ha, a bitstream vs lpcm test

[ErikBRak1m]

Originally Posted by GardenVariety

I was just speaking in terms of PQ, of course Speed Racer with it's lossy soundtrack is no where near reference audio quality.

If you are speaking overall with audio and video combined then I would agree that Baraka is near the top.

I was so disappointed when they did Speed Racer in plain Dolby Digital. Big-time disappointment. I saw it in IMAX at the theatre, and I was so hoping for at least Dolby True HD 5.1. At least the video was good. Couldn't they have given us Dolby True HD and just ditch the bloody "Crucible" videogame? Honestly.

[cryosin]

Everything but the Analog master is going to be a compressed format. Letting your receiver do the decoding is always going to be better because your receiver has all of the circuitry designed to decode and compute the necessary algorithms and control the range of the track. Here is why:
Lets say you plug in a guitar to an amp and start playing. You hook up a microphone to the amp and record that. Then, you take that recording and play it out of another amp.
That is basically the lamens terms version of sending data throgh LPCM.
With bitstream you are taking the guitar and plugging it directly into the amp.
The amp(or in this case, your receiver) is designed for "amplifying" the signal, your blu-ray player(or in this case, guitar/microphone) is not.
Comparing audio to "unzipping" files on a PC is close but your missing a big part of the picture.
When you run a program or play a game are you going to unload it into your system "RAM" or your "hard drive"?
Think of the player as your RAM and your hard drive as your receiver. So yes, the zipping analogy works but when it comes to audio there are alot of other things that need to be taken into account.

My receiver is worth about $500 right now, nothing fancy but not too shabby. I can tell a whopping difference between LPCM and bitstream.
Make sure your receiver's are set up properly, there are alot of functions people miss when setting it up. It took me about 4 months to get my receiver and the speakers i purchased sounding optimal.

[AmishFury]

if you're going to type such a long post make sure you know a thing or 2 about digital audio and lossless compression first