player decoding or receiver decoding

jaysonbarnett · March 2008

I have a question because i am about to get my onkyo 805. I will be using hdmi for sound but am still not sure whether to use the player to decode dolby HD and dts HD sound, which then will not let me use my receivers bass management. Or Use the receiver to decode but then will not be able to hear the sound from the DVD menus. I have hdmi version 1.3a on both my blueray and receiver. Which is better and everywhere i look i find different answers to this. I AM SO LOST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!. Any help would be great.
Jason Barnett:)

phuz · March 2008

I could be wrong and I'm sure someone else who can confirm will chime in, but I think with HDMI 1.3a you don't have a choice. The decoding will be done by your receiver (with bass management).

jaysonbarnett · March 2008

I think PCM is when the dvd plyerdecodes the signal and the bitstream will send the audio uncompressed to the receiver to be decoded and then it is called PCM. Somewhere along the chain the signal is converted to PCM. MY whole question is which is better. I think if you have the dvd player do the decoding the onkyo 805's display will only show PCM and if you send the bitsream to the receiver you will see th dolby truehd on the display. Im not sure so hopefully an expert in this field will read this and reply.

mantis · March 2008

What player do you have? I have had no problems decoding on both ends. I also have had no dvd problems with menu's or anything else via hdmi on any blu ray player playing dvds.

I also think the processing should be done on the processor side meaning the receiver or Preamp/processor. If you want the player to decode, really there is no difference that I have experienced one way or another. I have tried both and found it to sound exactly the same. I did however hear a volume difference.

player decoding or receiver decoding

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