HD audio to Sony 1200es

[paul211b]

Hello
Can anyone tell me if it's possible for me to play hd audio tracks via my old Sony 1200es amp?

I am playing mkv files from a pc using an optical cable attached to an Asus P8z77-v pro mother board that uses the realtek hd drivers .
I know that my old amp does not support hd audio via hdmi but what about optical spdif?

I have been reading that I could send this as pcm but don't understand what that means. When I currently use a dts sound track I have a blue light that appears on the amp.

Does this happen with pcm? Does the light mean I getting better quality audio?

If I were to play an mkv with dts_hd would this work with my current setup?



Many Thanks

 

[JojoBar]

HD audio plays only via HDMI (due to protection rules).
Therefore whatever you play through optical (LPCM or compressed bitstream) is SD audio that your "old" amp can play.

 

[dante01]

HD audio plays only via HDMI (due to protection rules).
Therefore whatever you play through optical (LPCM or compressed bitstream) is SD audio that your "old" amp can play.

It has nothing to do with content protection. The S/PDIF protocol cannot handle the bandwidth associated with HD audio and cannot convey more than 2 channels of PCM data.

LPCM is not compressed or standard definition. In fact PCM is uncompressed lossless audio in its rawest state. PCM is what you get when you decode and decompress either SD or HD formats. Bitstreaming is simply sending the format to a receiver for the receiver to decode into PCM data prior to passing it through the receiver's DAC. If you were to decode the audio at source prior to streaming then it would be streamed as PCM (LPCM).

The only two means by which to convey HD audio is either via HDMI or via multichannel analogue connections. I believe the 1200ES is only equiped with an HDMI switch, not a repeater and cannot process audio via HDMI? The receiver can accept HD audio via its multichannel analogue inputs, but you'd need to decode it at source and the source would require multichannel analogue outputs.

 

[paul211b]

"The S/PDIF protocol cannot handle the bandwidth associated with HD audio and cannot convey more than 2 channels of PCM data"

If I play at DTS sound track this plays fine with the blue light and DTS on the screen, if I were to play a DTS-HD sound track would this play? I am going to try tonight.

I only have a S/PDIF connection from PC to receiver, I am guessing by multichannel analogue connections you are meaning 1 wired connection for every speaker?

"If you were to decode the audio at source prior to streaming then it would be streamed as PCM (LPCM)"
So if I were to have a video with a DTS-HD soundtrack would my receiver pass this? where would this need decoding? Would my realtek soundcard from the PC do this?

thanks

 

[dante01]

"The S/PDIF protocol cannot handle the bandwidth associated with HD audio and cannot convey more than 2 channels of PCM data"

If I play at DTS sound track this plays fine with the blue light and DTS on the screen, if I were to play a DTS-HD sound track would this play? I am going to try tonight.

I only have a S/PDIF connection from PC to receiver, I am guessing by multichannel analogue connections you are meaning 1 wired connection for every speaker?

"If you were to decode the audio at source prior to streaming then it would be streamed as PCM (LPCM)"
So if I were to have a video with a DTS-HD soundtrack would my receiver pass this? where would this need decoding? Would my realtek soundcard from the PC do this?

thanks

DTS-HD has a DTS core. You'd get the higher bitrate DTS core via optical, but not DTS-HD Master Audio. The DTS core associated with DTS-HD audio is encoded at a higher bitrate than that associated with regular DTS. The bitrate will aproximate 1.5 Mbit/s, but is not HD audio.

 

[paul211b]

DTS-HD has a DTS core. You'd get the higher bitrate DTS core via optical, but not DTS-HD Master Audio. The DTS core associated with DTS-HD audio is encoded at a higher bitrate than that associated with regular DTS. The bitrate will aproximate 1.5 Mbit/s, but is not HD audio.

So is there no way of me receving this signal with my current setup. What would be the best way, buy another amp?

 

[dante01]

So is there no way of me receving this signal with my current setup. What would be the best way, buy another amp?

You can send the core DTS audio to your receiver via S/PDIF. Your receiver will decode it as it would decode DTS formatted audio. This is not DTS-HD Master Audio, simply the DTS core associated with it.

 

[JojoBar]

It has nothing to do with content protection. The S/PDIF protocol cannot handle the bandwidth associated with HD audio and cannot convey more than 2 channels of PCM data.

Sorry but I maintain : it has nothing to do with bandwith (rumor spilled by majors) but due to HDCP protocol = protection of material, mandatory for HD, not for SD ...

 

[dante01]

Sorry but I maintain : it has nothing to do with bandwith (rumor spilled by majors) but due to HDCP protocol = protection of material, mandatory for HD, not for SD ...

