PCM versus bitrate

[birdog1960]

using ARC Hdmi from my tv to a receiver. Is there a definite advantage to using PCM over bitrate out to stream from tv for music?. The disadvantage of PCM is that, at least in my x3500, it doesn't deliver dolby surround soundtracks for movies.

 

[fieldcar]

using ARC Hdmi from my tv to a receiver. Is there a definite advantage to using PCM over bitrate out to stream from tv for music?. The disadvantage of PCM is that, at least in my x3500, it doesn't deliver dolby surround soundtracks for movies.

Always leave it to bitstream unless you find that your HDMI source is upmixing in a strange way. Bitstream usually transmits PCM if the source audio is stereo.

 

[DVDdoug]

PCM is uncompressed so it MAY be better.

Dolby (AC3) uses lossy compression but it supports surround sound and the sound quality can be excellent.

PCM can also be surround but not on a DVD or over an S/PDIF connection, and it's not common.

...Every audio format/stream has a bitrate (usually in kilobits per second) but with PCM we usually don't talk about it. With uncompressed audio you can calculate the bitrate as the sample rate X bit depth X number of channels. (CD audio has a bitrate of 1411kbps.) And if you know there are 8-bits in a byte you can calculate file size in bytes per second.

 

[birdog1960]

Always leave it to bitstream unless you find that your HDMI source is upmixing in a strange way. Bitstream usually transmits PCM if the source audio is stereo.

thank you. Yes, I checked. PCM light comes on when amazon music streamed from tv. Kinda interesting that I was thinking that it sounded better with PCM setting