What's wrong with TrueHD?!?

[werewuf]

Originally Posted by DaViD Boulet

Extraction to PCM doesn't lose anything from the TrueHD because that's what the TrueHD is compressing. You may not be fully understanding what TrueHD is (or is supposed to be). It's basically a "zip file" for a PCM file. In other words, it's supposed to get "extracted" back to PCM... because that's what it's zipping (actually, all compressed signals, both lossy and lossless, get extracted back to PCM before d/a conversion). The only issue in the case of playback is whether your player unzips it or your receiver/decoder unzips it. HDMI 1.3 means you can send the raw TrueHD signal to your decoder for extraction to PCM there. Aside from jitter issues, there should be no difference if one device unzips or another devics unzips... unless there's additional DSP that one device applies that another does not.

Dialog Normalization is an example of DSP that's applied to a TrueHD stream *after* decoding back to PCM. It's not defeatable in consumer gear, and both players and decoders are forced to apply it if the flag is set.

First, I am not Taurus, but Werewuf. The way it has been explained to me is that True HD and DTS HDMA decoding is proprietary. I have spoken to a tech at DTS and his explanation was that until you had the proper decoders your not going to get their new product completely. When I had my BDP-94 I noticed the same difference that you stated, PCM was more robust. Now that I have the 95 and my receiver is showing True HD or HDMA what I am hearing now is vastly superior in all respects.