Question:

Hello Expert,

I have an Onkyo TX-SR605 AV Receiver. I have connected by PS3 to the receiver using a HDMI Cable. The HDTV is connected to the TV via another HDMI cable....TV is the monitor. When using a Blueray Disk, for example the movie 300, I get video output in 1080P, but for some reason the audio shows up as Dolby Digital 5.1. I would like to get Dolby TrueHD sound as the PS3 manual says that I should be able to....and I have invested in a receiver that is capable of 7.1 ch and I would like to utilize that as well. The Audio receiver display shows GAM Dolby PLIIx Movie.

What should I do to get trueHD sound. I have updated the framework on my PS3 to the latest version.

Please help.

Thank you,

-Kuldeep

Answer:

Hi, Kuldeep,

Your problem is that the PS3 actually does NOT support passing a Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD bitstream over HDMI to the receiver. The PS3 does include an on-board Dolby TrueHD decoder which converts TrueHD into multi-channel PCM and analog sound.

So if you want to take advantage of TrueHD with the PS3 and your receiver, then you actually have to set the Blu-Ray Disc audio output setting for HDMI (in the PS3's BD/DVD settings menu) to "PCM" instead of "bitstream." This will allow the PS3 to losslessly expand the Dolby TrueHD soundtrack into pure multi-channel PCM for decoding by your receiver. You will get better results that way than by sending a regular compressed Dolby Digital signal to the receiver as you are doing now.

Currently when you set the PS3's HDMI audio output to "bitstream," advanced audio codecs such as Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio are "truncated" to their "core" Dolby Digital and DTS components, thereby losing quite a bit of the audio data, which makes the sound quality suffer.

At some point in the future, the PS3 may support bitstream audio for Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD - or at least on-board decoding of DTS-HD and conversion to PCM - but as of the latest 2.1 firmware upgrade, that feature is still not available.

Hope that helps,

-Chris