BDP-S350 AVCHD audio problem

[pull10k]

I have a Sony BDP-S350 and an Onkyo 905 receiver. I use DSP pass through for my Blu rays and it outputs bitstream perfectly.
But when I use it to play my AVCHD discs it only its internal codecs and outputs Dolby Digital. Obviously I would want my $1600+ receiver to decode instead. I cannot figure out why it does this.
Does anyone else know of an answer? I'm stumped.

[keyzone72]

Originally Posted by pull10k

I have a Sony BDP-S350 and an Onkyo 905 receiver. I use DSP pass through for my Blu rays and it outputs bitstream perfectly.
But when I use it to play my AVCHD discs it only its internal codecs and outputs Dolby Digital. Obviously I would want my $1600+ receiver to decode instead. I cannot figure out why it does this.
Does anyone else know of an answer? I'm stumped.

If you are bitstreaming from your bluray player to the Onkyo for decoding, that is because there is a digital file on the bluray itself and the Onkyo understands how to decode it.

AVCHD discs are not the same. ACVHD discs do not have a surround soundtrack in encoded Dolby True HD or DTS HD. So there is nothing for the Onkyo to decode. Considering the Sony BDP-S350 can play AVCHD discs, it will read whatever audio format is on the disc. It sounds as if your player is able to play the AVCHD video and sound, but then "recodes" the audio to Dolby Digital. This sounds normal to me. What were you hoping would happen? If you are hearing sound when you play your AVCHD disc and your receiver lights up and tells you you are receiving a Dolby Digital stereo signal, this sounds normal. If you authored an AVDHD disc with a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround soundtrack, then the Onkyo should read that it is receiving a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal.

Don't expect to play an AVCHD disc and have the Onkyo indicate it's recieving an HD bitstream signal like Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA. It will not do this unless the audio on the AVCHD disc was specifically encoded to one of these specific formats.

I hope this helps.

[pull10k]

Originally Posted by keyzone72

If you are bitstreaming from your bluray player to the Onkyo for decoding, that is because there is a digital file on the bluray itself and the Onkyo understands how to decode it.

AVCHD discs are not the same. ACVHD discs do not have a surround soundtrack in encoded Dolby True HD or DTS HD. So there is nothing for the Onkyo to decode. Considering the Sony BDP-S350 can play AVCHD discs, it will read whatever audio format is on the disc. It sounds as if your player is able to play the AVCHD video and sound, but then "recodes" the audio to Dolby Digital. This sounds normal to me. What were you hoping would happen? If you are hearing sound when you play your AVCHD disc and your receiver lights up and tells you you are receiving a Dolby Digital stereo signal, this sounds normal. If you authored an AVDHD disc with a 5.1 Dolby Digital surround soundtrack, then the Onkyo should read that it is receiving a Dolby Digital 5.1 signal.

Don't expect to play an AVCHD disc and have the Onkyo indicate it's recieving an HD bitstream signal like Dolby TrueHD or DTS MA. It will not do this unless the audio on the AVCHD disc was specifically encoded to one of these specific formats.

I hope this helps.

Thanks for the reply. Actually the bdp-s350 blu ray player passes ALL sound codecs no matter the type , dts, hd, master, whatever, natively including plain Dolby digital directly to the receiver. The AVCHD has a Dolby digital soundtrack. The spec support up to 7.1 DD.

My OPPO DVD player also passes all sound in bitstream as it is stored on the disk.

My question is why the s350 doesn't with AVCHD's or is it something Sony would have to enable (I'll bet on this one). Or can I edit the header of a file to convince the player it should use the true blu ray spec?

Anyone else have a solution?

[mreilly611]

The AVCHD only has Dolby D. So it will only output as DD. You can't take Dolby D and process it as True hd.

[pull10k]

Originally Posted by mreilly611

The AVCHD only has Dolby D. So it will only output as DD. You can't take Dolby D and process it as True hd.

Not trying to process it as true HD.

Maybe I am being misunderstood.

The Player is decoding the audio. It is set to not decode ANY audio. It is to pass raw info to the receiver no matter what.

I'm not trying to magically change what is on the disc, just want to know why the player won't pass it bitstream.

If you don't have a bitstream enabled player through HDMI with a receiver able to decode anything you may not grasp this.

