Sound on the PS3..A Funny Story

[Obiwan176]

Well here is something interesting. I have had the PS3 since the day it came out primarily for Bluray movies. I have been using the optical digital cable with my 7.1 surround sound receiver and have NEVER been happy with how it sounds. So, today I had finally had it and figured out what was wrong.

I had the sound on the PS3 set to PCM instead of bitstream because the PS3 tells you that you will not get all of the sound if you use bitstream. The funny thing is I could never get my receiver to show the Dolby Digital logo. I switched it to bitstream just to see what would happen. I am now officialy blown away by the sound. It is a night and day difference.

The funny thing is the PS3 tells you that PCM is the way to go but they fail to tell you that the only way to enjoy PCM is through the HDMI cable. I was furious when I fouhnd this out. I thought something was wrong with my receiver. They really need to tell consumers stuff like this. They would be happier.

And, I say all this as a person who is fully equiped to understand how this stuff works. I am completey audio/video adept. People come to see me to set stuff like this up. This whole HD thing has had me confused from day 1. It is maddening.

[AKmaro1]

Yeah, that would make a hell of a difference! I know my Toshiba DVD player has a chart that tells you how to set it up, and those settings seem to work for most players no matter what. I had a similar problem when I first bought my Kenwood Surround system. I bought it second hand, and it's still working fantastically, but I had no owners manual or remote originally to check the settings. And the movies seemed rather dull sounding, here to find out they had the "night mode" setting on which reduces the dynamic range on the Dolby Digital setting. Well turning it off made all the difference in the world! So we live and learn.

I'm just glad you got it to work in the end, most often it's the little stuff like that, that's the most annoying and hard to figure out.

Actually Obiwan, check and see if you can make your DTS setting show up. It's my understanding that receivers that can't do the Dolby True HD and other lossless audio formats, play them back at the DTS setting by default, it's the best setting that these "older" receivers can do. I know that's how my GF's cousins receiver works (Yamaha), I had to help her get hers set up when she bought an HD-DVD player awhile back.

[Obiwan176]

Yeah, when I had is set to PCM, the DTS logo always came on but it sounded rather hollow and the dialogue sounded very tin like. It was in no way shape or form better than the bitstream Dolby Digital sound. As I now understand it, without the HDMI input on my receiver, I will never be able to enjoy any of the PCM soundtracks. I am using the digital optical input.

[AKmaro1]

Yeah, we had to play with her sound a little after it was hooked up (she did it initially), she was complaining about almost the same stuff you were, she's using optical as well BTW as I've read that you should. I think we got the sound better in the end, but I haven't seen how her system is doing in about a year or so, so who knows.

Unfortunately my experience with Blu-ray and PS3's are sort of limited, so I don't know if all Blu-ray players make you use the HDMI for PCM soundtracks or not.