Hi all, I might be opening pandora's box here. This is about BS3 and DVD Audio decoding from music DVDs played on a PS3.

My set up - A BV4 50", BS3 (4 months old), BLab 5s, Lab 3s (rear), Lab 10 (centre), BS9000.

I have had no problem playing Blu Ray discs in the PS3 with great picture and I think (!!) good sound (anything sounds great through the Lab 5s). However my brother brought home the Eagles Farewell Tour DVD to play on my system. The audio options were DTS 5.1 and Dolby 5.1. I chose DTS and quite frankly the sound was missing ANY bass. None at all. It sounded like some plastic boom box you would pick up in a garage sale. Of course he pissed himself laughing at the sound.

I tried to research the whole issue of Audio decoding (DTS HD, Master Audio etc) and quite frankly without a doctorate in Audio engineering I have no hope of even figuring out what is possible and what needs to be done here. Can someone help.

Should I go out and get a new dedicated (say Panasonic BD80 ) BD player ?

To do a direct comparison I also happen to have the Jean Michele Jarre AERO DVD & CD set. The DVD was mastered in DTS 5.1 mode and the CD has PCM Stereo mode. The CD when played in my BS 9000 through the labs sounds awesome. The audio DVD when played through teh BS3 sounds crap. So I know its not the speakers etc.

Help...

You should only pass on to the BS3 the sound formats that is supported by it (DD 5.1, DTS 5.1 etc), but other formats (such as DTS-HD) must be decoded by the PS3 and sent to the BS3 as multi channel PCM. The PS3 is very versatile in this respect, but you can easily get lost in the audio output setup.

Same goes for Sony's stand-alone BD players: The S350 can not decode formats such as DTS-HD and will just pass it on (= no HD sound from BS3), while the slightly more expensive S550 can be set to decode DTS-HD and pass it on as multi channel PCM (= HD sound from the BS3).

But this only applies to, say, DTS 5.1 vs DTS-HD - I do not know why you have lost only bass.

Roger

Roger, thanks for the response. I fixed the problem last night. I realised that when the PS3 is switched (also used by my sons) they have their own login and so if it was on via their login, the audio preferences for them were set to Scart and Composite Video cables rather than HDMI. So as soon as I changed the option to HDMI, put in a music DVD all was as it should be with excellent bass, really tight, as it should be with teh Lab 5s.