optic cables

[aussiephil]

I have an Onkyo tx-sr701 and a panasonic dmp- bd65 now obviously due my receivers age a need to use optic cable, my question is my research shows my amp has a sampling rate of 96kHz/24bit but i believe i read it can carry 126kHz/24p what i want to know is can it, and is my receive producing true hd audio or is it automatically being down scaled 5.1 or even 5.1es.

question 2 whats the max sampling rate of optic cables?

is hdmi 124khz/24p and or what sampling rate is lossless audio?


Any and all answers are all appreciated

Thanks

 

[MDS]

A couple of clarifications on terminology:

1. If the receiver specs say it has 24/96 dacs (digital to analog converters), it means that is the maximum sampling rate is can process. It does not mean that all audio is processed at 24/96. A 16/44.1 CD will still be processed as 16/44.1.

Note: the first number is the bit depth and the second number is the sampling frequency. So 24/192 means there are 192,000 24-bit samples for every second of audio per channel.

2. Optical and Coax digital audio cables can theoretically carry any bit depth at any sampling frequency. It is not the cable itself that is limited but rather the s/pdif inteface and data format that limits it to 16/48. Compressed formats like Dolby Digital and DTS can be carried too.


3. '124 kHz/24p' looks like a combination of a bit depth/sampling frequency number but is neither. Lossless audio is often 24/192 as in 24-bit/192 kHz but the 'p' on the end would only be used to specify a progressive scan video resolution. A 1080p LCD TV, for example, that supports a 24 Hz refresh rate could be described as 1080p/24.

4. If the receiver only has 24/96 dacs, it cannot process anything higher than that and the s/pdif connection you are using (via the optical cable) cannot transmit multi-channel high-resolution audio. The only way to get any sound is to have the BD player set to output PCM, in which case it will downsample 5.1 to 2 channel stereo and your receiver can play that.

 

[aussiephil]

thank you for your information i understand what your saying and that my terminology is a bit irish lol but one further question for you seeing as you seem to know i understand that my BD manual also said to set it PCM as this is what my set up understanding was also but i have it set ti bitstream and hdmi audio off will it sound better as you suggest on PCM or of bitstream seems to work should i just leave it as my reseach says bitstream is better maybe im wrong! Once again thank you i realy appreciate it

 

[AVRat]

With your current Onkyo/Panny setup, it is not capable of the hi-res BR audio formats. If you had purchased the Panny 85 instead, you could have used its 7.1 ch outs to the Onkyo’s analog ins. So the best you can do is use the SD audio formats bitstreamed to the Onkyo.