OT: PS3 adds DTS-HD Master Audio

apit34356 wrote on 4/12/2008, 10:55 AM

Here's an article about a new PS3 firmware update. A few months ago, we had a "discussion" about this, many argue that the PS3 was not able to do this, while I stress that is was a firmware issue ,not hardware but the brilliant minds at AVSFORUMs claimed different, (which used in these forums as factual data).

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PS3 firmware adds HD audio

By James Sherwood
12th April 2008 08:02 GMT

If you like watching Blu-ray Discs on your PlayStation 3, then things are about to get better. Sony has announced a firmware update that’ll give film fans the option to use another HD audio format.

Firmware version 2.30 will be released on 15 April and will enable the console to support DTS-HD Master Audio. This enables the HD video seen on screen to be matched with equally high quality sound.

Dolby’s TrueHD, which the PS3 already supports, is more common than DTS-HD. However, Sony’s firmware update will at least give consumers the option to choose which sound set-up they want to use.

Teen pregnancy flick Juno, which is released on Blu-ray in the US on 15 April, will support DTS-HD Master Audio with up to 5.1-channel surround sound. However, the audio format can support 7.1-channel sound.

DTS itself claims that DTS-HD Master Audio is capable of delivering audio that is "bit-for-bit identical to the studio master" at up to 24.5Mb/s on Blu-ray, with the audio encoded using 24-bit quantisation at 96kHz.

Sony already supports the audio format in several of dedicated Blu-ray players, including the BDP-S350 and BDP-S550 that it announced in February.
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Comments

Terje wrote on 4/12/2008, 4:57 PM

many argue that the PS3 was not able to do this, while I stress that is was a firmware issue ,not hardware

Having spent some time on AVS, I believe what has always been stated by the "nay sayers" about HD MA sound is that the PS3 doesn't have hardware to support bit streaming of this format. The "nay sayers" typically said that the PS3 will never get bit streaming support and that the only way it could get HD MA support was by getting support for internally decoding HD MA to LPCM. The firmware upgrade from Sony adds support for decoding HD MA to LPCM, but not for bit streaming.

To me it seems like this firmware support confirms what the "nay sayers" have stated all along, that the PS3 HDMI port is hardware-crippled and therefore unable to support HD MA bit streaming. If the PS3 could support bit streaming it would stand to reason that the new firmware enabled this since this would be less work than internally decoding to LPCM.

Robert W wrote on 4/12/2008, 5:29 PM

I have been saying for years that 24/96 is a much poorer format than 24/48. Once you are working at 48khz, arguably the most important factor is bit depth. A lot of people think of frequency rates and bit depth as a "more is better" thing, and really, with a 24/96 all you are doing is wasting a lot of bandwidth and bit resolution on redundant frequencies. I know a few good engineers, and none of them have actually worked at 96khz on any project. All these supposedly 24/96 film releases are just 24/48 with an empty top end added.

Edit: Lossless surround audio is appealing though.

Spot|DSE wrote on 4/12/2008, 7:59 PM

I know a few good engineers, and none of them have actually worked at 96khz on any project.

We did, a few years ago on a Rod Stewart project. Not only was it wasted bandwidth, but at the time, it created more dithering problems and throughput problems than you could have imagined. It was fun to be able to boast the numbers, but the reality was, it was all dithered to 24/48. Tom Stockham argued for 24bit/50kHz back in the day....turns out, he was pretty much right.

Laurence wrote on 4/12/2008, 9:10 PM

Last year at my son's science fair, there was a kid who had a project on adult hearing loss. He had a set of tones recorded and some headphones. Virtually none of the fathers could hear tones above 10k. One or two of the mothers could and all the kids could.

The conclusion that the kid made was that kids could hear a lot more than their parents could.

Another conclusion he could have drawn is that a typical portable CD player has can reproduce frequencies a lot higher than any adult can hear.

John_Cline wrote on 4/12/2008, 9:33 PM

Women and children can hear higher frequencies than can adult men. The high-frequency response of males starts to roll off starting at age 25.

apit34356 wrote on 4/12/2008, 11:23 PM

JJKizak wrote on 4/13/2008, 6:00 AM

My hearing response is 19 HZ to 12.4 KHZ at levels of 98 db SPL. (age---Older than 65, male). Another example: 19 HZ to 10 KHZ at levels of 98 db SPL. (age older than 87, female) The upper limits are cast in stone and cannot be exceeded with higher volume levels. (I tried real hard)
JJK

Terje wrote on 4/13/2008, 6:47 AM

"The firmware upgrade from Sony adds support for decoding HD MA to LPCM, but not for bit streaming." this is incorrect, again. As publicly stated,"t DTS-HD Master Audio is capable of delivering audio that is "bit-for-bit identical to the studio master" at up to 24.5Mb/s on Blu-ray, with the audio encoded using 24-bit quantisation at 96kHz." this would not conform to LPCM format.

Well, we'll of course see on the 15th (for me a little later since I am out of the country right now) but I think I am right on this one, at least according to what I have read about it thus far.

Here is the Yahoo news article:
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/techdigest/20080411/ttc-ps3-firmware-upgrade-2-3-will-give-d-e870a33.html

Quote:
"The update will output all 7.1 channels via HDMI, but only to those few receivers that can actually take a 7.1 PCM stream, like the Onkyo TX-NR905."

In other words, the 7.1 HD MA sound will be encoded into a PCM stream.

Or here:
http://recent-technology-news.com/data/articles_t15/idt2008.04.11.07.22.39.html

Quote:
will add the ability to

(my emphasis) and then
The new update gives the PS3 the capability to convert DTS-HD MA and HR to PCM for transmission via HDMI.

and finally
the PS3 will have on-board DTS-HD decoding capability. This means the PS3 will be able to expand the DTS-HD track internally to a bit-perfect multi-channel PCM soundtrack, for decoding on a home theater receiver via an HDMI cable. The PS3 will not support native bitstreaming pf DTS-HD via HDMI

Now, if all of this is wrong, I am of course happy, but I have not seen anything that contradicts this information. Please note that your quote above actually doesn't either, since it talks about the max capabilities of the format, not what the PS3 will actually do. But as I said, I'd be happy if I was wrong.