Thanks.

[keyzone72]

Hi pull10k,

I've been reading your posts over and over again and I am stilll having trouble understanding what exactly you are trying to resolve. Let me share with you my setup and maybe this might help address your AVCHD bitstreaming concerns.

I have a Yamaha BD-S2900 bluray player and when I go to the players Digital Audio Output menu, I can choose whether audio is output over HDMI as "Bitstream" or PCM." These 2 choices are available for any video content (whether it plays from the disc drive or SD card slot) for:

Dolby Digital
Dolby Digital Plus/TrueHD
DTS
DTS-HD

I have all 4 of these settings on my Yamaha BD-S2900 set to "Bitstream," so the player itself is not doing any of the decoding. The only cables connected to my player are the power cable and the HDMI cable that's connected to my receiver. I do not have any analog cables connected to the analog outputs of my blu-ray player.

The receiver I am using is a Yamaha RX-V3800 and it handles all the decoding. So no matter what I play from the blu-ray player (DVD, blu-ray, AVCHD, etc), my receiver indicates the source file format and number of channels it is receiving and decoding. I can verify this by looking at the face of the Yamaha receiver while playing anything and seeing what lights up on the display panel. You've made it clear that you are successfully bitstreaming Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD soundtracks into your Onkyo receiver with no problems, so let's get back to your concern about playing AVCHD content from your Sony player into your Onkyo.

Originally Posted by pull10k

I'm not trying to magically change what is on the disc, just want to know why the player won't pass it bitstream.

When you say you "just want to know why the player won't pass it bitstream," are you saying that you are unable to hear any sound whatsoever when playing your AVCHD disc? This is a very important question to answer because it will help me determine what may be the problem. Let me go back to my setup for more insight.

My Yamaha blu-ray player has an SD card slot and I can play AVCHD movies right off the card. When I play these movies, I hear stereo sound from the player over HDMI into my Yamaha receiver. Since I have set all 4 options on the Digital Audio Output menu of my blu-ray player to "Bitstream," my receiver indicates that the sound for AVCHD movies are being transmitted in stereo as Dolby Digital 2.0. This is because the source file on the AVCHD file is encoded as Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo.

If I go back into the blu-ray player's Digital Audio Output menu and change the setting for any of the 4 codecs from "Bitstream" to "PCM," then the player will be doing the decoding. My receiver will still receive the correct number of audio channels over HDMI, but the difference will be that the receiver will now indicate it is receiving PCM audio and will not be doing any decoding.

So to make progress on this issue, you need to provide us with answers to the following questions:

1. Are you able to hear ANY SOUND coming from your Onkyo receiver when playing your AVCHD disc?
   
   
2. Assuming you can hear sound when playing your AVCHD disc, how many channels does the Onkyo receiver indicate it is receiving? On the face of the actual receiver, look for channel icons that light up (such as 1 & 2 for stereo, 1-6 for surround, etc) while playing your AVCHD disc.
   
   
3. Assuming you can hear sound when playing your AVCHD disc, what audio format is does the Onkyo receiver indicate it is receiving? On the face of the actual receiver, look to see which icon lights up (such Dolby Digital or PCM) while playing your AVCHD disc.

Once you answer these questions, we can gain a better understanding of what's going on with your system as far as bitstreaming AVCHD movies are concerned.

[Cpt_Dylan_Hunt]

Old thread, but I'm having almost the exact same problem, with the same player Sony s350, playing AVCHD disks.

I have AVCHD disk encoded in DTS master 5.1.

My Sony s350 was set to bitstream, and I don't get any sound at all. On the screen of my tv, it says it is sending a DTS master signal though. My receiver is a Yamaha HTR 6160 aka rxz663, and is supposed to decode DTS master.

If I switch the settings in my blueray player from bitsream to "mix", the player does the decoding, but since the s350 only bitstreams DTS master but doesn't decode it, it's getting downsampled to regular DTS 5.1

As DTS 5.1 via PCM, I DO get sound. Great sound. Fantastic sound.

The problem is, why do I not get sound from AVCHD disks, when my s350 is set to bitstream?

I have a strong feeling that if I had a s550, doing the DTS master decoding, everything would be fine. But for some reason, my receiver just doesn't do anything with DTS master from AVCHD. It works fine for movies.