Quick Question regarding audio..

[Revann]

I have a Samsung BDP-1500 and my amp is part of this home theater in the box bundle. http://reviews.cnet.com/home-theater...?tag=mncol;lst.

I have them hooked up with an optical cable. My question is would I get better sound setting my BD player to Bitstream (re-encode) or Bitstream (audiophile?). Thanks for the info.

[Audiophile_At_Birth]

I would assume audiophile rather than re-encode. Why "re-encode" something. But I'm certainly not one to tell you. I'd say trust your ears. But if there's no difference that you can hear that is audible, then I guess there would be no wrong answer. It all comes down to the listener.

[Squozen]

I just downloaded the manual and read it for you.

Use Bitstream (re-encode). This is recommended by Samsung for users with optical connections on page 35. It re-encodes lossless audio into 1536kbps DTS and also mixes in secondary audio. Using Bitstream (audiophile) will limit you to a 640kbps DD track on most discs, and you'll lose secondary audio.

It looks like a well laid-out manual, why aren't you reading it?

[Revann]

I read it...but I just wanted to know if anyone had any experience with this player also. I realize audiophile wont have the "secondary" audio, but would the primary audio sound better if it's not re-encoded.

I'm not really good at understanding how the Kbps work (but since DTS is higher I am assuming now thats better) and so forth, so I was just wondering if anyone heard an audible difference before I start experimenting with it.

[jeff92k7]

Originally Posted by Revann

would the primary audio sound better if it's not re-encoded.

For DTS it won't matter but for Dolby Digital tracks, audiophile will actually sound worse. With Bitstream (audiophile), the player is outputting the core of the audio as a bitstream to your AVR via the optical cable.

The core of the audio is going to be a high-bitrate Dolby Digital stream (higher than DVD, but still compressed) or a high-bitrate DTS stream (again, higher than DVD but still compressed) depending on the audio format of the disc. basically, it is sending the compressed audio exactly as the compressed core appears on the disc.

Bitstream (re-encode) works differently. It decodes the Full HD Dolby digital track in the player, then downconverts it to a high-bitrate DTS track to stream to your AVR. The advantage to this method is the re-encoded stream is a higher bitrate stream than the Dolby core would be. In other words, it will sound better because less audio is being lost to compression. DTS tracks however, won't sound any different with this setting since the 1500 doesn't currently offer DTS-HDMA decoding internally. But even if it did, it wouldn't matter. The bitrate of the re-encoded DTS stream is exactly the same as the DTS core. Therefore, even if the 1500 had DTS-HDMA decoding, the re-encoded audio would be exactly the same as the audiophile setting but with the secondary tracks mixed in.

All that means that you should use the re-encode setting until you get an HDMI receiver or a better Blu-Ray player with analog outputs.

[Revann]

Thanks for the response. Now its alot clearer to me.

[BIslander]

jeff92k7 - An interesting post, but I can't agree with your statement that re-encode sounds better than audiophile. That conclusion strikes me as a personal opinion based on the notion that DTS at 1.5 mbps is better than DD 5.1 at 640 kbps just because the bitrate is higher. Dolby encoding is more efficient than DTS. It's hard enough to tell the difference between lossless and lossy when DD and DTS are encoded at the maximum legacy bitrates. I doubt you'd be able to pickout a DTS re-encode in a blind test with the audiophile Dolby output.

[jeff92k7]

Originally Posted by BIslander

That conclusion strikes me as a personal opinion based on the notion that DTS at 1.5 mbps is better than DD 5.1 at 640 kbps just because the bitrate is higher.

It is personal opinion, I'll admit that, but it is based on simple math since neither company releases details of exactly how their encoding scheme works. Would we be discussing DVD bit rates of 448Kbps for Dolby and 768Kbps for DTS, then I would be tempted to agree. However, we are discussing Blu-Ray bit rates of 640Kbps for Dolby versus 1,536Kbps for DTS. In this case, the DTS rate contains 2.4 times as many bits per second.

Originally Posted by BIslander

Dolby encoding is more efficient than DTS.

Even if Dolby does have a "better" encoding scheme to compress the audio in such a way that the ear can't really hear it, the DTS scheme still contains far more of the original audio. In other words, it is altered a lot less.

Originally Posted by BIslander

It's hard enough to tell the difference between lossless and lossy when DD and DTS are encoded at the maximum legacy bitrates.

Agreed. The differences are very minimal, but nonetheless, they are there. Many people, including myself, can hear the differences.

Originally Posted by BIslander

I doubt you'd be able to pick out a DTS re-encode in a blind test with the audiophile Dolby output.

Maybe not, maybe so. I've never really tried it. But as I said above, due to the much higher bit rate of DTS, I still recommend it over Dolby's format.

Now, I'm not trying to start another "DTS vs. Dolby" thread. These are my personal views and, as such, should not be taken as absolute truth. It is up to each person to make their own decisions based on their knowledge level. I certainly wouldn't complain if i had to listen to a Dolby track. We all did that for years before Blu-Ray came out.