Just ranting:

I have noticed that the HD audio programs have more audio/video syncing problems than their compressed counter parts. It seems to me that the only times I have ever had any audio/video sync problems have been with HD soundtracks. I have looked around the web and it seems there are more sync issues occuring with HD tracks and it isn't player dependent as many players have this issue with one disc or another. I have even read where 2 discs of the same movie have different issues on the same player, one plays perfectly and the other develops the audio sync issue!

My Samsung BDP1600 has had trouble previously(updating fixed these discs) and most recently with Avatar and Iron Man 2 (the firmware updates did not help). I think this sync issue is getting worse as the studios contantly change their protections forcing new updates which IMO look to be of little help for the end user. Would a new player or PS3 help? My research indicates it would not.

Any one else care to vent their frustrations with this issue, climb aboard

I know some older, lower-end receivers also had trouble processing the HD soundtracks in time, which caused sync issues. But those same receivers fed PCM were fine.

My PS3 outputting PCM (not bitstream) has never had a sync issue on any disc.

Thanks Jason, I hadn’t noticed this now I will and it will bug the hell out of me.

I remember i've had a few audio sync issues before. Seemed to be a type of "handshake" issue, powered everything off, then on, and it was fine. Another time, my hdmi cord simply was acting up. Changed the cord and no longer had any problems. Ironically the last audio sync issue i had was playing a dvd in a laptop. I either had to change to windows media player, or had to launch it from a different source other than the autoplay. I can't remember exactly what i ended up doing to fix it.

I have not had any audio problems at all with any Bluray I have played through the PS3.

My PS3 does all of the decoding as I don't have a model that supports bit streaming.

If I could talk like my mouth is behind my words by a split second, I could confuse millions.

I went and tried the PCM coding and not a missed syllable, everything is in perfect sync. I think I had it as PCM to begin with earlier this year and then noticed I didn't have a Dolby HD or DTS HD displayed on the 3808 just Muliti Channel In, changed it to bitstream(audiophile) and that is when the sync problems were first noticed. The Samsung manual claims there to be no difference between this bitstream and PCM yet there is.

So what gives with the HD audio tracks bitstreamed causing so many issues? And not just with my system. Is it from a too slow of a processor in the players(mid to lower end such as mine) to keep up?

Perhaps update your 3808's firmware?

I have a co-worker who has just recently (finally) purchased a BluRay player. He also happens to use a Denon 3808 and he's bitstreaming from the BR player (Sony BDP-S570).

He was just mentioning a few days ago that he had lip-sync and audio dropout problems when playing the DTS-HD audio from the "A-Team" BluRay. He asked if I had any ideas. I told him to check the firmware on the S570 and the 3808. Just today he told me that he checked both last night; the S570 was up-to-date, the 3808 wasn't. So he updated the 3808, and he says it seems to have fixed the problem. No idea if it was a fluke, or if the 3808's F/W really was the culprit.

So, perhaps check on your 3808's firmware?

Having the player decode to PCM would actually take more CPU power.

I'd say the Denon is to blame. For some reason it can't manage to decode the audio and pass the video on, while keeping both in sync.

Compressed audio does have a variable size, so there will be a different number of bits for each video frame. The receiver has to unpack those, and still keep the timing with the video right.

Jason, I assume that you realize now that the reason that the 3808 couldn't display HD when PCM was input was that there was no way to know how it had started out in the player before being decoded to PCM?

John, You are correct, I do realize why it doesn't show.

Peter, I do have the latest updates for all my equipment and it appears as though Denon has already stopped doing any updates for the 3808, at least judging by the 3808 threads on AVS .

If the 3808 is to blame I wonder why so many other people with other systems/avr's etc. have similar problems, a quick google yields a dizzying array of HD audio syncing issues. I would be willing to pick up a new avr if I knew it would fix this issue, but agian judging from the myriad complaints covering pretty much every avr out there I can't see how this would help.

Listening to the PCM vs. HD audio tracks, I felt that the PCM version seemed a little less lively, some of the bass from some of the slightly less high impact scenes didn't feel the same as they did with the DTS-HD audio track but his could just be me.

Very few BDs have PCM tracks. Really it was only the first batch before the lossless codecs were finalized. You could probably count on one hand the discs that had PCM and a lossless track. Once the dust settled and the HD codecs were well supported everyone stopped including the PCM tracks because they took up so much space.

If you're saying that you're hearing a difference between sending the HD bitstream to your receiver vs. sending the decoded PCM, you're wrong. (That's why double blinds studies are so important.) That's like saying the program ran better because someone sent it to you in a Zip file, rather than them unzipping it and sending you the raw executable.

It doesn't matter if the player decodes the audio to PCM or sends the bitstream, and the receiver decodes that to PCM. It all ends up being the same bits in the end. Just you don't get the HD light on the receiver as it can't tell the original format.

I'm wholly against bitstreaming. It serves no purpose, and actually slows the adoption of new audio formats (everyone waits for receiver to gain support rather than just letting the players with support for the new format do the work). It's a hack left over from laserdisc days, that lived on too long through DVD. It should have died when BDs came on the scene. Players don't bitstream the video to the display. They decode the compressed video into full frames and send them. Why should there be any difference with audio?

Think if the receiver had to support every audio codec known to man. That would be silly. No, if you have a computer hooked up to your receiver it decodes the Vorbis, AAC, MP3, FLAC, Monkey, Shorten, WMA, etc. and then sends the audio as PCM. That always works.

And that's my rant for the week.

Someday I'll remember the difference between the two. In the meantime, it's helpful to see the rant every few months or so.

I am obviously going to stick with the PCM output especially as there is no real difference in SQ, the sync issue is just too annoying to deal with. I did a little more research and it appears the newer Denon's are receiveing better support and the sync issues are virtually non existant(had to search prettyy hard to find anything) other than with the initial release of whatever movie is causing a problem or poor cable boxes, for some reason(I would suspect the almighty dollar) Denon is leaving us 3808 owner's out in the cold when it comes to proper updates.