Help with Sound - Blu-ray Forum

Livinlarge · 12-30-2006, 06:59 PM

Someone please rank the best to worst sound settings for me, for example I don't know if I should use DTS or DD or HD, etc. My receiver is brand new with HDMI inputs and supports up to 7.1 surround but my speakers are set up for 5.1. Someone please explain uncompressed sound? Thanks.

shido · 12-30-2006, 07:45 PM

Well, uncompressed LPCM is definitely the best sound you can get. Next would be DTSHD-MA, though we can only use the lossy core at the moment. Dolby TrueHD is supposed to be equivalent, though most reviews I've read seem to say that DTSHD-MA sounds better, even in its lossy form. Next would probably be Blu-ray's DD, which is the same as HD-DVD's DD+. All of these options sound better than what is found on DVD, though.

As for your question about uncompressed, think about mp3s. Mp3s takes an audio source and selectively removes bits from it that are not "important" to the overall sound. Thus, the file size gets smaller, while generally maintaining the original recording's fidelity. All audio formats until now used some sort of compression like this, whether it be DD or DTS. Each format just varied in the usage of bitrate - on DVD, DTS generally was encoded with a higher bitrate than DD, thus most times the DTS track sounded better. Anyway, the effects of compression are not unnoticeable however. If you've ever watched a streaming video online, you'd get the idea of what heavily compressed sounds like. So basically, when we say uncompressed audio, it means that the audio on that blu-ray disc is the exact original copy, without any compression applied to it whatsoever. This obviously requires more space to pull off, but that's what blu-ray was designed for. There're new lossless compression formats, such as DTSHD-MA and Dolby True HD out right now that should be equivalent to uncompressed LPCM. They do their compression differently - think of it as a sort of "zip" compression, where bits are not removed at all. It's more complicated, so I'll leave it to the experts to explain.

Anyway, seeing as you have an HDMI receiver, you should by all means use the uncompressed LPCM track whenever available. You won't regret it.

Livinlarge · 01-04-2007, 08:24 PM

I just watched Pearl Harbor with uncompressed sound and OMG! was that awsome.

12-30-2006, 06:59 PM	#1
Livinlarge Junior Member Member since:Oct 2006	Help with Sound Someone please rank the best to worst sound settings for me, for example I don't know if I should use DTS or DD or HD, etc. My receiver is brand new with HDMI inputs and supports up to 7.1 surround but my speakers are set up for 5.1. Someone please explain uncompressed sound? Thanks.

01-04-2007, 08:24 PM	#3
Livinlarge Junior Member Member since:Oct 2006	Thanks I just watched Pearl Harbor with uncompressed sound and OMG! was that awsome.

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12-30-2006, 07:45 PM	#2
shido Active Member Member since:Aug 2006	Well, uncompressed LPCM is definitely the best sound you can get. Next would be DTSHD-MA, though we can only use the lossy core at the moment. Dolby TrueHD is supposed to be equivalent, though most reviews I've read seem to say that DTSHD-MA sounds better, even in its lossy form. Next would probably be Blu-ray's DD, which is the same as HD-DVD's DD+. All of these options sound better than what is found on DVD, though. As for your question about uncompressed, think about mp3s. Mp3s takes an audio source and selectively removes bits from it that are not "important" to the overall sound. Thus, the file size gets smaller, while generally maintaining the original recording's fidelity. All audio formats until now used some sort of compression like this, whether it be DD or DTS. Each format just varied in the usage of bitrate - on DVD, DTS generally was encoded with a higher bitrate than DD, thus most times the DTS track sounded better. Anyway, the effects of compression are not unnoticeable however. If you've ever watched a streaming video online, you'd get the idea of what heavily compressed sounds like. So basically, when we say uncompressed audio, it means that the audio on that blu-ray disc is the exact original copy, without any compression applied to it whatsoever. This obviously requires more space to pull off, but that's what blu-ray was designed for. There're new lossless compression formats, such as DTSHD-MA and Dolby True HD out right now that should be equivalent to uncompressed LPCM. They do their compression differently - think of it as a sort of "zip" compression, where bits are not removed at all. It's more complicated, so I'll leave it to the experts to explain. Anyway, seeing as you have an HDMI receiver, you should by all means use the uncompressed LPCM track whenever available. You won't regret it.

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