DRC being processed by BD Player, AVR, or Both?

[BM1]

Kind of a strange question here...

Scenario:

• Sony BDP-S790 Blu-ray player bitstreaming audio to AVR via HDMI
• Dynamic Range Compression enabled on Blu-ray player and disabled on AVR

If my Sony BD player is bitstreaming audio to the AVR, is it still applying its DRC at the Blu-ray player level then sending over compressed audio, or would I have to enable DRC on the AVR to apply DRC since it's doing the decoding? My understanding is that DRC is applied during decoding so the fact that it's enabled on the BD player while bitstreaming audio has no effect, but I'm hoping someone that knows more about it than me can shed some light.

 

[jonnythan]

Your BD player is sending compressed audio. It's still bitstreaming, but it's bitstreaming a manipulated data stream.

What kind of receiver do you have?

 

[BM1]

I have a Sony STR-DH820.

Since I do want to use DRC sometimes for late night, low volume movie watching, it would be best to only have DRC enabled on 1 device, correct? If I enabled DRC on the receiver as well, would it apply compression again to the already compressed audio?

 

[jonnythan]

Yeah you only want it enabled on one or the other. You might want to try it on the receiver and the BD player to see which does a better job for you.

 

[BM1]

Thanks I'll experiment with it now that I understand how it works.