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In Reply to: RE: Not a review: Sony Playstation 3 posted by clarkjohnsen on May 28, 2008 at 10:52:12
Not a single mention of the difference in sound quality between the uncompressed/lossless options on BD and the older, compressed soundtracks on DVD. I would have thought that rated a mention and I would have expected a BD like "Blackhawk Down", which I own on BD but never owned on DVD, would show that up superbly.
My DVD player is/was a Denon 2910, not a bad player by any standards if not up to the best and now retained only to play non-Region 4 discs since Sony won't release a zone free PS3 here in Australia even though I understand that their stand-alone players, like those of every other major manufacturer, are zone free as a result of a court ruling many years ago here in Australia. Overall I'd have to rate the PS3 as equal to the 2910 and maybe a fraction better, though I occasionally see something I think the 2910 handled better. As a DVD player the PS3 certainly represents superb value for money.
In general I think I'm happier with BD picture quality compared to DVDs than you are. That may well be a function of our displays since mine is a 32" Loewe 1366 x 768 LCD TV, a little different to your projector setup. Even on a BD like "Lady In The Water" where the reviews I've read were pretty equivocal about picture quality and suggested little improvement, I've been quite pleased by what I see as an improvement. Maybe I'm looking on the sunny side of things and perhaps it's partly my eyes since I've got the start of cataract development which I don't tend to notice when viewing something at home on a bright screen at a close distance but which really annoys me in a cinema with a dimmer screen and greater distance because movies in the cinema no longer look in focus to me and the contrast becomes degraded as well. Whatever the reasons I've been really happy with the picture quality results on BD for every comparison I've made.
But sound quality! BD high def sound quality is noticeably better than DVD sound quality. Voices sound more natural, as do other sounds, and everything sounds richer with better dynamics. How could you discuss the PS3 and talk about differences in picture quality for BD compared to DVD and not make even a passing comment on sound quality?
Clark, this is a sad day…
David Aiken
Follow Ups:
...first of all, I've had the rig for only a few days.
Clearly from the lack of info, I lack a decoder for the elaborate sound on BDs and many DVDs.
Finally, I did mention that I prefer the sound to be upfront. Perhaps you can tell me which if any of the encoding schemes yield good stereo?...
clark
OK, now I understand the ommission.
As someone who started out watching movies in simple stereo and has progressed in stages to 6.1, I'm happy to share some of my thoughts on surround vs stereo plus how I felt I got the best stereo results. YMMV.
Basically I've come to the conclusion that you get the best results when you reproduce the soundtrack with exactly the same number of channels as the soundtrack possesses. It's common to hear people complaining about how expanding stereo to 5.1 doesn't sound all that brilliant, but I've come to the conclusion that collapsing 5.1 to stereo also introduces problems. Mixing channels together seems to reduce the clarity of things to my ears, just as fake surround often sounds, well, fake.
If you are going to go for stereo, however, my best results with stereo—prior to my surround days—came when I selected a dedicated stereo sound track when the disc offered that, and when I avoided the 2 channel pseudo-surround options offered by my player and receiver. In other words, best results for stereo came from stereo sound tracks (see point above) which were then left unaltered with fancy processing. The only time I really felt happy with pseudo surround effects were on those rare soundtracks like on the 4 disc Lord of the Rings movie sets where the 2 channel mix on the disc included the pseudo surround effects, ie the 2 channel soundtrack had specifically been mixed to provide those effects.
Few BD discs seem to have dedicated stereo soundtracks and I haven't tried downmixing a BD surround track to stereo. If you're not using HDMI you probably don't have much choice other than letting the PS3 do the downmix. In the absence of experimentation I'd downmix the highest quality soundtrack on the disc if you have a choice of soundtracks. I'd go for downmixing an uncompressed PCM soundtrack first before choosing a Dolby TrueHD or DTS HD MA soundtrack. I somehow doubt you'll find a choice between Dolby True HD and DTS HD MA on any disc since the standard practice seems to be to offer one or the other but not both but, in the unlikely event that both were offered I'd probably tend to pick the DTS HD MA track over the Dolby True HD track since I tend to think that DTS sounds better than Dolby, at least for the old formats. I don't have any discs which let me do an A/B comparison on the same soundtrack.
I wouldn't choose to downmix an older Dolby or DTS soundtrack over a high def version of the same soundtrack but it might be worth actually comparing an older Dolby/DTS dedicated 2 channel soundtrack to a downmixed new Dolby/DTS soundtrack. I'm not certain whether a proper stereo soundtrack in a lossy compression format would win out over a downmixed lossless surround soundtrack.
David Aiken
...I may not!
As for, "You get the best results when you reproduce the soundtrack with exactly the same number of channels as the soundtrack possesses" -- all too often those other channels are faked. Feh!
One thing I must do is learn how best to collapes the whole shmear into simple stereo. Regrettably (?) I do not yet have any decoding gear in house, so that must wait. I hate that "they" may have deprived us of the simple solution.
clark
"all too often those other channels are faked."
No more so than a stereo mix from a multi-channel recording is also faked.
My point was simply that taking a given soundtrack and altering the number of channels, whether it be a 2 channel soundtrack you're converting to more channels or a 5.1 channel soundtrack you're converting to stereo, can't be done without some damage. I found that the clarity of sound from the front L & R speakers in my HT system improved when I added side surround speakers and took the surround content out of what they were playing, and I found it improved again when I added a centre speaker and took the centre information out of what they were playing. Doing the reverse and folding channels into a smaller number of channels reduces clarity for me.
"One thing I must do is learn how best to collapes the whole shmear into simple stereo. Regrettably (?) I do not yet have any decoding gear in house, so that must wait."
Actually you do have some decoding gear which will collapse a surround sound mix to 2 channels: your DVD/BD player. They all have options for 2 channel or multi-channel output. Simply choose the 2 channel option and avoid selecting any option that adds pseudo-surround effects. Whatever you do, don't try the "simple" approach of just connecting the L & R output jacks of the surround sound outputs to your stereo amp because you're likely to find that all that does is give you 2 channels of the surround mix without any folding down to 2 channels and the first thing you'll notice as missing in action will be most of the dialog. Some players may work with this sort of connection PROVIDED you choose the stereo output option in their setup menu. Best advice: Read the manual for instructions on stereo output options.
David Aiken
...to a stereo amp?
I've just been doing as suggested, using the player's own stereo out. No problem yet with intelligibility!
I was only worried by what I read, about BDs having no real two-channel mix.
cj
and some others are sure to do so in the future. If an error can be made, there's always someone around to make it.
There are a couple of BDs of older films, "The Searchers" for one, with mono sound tracks. I was looking at the BD selection available locally yesterday and if I remember correctly "The Road Warrior" starring Mel Gibson actually has a stereo sound track so there's a stereo BD for you. The film may not be to your taste and I have to admit that I passed it by myself. Stereo soundtracks on BD are not impossible but I think you'll only see them on older films and at present there are relatively few films available on BD which did not have surround soundtracks when they originally released and I think there is little motivation to go back and create stereo soundtracks for hi def releases. I suspect there's a lot more chance of seeing the original soundtrack format preserved so I'd keep my eye out for re-releases of older films if you want native stereo on BD discs.
Selecting the stereo sound track option on DVDs is definitely the way to go when a stereo option is provided but a lot of people have a tendency to just tell the player to play the disc and accept the default soundtrack without investigating what's available, and the default is more and more often surround. It will definitely be surround with BD.
David Aiken
d
He's doing stereo, and he may be using the analog outs (doesn't specify)-not the PS3's strongest feature.
Jack
nt
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