I will ask because I do not know.  I think I have an understanding of what PCM is, but how does it compare to DD or DTS?

Thanks for the grade school 101.  Though I wish I knew I was going to move to HD DVD and Blu-ray a month ago when I got my surround sound system.  I will have to play around though.  As my receiver seems to support PCM, it just doesn't sound right.  Or maybe I have no idea and it doesn't support it 

Quoting schultzy:

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As my receiver seems to support PCM, it just doesn't sound right.

Have you tried to let your DVD-player do the decoding and then transport the signal analog to your receiver?

Quoting Mark Harrison:

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Here's the grade school answer.

The biggest difference is the PCM is uncompressed while DD and DTS are compressed.

If you really want to get technical, DD and DTS are lossy compression algorithms.  They throw out the "unimportant" bits hopefully leaving you with something that sounds like the original.  How much compression there is determines how much is thrown out.  Much like a JPEG.

DD+ is also a lossy compression algorithm.  But it's a better algorithm than the old DD found on DVDs, so you get better quality.  Less is tossed out.

DD TrueHD is lossless.  That means that when uncompressed, you end up with a file that is identical to the master used to make the track.

DTS-MA (DTS Master Audio) is also lossless.  It takes the DTS Core track (lossy) and combines it with the bits that were tossed out in the compression stage to give you the original track.

Thanks for this. I have never actually known what the differences are. (and I never cared when I was sitting at the PC.)

For some reason I thought PCM was the poor cousin and tried to always select DD..

Quoting Mark Harrison:

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It should support PCM.  I know mine does. 

If it plays music Cds (which all do  ) then it supports PCM. 

Quoting Skywatcher:

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Quoting Mark Harrison:

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It should support PCM.  I know mine does. 

If it plays music Cds (which all do  ) then it supports PCM. 

CDs are 44.1khz, DVDs etc. 48khz. And of course a 5.1 or above signal is slightly different to a stereo PCM signal

Quoting Erik:

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Quoting schultzy:

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I will ask because I do not know.  I think I have an understanding of what PCM is, but how does it compare to DD or DTS?

Here's the tech-y answer...

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/news/

Thanks for the link.  That's a good article.

I've yet to see an HD DVD with a PCM track (though I'm sure there's one out there somewhere).  I'd go back and re-read that article.  Which is "better", really depends on the source used and the equipment it's played back on.  In theory a lossless track (PCM) will be better than a lossy track (DD+).  But if you don't have good enough equipment to hear the difference, then it really doesn't matter.  And even if you do, you have to have good enough ears to hear the difference.  Transformers only has a DD+ track (lossy), yet still was recently voted to have the best HD sound track of any HD DVD and Blu-ray out.

If you have an A35, your player is converting the DD+ or DD TrueHD to PCM internally and sending that to the receiver.  There was firmware upgrade recently that allow some player to send the native track to the receiver to decode.  I think the A35 will do that and the Onkyo 805 should also decode them.  So you might want to look into that if you care.  Although it's 90% marketing gimick so some people can see the TrueHD light show up on their receiver.  Since my player doesn't support it and my receiver doesn't either, I don't know a whole lot, but I can point you in the right direction if you care.