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[esotericxa]

Clearly I have to split my questions up, so number 1:
From my earlier post:
"There are a lot of options in MC
, but some of them and the comments, do not make sense to me.

For example, under Tools, Audio, setting bit streaming, it says, "None (recommended)" at the top of the custom options. "

Is there a rational for this recommendation and if so, could some one either explain or point me to the reasoning behind this recomendation.
Thanks

[Awesome Donkey]

Unless you're needing to bitstream something (DSD, AC3, DTS, etc.) it's recommended to leave it set to None because, I suppose, it *could* cause issues if you're trying to playback certain file types and it's trying to bitstream them even though the selected bitstreaming option isn't supported/won't work. Basically it's likely recommended to avoid possible playback issues if the bitstreaming option is erroneously set/enabled. If you do need to bitstream, then set the setting accordingly to your needs.

[esotericxa]

Thankyou Awesome Donkey. Appreciate your input and I hope this is so.
But it sort of leads to a couple of other questions if I may be so bold or dumb...
Do we think that
most people use MC to stream to their extremal surround sound decoder receivers, or

or that
most people actually drive their sound system directly from the PC multichannel sound card?

Seems to suggest that if your using the PC multichannel sound card, you may be naïve enough to
enable bit streaming when it would be/could be doing nothing for you?

Or since there is little to no explanation of what enabling bit streaming will do if you enable it
The "Not recommended" may be indicating that it is not necessary. potentially if you have selected HDMI out and WASAPI, bit streaming would be assumed and implied and there for this option should not be used, in which case it would be redundant and not necessary at all?? Or perhaps it should appear under the HDMI option, if used or selected, where perhaps it would appear only in a sensible context,,,, and not appear for those who are using their PCs six/eight channel sound card.

OR will MC actually run both the 6/8 channel sound card AND the HDMI output at the same time??
Sorry to be so mystified, but I have not found this clarified any where yet.
What think yee all??
Thanks again

[Awesome Donkey]

I bet there's more users who listen to music without bitstreaming, than users who do bitstream DSD, DTS, AC3, etc. And the number is probably multiple times over easily, so it makes sense to leave bitstreaming off by default. Thinking about it, it makes little sense to have bitstreaming on by default and it'd likely cause issues for those who have no intention of bitstreaming. It also makes sense not to enable bitstreaming by default, because some (maybe a lot?) of users want to use DSP effects. When bitstreaming is enabled, DSP isn't possible.

But for those who want to bitstreaming, enabling it and setting it up how you want is easy enough.

P.S. You can customize bitstreaming by selecting Custom..., and it gives you multiple options.

[Hendrik]

Do we think that
most people use MC to stream to their extremal surround sound decoder receivers, or

or that
most people actually drive their sound system directly from the PC multichannel sound card?

You seem to be under the assumption that this is an either-or situation, but far from it, there is multitudes of ways to send audio to speakers.

Many people don't even use HDMI at all, a common option is using a high-quality USB audio device, which can have many channel, I havea mid-range model  myself with 10 line outputs.
Even if you are using HDMI, you can send uncompressed PCM over HDMI without an external decoder, which is fully digital and bitperfect, but allows for full DSP, volume control, etc in Media Center.

In short, even without bitstreaming, over HDMI you should be getting first-class multi-channel audio.

[jachin99]

I have always wondered.  With bitstreaming off will mc bitstream proprietary formats it cannot handle itself like Atmos or does this have to be setup as custom?

[thecrow]

I thought there were two reasons why bitstreaming was not "recommended".

1) If you ask MC to bitstream it cannot apply any DSP changes to the signal such as level control or EQ.
2) The speed at which a video plays on a PC is determined by the speed of audio playback, which if you are bitstreaming signals like AC3 or DTS is fixed to a narrow range. The consequence of this is MC cannot adjust the speed of playback sufficiently so that the video frame rate matches the display refresh rate. This leads to dropped or repeated frames which will be perceived as motion judder.

Having said that I personally bitstream all my audio and am not bothered by either of these limitations.

[esotericxa]

Well, thanks for the interesting and varied responses.
I am surprised that the forum, has exceeded my expectations as a support vehicle.
Probably should have been obvious, but no single support person, would have or could have supplied such an interesting variety of information and views.
Perhaps they could in an extended phone call but even then, the variety of deployments provides a lot of different experiences.
The responses do raise more questions but I will have to get back to them later, out of time for the present, and it does give me some things to experiment with.
Thanks all.