UMC-1 audio decoding

[alhull]

I just got a new flatscreen so now I can finally use all HDMI connections for everything and no more damned copyright popup screens now.

I'm playing Blu ray that has DTS-HD MA audio. My Sony S550 player is set to hdmi audio. I have my UMC-1 input for Blu ray set to HDMI 1 video and audio.

When I play the movie, the player says I am getting English DTS HD 3/2.1 48KHz. But the UMC-1 shows "Direct MultiPCM" ?

Status shows HDMI 1 HDMI 1 mode: direct

Why don't I see "DTS HD MA" in the status?

[moodyman]

check to see that your player is set to bitstream...

[alhull]

The audio output choice for HDMI for both my Blu Ray and HD DVD players only appear to offer Auto or PCM. Bitstream is only appearing under the audio SPDIF output choice, not for HDMI.

[sanjaygolf]

Both players only do onboard decoding for DTS-MA and Dolby TrueHD and cannot bitstream those audio formats.

[alhull]

So how do you get the UMC-1 to do all the decoding with its great state of the art chipset? Is there any audible difference using just hdmi vs analog connections or bitstream?

[zductive]

Not familiar with your player BUT, make sure that your secondary audio is set to OFF in the player. My dmb30 does not output the high res formats while the secondary channel is active.

[ratmice]

Set “BD Audio Setting” to “Direct” in the “Audio Settings” setup (page 49).

This is from your S550 manual. Selects whether to mix or not mix interactive audio and secondary audio (commentary) when playing a BD that contains such audio. SO zductive seems to be on the right track.

[towen7]

Jan 31, 2010 0:01:25 GMT -5 alhull said:

So how do you get the UMC-1 to do all the decoding with its great state of the art chipset? Is there any audible difference using just hdmi vs analog connections or bitstream?

There is no difference in sound between bitstreaming the raw TrueHD and having the player send LPCM. Both use the HDMI connection and both are digital formats and the UMC'c "great state of the art chipset" will be in play and there will be no audible difference. The only difference is that you don't get the satisfaction of seeing the TrueHD lights on the UMC-1.

However there can be a differences between LPCM and/or bitstreaming via HDMI and using the analog inputs. In this case your player is perfroming a Digital to Analog conversion instead of the UMC-1. Additionally the bass management will need to be done within the player.

[ratso]

agree with towen. i went around and around trying to figure out this bitstream/LPCM thing. there are always those people that say they can hear a difference (but i strongly suspect these are the same people that say power cords make a difference). bitstream turns on your little light on the front of the AVR, that's all. and what's more some secondary audio tracks won't work with bitstream either. bottom line - set it to whatever and move on. it doesn't matter.

[bootman]

Think of HD audio this way. (both TrueHD and DTS HD MA)

HD audio is a zip file of the original sound track (encoded PCM)

The advantage of doing HD audio instead of PCM is space savings on the disk.

Not really a big deal on Blurays but was a big deal on HD-DVDs.

You can unzip this audio information one of two ways.
Unzip it at the player and send PCM to the AVP or send the zip file directly to the AVP and unzip it there.
Either way it gets unzipped to PCM first before getting converted to analog by the DACs in the AVP so you can hear it over your speakers.

Second audio poses a different problem.
Most are not encoded in HD audio but just DD or DTS.

The player has the ability to mix these in but doing so requires that you "unzip" the HD track to PCM, unzip the 2nd audio track to PCM and mix them before hitting the DACs.
This is why you can't bitstream with 2nd audio enabled.

[iain]

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

[bootman]

Jan 31, 2010 13:25:16 GMT -5 iain said:

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

Post your Oppo HDMI and audio settings.
Are they setup as described on page 22 of the manual?

www.oppodigital.com/dv980h/download/DV-980H%20English%20Manual.pdf

• If your receiver supports HDMI v1.2a with Multi-Channel PCM audio and DSD over HDMI,
please set these DVD player options:
o Speaker Setup Page > Down-mix to “7.1 CH” or “5.1 CH” (Depending on your
receiver and speaker configuration)
o Speaker Setup Page > Front Speaker to “Large”
o Speaker Setup Page > Center Speaker to “Large”
o Speaker Setup Page > Surround Speaker to “Large”
o Speaker Setup Page > S. Back Speaker to “Small” (for 7.1CH setup only)
o Speaker Setup Page > Subwoofer to “On”
o Audio Setup Page > Digital Output to “Raw”
o Audio Setup Page > HDMI Audio to “Auto”
o Audio Setup Page > SACD Output to “DSD”

[moodyman]

Jan 31, 2010 13:25:16 GMT -5 iain said:

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

What model PS3 do you have and is it set to bitstream or LPCM???

