Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions HD Audio Formats - Can you hear a difference?

I'm using a PS/3 at present to play BluRay disks (I've got a combo Bluray, HD-DVD for my HTPC comming) but got asked the other day if the HD audio formats sound any better (I use the PS/3 to decode to 5.1 PCM and push it out over HDMI to my Yami V2700).

Now I've not done any "double blind" type test and while normal DD / DTS and the new HD formats all sounds good to me (and leave me imersed in the movie) I thought I'd ask....
1) can you hear a difference and if so
2) given the law of diminishing returns, how much better is it

Thanks
Nathan

I think they do. Only you can answer if they sound better to you.

I asked a similar question a while back and was told that "HD-Audio" vs "Standard-Audio" was about as big of a jump in the movie experience as going DVD to HD for picture. I'm loving the HD picture right now, and my HD-DVD "downgrades" the HD audio to 1.5Mbps DTS for me, and movies like Transformers even sound better that way than they do on the regular DVD (I did a basic sound and picture comparison thanks to NetFlix).

Part of me wishes that I would have forked out the $600 for the top end HD-DVD player to get analog audio outs for use with my really nice, but 3 year old (non-HDMI) receiver, but then again, for $98, I'm pretty happy with just the HD picture right now. Maybe when that HD-DVD/Blu-Ray PC drive gets a little cheaper I'll jump on the HTPC bandwagon. I've been wanting to do that for years anyway.

1) Yes, definitely
2) A lot and it will get better as 24-bits audio is slowly entering the movie theaters.

What are some hd-dvd's that have dolby true hd sound?

300, Happy Feet, Troy, the new Kubrick releases (in 24 bits), Shrek 3, The Matrix trilogy. Those are the ones I own and first listened in regular audio because I did not have a HDMI receiver and later re-watched them in Dolby Truehd.

You can see on this site, they have the full specs of movies: http://www.highdefdigest.com/

Imo there is a huge difference, and it is very easy to AB through the HD DVD menu.

cool I have 300 in the mail from netflix now

If you have a new receiver and it can decode the audio you would send it bitstream, if you use your A2 to decode then you would send it to your receiver via PCM.

Is this cheap enough? I will guess they are cheaper down there.

Yah, Sorry about that- i figured out my answer right after I posted so I changed it to 'cool 300 is in the mail'

The following links may be interesting for those wanting to know what Audio format is encoded on these disks:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=9044310&postcount=1
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=822245

The uncompressed PCM audio from Blu-ray discs is head and shoulders above the compressed formats. There's definitely a crispness and detail there that's absent in the compressed DD or DTS soundtracks found on SD DVDs.