun as 5.1 or 7.1 and is probably why you do not care for it much.

[Squozen]

If you only have an optical input, set your Blu-ray player to bitstream. You will not get lossless audio, but that's just how it is without HDMI (or 5.1 analogue inputs).

[BTBuck1]

pulse code modulation: the bestest sound evAR!