Help-New DVD player and I need some info about the digital (SPDIF) output settings.

[slicemaster101]

Well,

I am a huge fan of surround sound and digital audio and I just bought a new DVD player. My old one is fine but I decided it would be nice to have one in my bedroom as well. Anyways I had my old player hooked up to one of the digital in ports (optical) on my JVC RX-6008V Surround Sound A/V receiver. Every thing worked fine and still does, but with my new player I have more configurable settings as fare as digital output is concerned. It has two settings (modes) witch I can operate my SPDIF (digital) ports on the DVD player at. The settings (modes) are ether “RAW” or “PCM”. Witch provides better sound quality? It seems that my receiver is able to sync with both streams but I would like to know witch I should use for the best sound, and what are the benefits to one of the other?

Thanks,
Slice

[slicemaster101]

please help...

[chris ma]

Does the manual explain PCM and RAW for your new player? Your receiver should only take precedent of one default over the other when it detect both types of signals present. You need to give a lot more information in order for people to put their 2 cents in

PS: I would option coax rather than optical unless you are into AT&T connectors.

[Schaef]

Not knowing EXCATLY what the difference is, I can fathom a guess based on the two DVD players I've owned. From what I can gather, the RAW mode is the stream off the disk with nothing done to it, just blasted on through. The PCM mode, on the other hand, has been manipulated by the player in some manner.

As to which is better, that depends on a lot of things and what you really want. I personally, assume that my receiver is better at the decoding than the player, and thus set everything to RAW or equivalent mode. But that's just me.

[Sparhawk]

Does the player have on-board DD or DTS decoding? If so, I would imagine that RAW allows a downstream component to do the decoding, while PCM does the decoding on the DVD and sends out decoded PCM to the downstream component.

I'll have to look at my own player, as I seem to remember something like this. Mine doesn't have on-board decoding, so maybe I'm wrong on the above guess?

[UrSv]

Well, to me it seems simple enough. Try RAW. Listen. Then try PCM. Listen to that to. Decide which one gives the best sound. Use that setting. Probably better than anybody telling you that one of them is better. It's your choice I think?

It is kind of hard to tell for anybody I think without listening to your specific player. As for benefits of either stream I think both get you sound and one of them is the one you will prefer.

/UrSv

[johan]

I would do this: Keep it on RAW. Probably it sends the sound unaltered. Then if you get a source that your receiver can't decode, e.g. MPEG-2 sound or something (I have experience of this), put it on PCM. The DVD internally decodes/encodes the sound to PCM. PCM is probably always stereo whereas RAW is "raw", unmodified bitstream including every possible channel it may contain.

[hifiZen]

Yep. PCM is often downmixed to only 2 channel output. Sometimes PCM will contain surround information using ProLogic or ProLogic II, but this is re-encoding the decoded Dolby Digital or DTS track before it goes to your receiver. Stick with RAW, and switch to PCM when it doesn't work.

[tubenut]

If your receiver is DD and DTS set it to raw, PCM is for older receivers and people using the unit in stereo into a stereo dac. NO dts or DD available to your receiver if set to pcm.

[pquadrat]

How about SA-CD or DVD-Audio? I was told that there are no players with digital outputs of the 96KHz or 192KHz sampling data, because the "software" (music) industry does not allow digital-out of this data format to prevent copying. Is there any sense to build a DAC capable of 96/192 kHz sampling frequency?

-peter