Difference between 48KHz and 96KHz and sound quality

[Dood56]

I have a PS3 and an HD-A2 and have both of them connected to my Onkyo 605 via HDMI. The A2 is set to auto under the HDMI tab and I have the PS3 configured for HDMI audio. However, my receiver reads PCM when I watch a movie, but only show 48KHz. I was under the understanding that this was the sampling frquency for bitstream. Is there a difference or will it not be noticed by my mortal ears? Any help will be appreciated as always!

[eNoize]

Unless you want a long explanation, full of technical jargon, I wouldn't worry about it. You should see 48kHz for LinearPCM from the PS3 and 96kHz from your A2.

The difference between the two may not be enough for you to notice. However, the higher the sampling frequency, the more megabits per second. It's for this reason that Dolby Laboratories and Digital Theater Systems (DTS) opted for lossless compression: umcompressed PCM at 48kHz maxes out at 6.9 Mbps, whereas TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio at 96kHz maxes at 16-18 Mbps.

Hope this helps; but I wouldn't worry too much about it right now, since the players decode these codecs internally at the moment, which is a max of 1.5 Mbps and possibly 3 Mbps.