[moodyman]

Jan 31, 2010 10:11:59 GMT -5 towen7 said:

Jan 31, 2010 0:01:25 GMT -5 alhull said:

So how do you get the UMC-1 to do all the decoding with its great state of the art chipset? Is there any audible difference using just hdmi vs analog connections or bitstream?

There is no difference in sound between bitstreaming the raw TrueHD and having the player send LPCM. Both use the HDMI connection and both are digital formats and the UMC'c "great state of the art chipset" will be in play and there will be no audible difference. The only difference is that you don't get the satisfaction of seeing the TrueHD lights on the UMC-1.

However there can be a differences between LPCM and/or bitstreaming via HDMI and using the analog inputs. In this case your player is perfroming a Digital to Analog conversion instead of the UMC-1. Additionally the bass management will need to be done within the player.

This is mostly true..however bear in mind that bistream may play a little louder..and might be interpreted as sounding better...

[pmd918]

Jan 31, 2010 12:43:48 GMT -5 bootman said:

Think of HD audio this way. (both TrueHD and DTS HD MA)

HD audio is a zip file of the original sound track (encoded PCM)

The advantage of doing HD audio instead of PCM is space savings on the disk.

Not really a big deal on Blurays but was a big deal on HD-DVDs.

You can unzip this audio information one of two ways.
Unzip it at the player and send PCM to the AVP or send the zip file directly to the AVP and unzip it there.
Either way it gets unzipped to PCM first before getting converted to analog by the DACs in the AVP so you can hear it over your speakers.

Second audio poses a different problem.
Most are not encoded in HD audio but just DD or DTS.

The player has the ability to mix these in but doing so requires that you "unzip" the HD track to PCM, unzip the 2nd audio track to PCM and mix them before hitting the DACs.
This is why you can't bitstream with 2nd audio enabled.

Excellent explanation. I don't think that most people understand this.

[lonnie]

Jan 31, 2010 13:25:16 GMT -5 iain said:

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

The UMC is only decoding what is being sent into it. You should go into the setup menus for the PS3 and DVDplayer and change them to output bitstream. This will port out the native code and the UMC can then decode it.

[moodyman]

Jan 31, 2010 15:01:05 GMT -5 lonnie said:

Jan 31, 2010 13:25:16 GMT -5 iain said:

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

The UMC is only decoding what is being sent into it. You should go into the setup menus for the PS3 and DVDplayer and change them to output bitstream. This will port out the native code and the UMC can then decode it.

dpending on the model of PS3 he may not be able to bitstream the HD codecs...

[moovtune]

Jan 31, 2010 13:25:16 GMT -5 iain said:

I am having the same issue as alhull except that the UMC reads PCM, 2ch and does not reproduce the audio into the 5.1 surround setup that I have. It merely goes to L,R, Sub mode. Very strange and very frustrating. I have this issue with both the PS3 and the Oppo Dv980H players, both hooked up via HDMI. Any suggestions?

If your Oppo works similarly to my 983H, the video output resolution affects the number of channels playable. For example, if I play an SACD I won't get 5.1 unless my video resolution is set to 720 or 1080 even though I'm not using the video. Check your video resolution. I don't know if the PS3 works that way too.

[kaa1954]

Taken from the 980h manual:

"If you use HDMI to connect audio to an HDMI A/V receiver or audio processor, it is
recommended that you choose 720p or higher HDMI output resolution when playing high
resolution audio content (DVD-Audio and SACD). According to the HDMI specification, the
bandwidth available for audio is proportional to the total bandwidth used by video. At
480p/576p resolution, the HDMI specification can only support 2 channels of audio with high
sample rate (up to 192kHz), or 8 channels of audio with standard sample rate (up to 48kHz).
Depending on the capability of your A/V receiver or audio processor, if you play high
resolution audio content at 480p/576p resolution, you may get reduced audio resolution,
incomplete audio channels, or even no audio/video output at all. Choosing a high HDMI
output resolution such as 720p or 1080i allows enough bandwidth for all high sample rate
audio channels."

[markd]

Yep- there is no separate audio bus in HDMI. There are four pairs- clock, R, G, B. Audio data is actually packed and sent on the color pairs in between the video data, during the re-trace periods. So the faster the clock, the more data you can push in those slots.