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[Grape Ape]

I am sure long time forum members are rolling their eyes at yet another bitsreaming post. I have read many of them but I still have a few questions.

1. Bitstreaming not recommended. I think I understand why but I want to see if my reasoning is correct. I just want to watch my video with the best sound possible. I just always thought that having the sound go directly from the disk to the speakers was always best. That is why I have always chose bitstreaming. From what I have read, if you have bitstreaming off, MC26 will decode DTS-HD and forward that to my receiver. My receiver will show PCM, even though it is playing DTS-HD.
2. I am having issues getting MC26 to bitstream some audio, mainly DTS-HD. My receiver can decode this but when I use the bitstream option I get an error that it can't play the video. DTS, DD, bitstream just fine. Using VLC, the same video will play just fine with DTS-HD.
3. When I use MC26 with bitstream off, my video plays fine with surround sound. This leads to #4.
4. My question is, when I use MC26 to decode the video with DTS-HD audio, am I getting DTS-HD or am I getting some converted sound output of lesser quality?
5. I have finally, after many years and lots of self counselling, gotten over the fact that my receiver won't always show DTS or DTS-HD. I get that. But without that little signal from my receiver, I always have that little doubt in the back of my head on what sound quality I am really getting.

[tij]

All soundtracks contain PCM ... it’s a way of representing audio digitally (another way is DSD but no movie use that)

DTS, DD, HDMA, TrueHD is just the way to compress PCM so it takes less storage space ... obviously each of them use different algorithms to do that ... some algorithm do not loose any musical info (aka lossless ... HDMA TrueHD) others loose some to achieve better compression (aka takes less storage space but loose some audio details in the process)

Whole thing is comparable to WAV (which incidentally is also PCM) and FAC vs MP3

It does not matter who do decoding of DTSHDMA .... MC or receiver ... resulting PCM will be identical (unless you apply DSP in MC ... which is arguably beneficial as you can do all sort of things including sound leveling, room corrections, etc)

Only time when you want to do bit streaming is Atmos and DTSX as MC cannot calculate object metadata (cause technology is proprietary)

[wer]

tij is mostly correct, but omits one thing.

There's one other use case (aside from Atmos) where you might want to bitstream, and that's if you want to use your receiver/processor's Dynamic Range Compression capability, like for watching wide dynamic range movies at night.

Encoded bitstreams (and I'm talking about non-Atmos) have metadata that describes the characteristics of the audio track, including things like dynamic range.  DRC features in more sophisticated receivers (Yamaha does it, for example) use this metadata to do a better job at compressing or expanding the dynamic range of your movie based on how you have the control set.  When you let MC decode, this metadata is obliterated, and your receiver's DRC processing cannot function correctly.

MC has a "night mode" (which does not work very well in my opinion) which performs DRC, but your receiver could do it better if it uses the metadata.

If you do not care about DRC or Atmos, then by all means let MC decode, as it opens up many additional processing possibilities that are unavailable to you if you bitstream.  The quality of decoding (MC vs your receiver) is the same either way.  The decoded audio is identical, until you start processing it with EQ or something. The indicator light on your receiver affects only your mind, not your ears.

You also have the option in MC to create zones, which will let you bitstream or not on demand based on your needs.

I hope everything's clear now...

-wer

[blgentry]

It really comes down to a few things:

*  Do you want to use MC's audio processing functions like Parametric EQ, Convolution, etc ?
*  Do you like the way your receiver handles bass management and channel selection?
*  Are Atmos or DTS-X a thing for you?

If you bitstream, you get:
* NO MC audio processing functions
* Bass management via the receiver's controls
* Atmos and DTS-X handled "automatically" by the reciever

If you let MC decode you get:
* All MC audio processing available for use
* Bass management and channel assignment done by MC
* No handling of Atmos or DTS-X.  You can make zones to do bitstreaming for only these formats, but it obviously means you have to set up bass management in your receiver, and you lose all MC processing for these formats.

I find MC's bass management and channel assignment to be fairly capable, but clunky.  For example, you can't easily increase the volume of the center channel if you don't have a real center channel.  Another example:  MC is usually set to "source number of channels" by default, but this breaks a lot of multi-channel configurations.  Another:  It's unclear what subwoofer options to set.  There are some unusual ones and their behavior is not well documented.

This is all MY OPINION.  I find receiver bass management to be much more straightforward and easy to understand.  Just my opinion.  You may have a different opinion.  In fact I'm sure there are people reading this now that think I'm out of my mind and MC's multichannel handling is the best way.  I do not deny that there are lots of satisfied customers that use MC for all decoding, etc.  Luckily we have the choice of which one we want to use.

Brian.

[rec head]

Is MC always doing bass management or does it need to be set up? I have never even looked at it because I do the management with the AVR. Am I double bass managing? I have never heard a difference but curious.

[JimH]

If you're bitstreaming, MC doesn't do anything other than pass the file to the device.

If you're not bitstreaming, MC does only what you enable in the DSP Studio.

[rec head]

Thanks, that's what I thought.