Sony BDP-S360 Help! ("Direct" or "Mix" for my soundbar?)

[Cortiz]

I recently bought a Sony sound bar to go along with my new Sony BD player, the S360. My question is, should I set the player's audio output to Mix or Direct? According to the manual if I understand correctly, Mix is for PCM and Direct is for Bitstream. Any help on how to set up this sound bar correctly would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[MrBoylan]

I recently bought a Sony sound bar to go along with my new Sony BD player, the S360. My question is, should I set the player's audio output to Mix or Direct? According to the manual if I understand correctly, Mix is for PCM and Direct is for Bitstream. Any help on how to set up this sound bar correctly would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

On a soundbar, this setting isn't likely to have much of an audible effect, if any. Does your soundbar even support on-board decoding of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio? If not, then setting the player to "Direct" is just going to downgrade the sound from its native Dolby TrueHD to regular Dolby Digital and DTS-HD to standard DTS, whereas "Mix" will do the decoding to PCM in the player and send multi-channel PCM to the soundbar. This way you should still get some benefit from the sound quality of lossless audio tracks (at least on Dolby TrueHD tracks).

On a full-fledged receiver or preamp/processor with on-board DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding and multiple discrete speakers, I would say use "Direct" because this will maintain the full quality of the lossless surround tracks, with the bitstream sent to the receiver for decoding. The drawback to "Direct" mode is that the player will not mix in menu sound effects or PiP (BonusView) commentary tracks so you'd need to switch over to "Mix" mode if you want to hear these.

Assuming your soundbar does support multi-channel PCM tracks over HDMI (but not Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD), then I would say use "Mix" mode and just set it and forget it. This will give you the best overall sound quality for your equipment as well as the convenience of being able to hear menu effects and BD Secondary Audio.

If you post the model number of your sound bar we can look it up to verify which codecs it supports.

Good luck!

-Chris

[Cortiz]

On a soundbar, this setting isn't likely to have much of an audible effect, if any. Does your soundbar even support on-board decoding of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD Master Audio? If not, then setting the player to "Direct" is just going to downgrade the sound from its native Dolby TrueHD to regular Dolby Digital and DTS-HD to standard DTS, whereas "Mix" will do the decoding to PCM in the player and send multi-channel PCM to the soundbar. This way you should still get some benefit from the sound quality of lossless audio tracks (at least on Dolby TrueHD tracks).

On a full-fledged receiver or preamp/processor with on-board DTS-HD and Dolby TrueHD decoding and multiple discrete speakers, I would say use "Direct" because this will maintain the full quality of the lossless surround tracks, with the bitstream sent to the receiver for decoding. The drawback to "Direct" mode is that the player will not mix in menu sound effects or PiP (BonusView) commentary tracks so you'd need to switch over to "Mix" mode if you want to hear these.

Assuming your soundbar does support multi-channel PCM tracks over HDMI (but not Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD), then I would say use "Mix" mode and just set it and forget it. This will give you the best overall sound quality for your equipment as well as the convenience of being able to hear menu effects and BD Secondary Audio.

If you post the model number of your sound bar we can look it up to verify which codecs it supports.

Good luck!

-Chris

Hi Chris, thanks for your response. It was very helpful. My Sony sound bar does not support True HD or DTS Master. The model # is: HTCT100

Thanks for your help!

[MrBoylan]

Hi Chris, thanks for your response. It was very helpful. My Sony sound bar does not support True HD or DTS Master. The model # is: HTCT100

Thanks for your help!

Yup. Your soundbar supports standard DTS, Dolby Digital and multi-channel PCM over HDMI so the "mix" (PCM) setting on the BDP-S360 is your best bet.

Regards,

-Chris

[Cortiz]

Yup. Your soundbar supports standard DTS, Dolby Digital and multi-channel PCM over HDMI so the "mix" (PCM) setting on the BDP-S360 is your best bet.

Regards,

-Chris

Great thanks!