With Optical Outs, Which is Better? Lossless, or Lossy...

[DarkDune]

Which sounds better when you use Optical Output to your AV Receiver (not HDMI)?

Lossless?

Lossy?

I find that playing Dolby TrueHD or the DTS counterpart through the Optical Output broadens the Dynamic Range and ends up being too soft, or too loud.

What do you think?

[Rob J in WNY]

DarkDune,

I'm not sure if you know this already, but standard optical multichannel audio does not support lossless bitrates above 2 channel PCM. 5.1, 6.1 and 7.1 channel PCM, and both Dolby TrueHD/DTS-HD Master Audio native bitstreams cannot be passed via optical. HDMI only.

[solarrdadd]

Rob is correct, the poll can't be answered because you can't get lossless from an optical cable, ONLY from HDMI or via Analog decoded at the source. Perhaps you should have been asking "what sounds better for DTS & DD, Lossless or lossy?" Is that what you meant to say?

[steve_dave]

If your only multi-channel connection is optical then you would be best served by choosing bitstream and accesssing the DD 5.1 alternate track or the DTS core track. Some receivers can not properly playback some PCM 2.0 streams over Pro-Logic decoders which results in front heavy sound wth little to no surround activity.

As stated before, optical/coaxial simply does not have the bandwith to support lossless sound. They can do limited bandwith multi-channel sound and PCM 2.0.

[crackinhedz]

Its a three way tie.