Really, so you should therefore be able to convey non HDCP protected HD content via S/PDIF then???? S/PDIF cannot convey PCM with more than 2 channels and its bandwidth is limited. Fibre optic cabling itself can quite happily accommodate the conveyance of more than 7 channels of audio at bitrates associated with HD content, it is purely the S/PDIF protocol that limits its use for such. S/PDIF could have been updated to fascilitate HD audio, but was left dead in the water in favour of HDMI.

HDCP is not mandatory, it is at the content authors/publishers discretion as whether or not to use it. Its implementation within HDMI hardware is mandatory, not its use within content!

HD audio can be conveyed via analogue which has no HDCP protection. It is the video aspects of HD that are protected via HDCP and not the audio. S/PDIF is audio only. If this is not the case then please explain to me why you can still convey HD audio via multichannel analogue and why the movie industry hasn't forced its retirement like they have with component HD video connections? Component video has been retired because it cannot impliment HDCP, but multichannel analogue audio connections are not restricted unlike component video connections.

To further emphasise that it is the S/PDIF protocol at fault then consider why the Audio REturn Channel of HDMI cannot convey HD audio. THe reason is because ARC is governed by S/PDIF and therefore cannot convey HD audio even though the HDMI connection using it complies with HDCP!

 

[JojoBar]

The answer is in your question : "If this is not the case then please explain to me why you can still convey HD audio via multichannel analogue"
Digital HD audio is, in practice, protected, via HDCP because it's easier, because using HDMI. By "Mandatory", I don't mean by standard but by Major pressure. For easy reason, there is not such a limitation for analogue ...
There is no hardware limitation through optical SPDIF to route 7.1 digital LPCM audio :
16 bit 44 kHz : 6 Mbit/s exactly the standard specification for the Toslink bandwidth (IEC958 - early 80's).
Note this is an old specification, not a hardware limitation ...

 

[dante01]

The answer is in your question : "If this is not the case then please explain to me why you can still convey HD audio via multichannel analogue"
Digital HD audio is, in practice, protected, via HDCP because it's easier, because using HDMI. By "Mandatory", I don't mean by standard but by Major pressure. For easy reason, there is not such a limitation for analogue ...
There is no hardware limitation through optical SPDIF to route 7.1 digital LPCM audio :
16 bit 44 kHz : 6 Mbit/s exactly the standard specification for the Toslink bandwidth (IEC958 - early 80's).
Note this is an old specification, not a hardware limitation ...

So why was analogue component prevented from conveying HD video, but not analogue from conveying HD audio?

As I already stated, the same S/PDIF protocol is used to deal with HDMI's ARC capabilities and it still limits the audio to SD formats even though the HDMI interfaces used comply with HDCP. ARC doesn't use TosLink, it uses HDMI as the means by which it conveys audio.

S/PDIF is restricted to stereo PCM. Try streaming 5.1 SD LPCM via S/PDIF and see how you get on either via TosLink, digital coax or the Audio Return Channel of HDMI, all of which are governed by S/PDIF!

S/PDIF's inability to convey HD audio or multichannel LPCM has nothing at all to do with HDCP or hardware limitations. The protocol was devised before the conveyance of HD was of importance and as such was never developed to convey such audio. It wasn't developed any further because HDMI was adopted and because HDMI can convey both audio and video via the same interface and cabling. Future development of S/PDIF was abandoned hence why it can't convey HD audio.

Yes the answer is in my question . If you knew anything about HDCP then you'd know that it restricts the conversion of HD video to analogue, hence why the rhetorical question asking why it isn't doing the same in relation to the audio? The audio is not protected by HDCP or HDCP would start baulking every time you tried to convert digital HD audio to analogue in order to output it via multichannel analogue coax.

By the way I never mentioned any hardware limitations preventing HD audio being conveyed via S/PDIF optical so not sure why you are hinting that I did? S/PDIF is a protocol used to govern the conveyance of data, not a piece of hardware! Digital coax would be now struggling to convey HD formats, but optical can convey HD audio if given the opportunity. The only thing stopping optical from conveying HD audio are the limitations of the S/PDIF protocol used to govern it and there's no reason to update S/PDIF in order to facilitate this given the existence of HDMI even though HDMI is lousy when it comes to how it deals with audio in relation to clock synchronisation and jitter.

 

[JojoBar]

Never mind.

 

[dante01]

Never mind.

I'm sorry, did I actually bother to explain it while you can't explain yourself or excuse your inaccuracies.

If I'm wrong then I'm wrong, but fail to see any evidence of this provided by you or in relation to what you've posted.

Your statement that HDCP is preventing the conveyance of HD audio via optical is incorrect.


Anyway, any connection governed by S/PDIF, including optical, cannot convey HD audio, either bitstreamed or as LPCM. In fact, contrary to your initial post to this thread, S/PDIF cannot convey any form of multichannel PCM regardless of definition and is restricted to stereo PCM.