Hey all. First post. I am off the HDMI bandwagon. Tired of the restrictions, and tired of the BS. Tired of the constantly changing spec. If you havent heard, 1.3 wont be the end, 1.3b is coming.

Im sorry for ranting, but I had been anticipating the release of the new Outlaw Pre/Pro as everyone else has. I read AVSforum, and saw the sticky FAQs about "why I dont need HDMI", as well as Gonk's commentary regarding HDMI, but neither really drove the point home as much as these articles:

Quote:
First let's clarify some nomenclature. Dolby and DTS have both introduced new audio codecs. The lossy ones are DD+ (Dolby Digital Plus) and DTS-HD (High Definition). The lossless codecs are Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA (Master Audio).

Think of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD MA as zipping a computer file to save space. None of the data is discarded, just packed more efficiently to take up less storage space. When you unzip the file, 100% of the data is still there, and you get a bit-for-bit copy of the original.

If you had a zipped document that you wanted to send me on disc, you would have two choices. You could unzip it on your computer before putting it on the disc. Or you could send it to me as a zipped file (would take up less space on the disc) and I could unzip it on my computer. Either way, I end up with the exact same document, down to the last letter.

Likewise, decoding (unpacking) a soundtrack in the player or in the receiver will yield the exact same results. It's not like high end receivers have a special secret version of TrueHD decoding reserved for them that cheap players aren't allowed to have. It's just format decoding. If certain audio data is flagged for the left front channel, then decoding in the worlds most expensive receiver won't place that data somehow "more" into the left front channel than decoding in the world's cheapest player.

Going back to the zipped document analogy. If you wanted to change anything in the document, from simple correction of spelling mistakes to complex re-formatting for a better look, you would first need to unzip that document. You wouldn't be able to manipulate it while it was still zipped.

Similarly, everything a receiver does to the soundtrack, upto and including D/A conversion, requires the soundtrack to be in uncompressed PCM form. In fact, when you send your receiver a DD or DTS bitstream, the first thing it does is decompress the soundtrack to linear PCM. Only then can it apply things like bass management, time alignment, etc.

Soundtracks on HD DVD (and eventually on Blu-ray, when it goes interactive) operate very differently than they do on DVD. With current DVDs, you need entirely separate soundtracks for things like foreign languages and filmmaker's commentary. This is actually a pretty wasteful approach.

With HD DVD, soundtracks can be authored in the 'Advanced' mode, which allows multiple content streams to be live-mixed (mixed in real time). You don't need another soundtrack for foreign languages. Just swap out the English centre channel stream with one of the foreign centre channel streams. You don't need another soundtrack for commentary. Just reduce the level of the main soundtrack and mix in the commentary stream. Same with button sounds and other interactive features, like picture-in-picture.

Just like editing the document requires unzipping the file first, doing any of this live-mixing to the soundtrack requires decoding it to linear PCM first. This is why it has to be done in the player. They're not going to transmit every option to your receiver, just one soundtrack. You choose what you want to hear, it is mixed in the player (i.e, the soundtrack you want to hear is literally built in real time inside the player) and transmitted as a final mix to your receiver.

Current HDMI allows 8 channels of 96/24 PCM to be transmitted (more than enough resolution for any soundtrack), but not the new codecs in their native form. When HDMI 1.3 arrives, it will allow the new codecs mentioned above to be transmitted in their native bitstream, but only if they were authored in 'Basic' mode (no interactivity). If the soundtrack was authored in Advanced mode, then it cannot be transmitted in undecoded form; decoding in the player is mandatory because of live mixing.

So far, all HD DVD soundtrack have been authored in Advanced mode. Which means nothing will change when new receivers arrive on the market. Despite having HDMI 1.3 transmission and decoders built into the receiver, decoding will still have to take place in the player.

Currently, Blu-ray discs are authored in Basic mode, since they haven't gotten interactivity yet. As soon as BD Java is up and working, they'll all be authored in Advanced mode too. At that point, what are the decoders in the receivers going to do? Decode the relatively few BD titles that were released before interactivity? Most of those titles will be re-issued anyway.

Personally, I'm glad that decoding is shifting to the player. I wish it had always been that way. Since receivers need the data in PCM form anyway, that's what every player should be outputting (irrespective of what format is used to store the data on the disc). As mentioned before, when new audio codecs and formats arrive, you'll have to buy a new player. But as long as the players keep outputting the audio in PCM form, current receivers will always remain compatible with anything that shows up in the future. How elegant is that!

Sanjay

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=9353634&&#post9353634
http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/High-Def_FAQ/High-Def_FAQ:_Is_HDMI_1.3_Really_Necessary/853

The question is what does this mean to audiophiles that want the highest quality audio?

If these articles are accurate, it means that 99% of High Def discs will be mixed in the player. The discs are going to be decoded and transmitted as PCM, whether it is 5.1/7.1/8.1 analog out of the player, or PCM over HDMI, both methods rely on the DAC's of your player.

Please read this article excerpt:


Due to the complexity in decoding DTS-HD MA adding this capability would add complexity and cost to new players at a time when there is enormous pressure to produce high-definition players at lower prices. It's cheaper—or at least friendlier to current marketing realities—to put this decoding in the AV receiver, where the enthusiast will pay for it without batting an eye. To make the bitstream transmission work, however, both the player and the receiver must be HDMI 1.3 compliant.


Many recent AV receivers can accept multichannel PCM digital audio over earlier versions of HDMI. Most HDMI-equipped players can convert standard DD and DTS to multichannel PCM, and most (but not all) players can do the same for Dolby TrueHD.

Decoding any form of Dolby TrueHD or DTS-HD MA into PCM is a completely digital operation—a manipulation of bits. It's a fact that audiophiles have long been skeptical of digital processing, particularly of things that can corrupt the digital data stream, such as jitter. Jitter interrupts the timing sequence, so that the bits do not always arrive at their destination when they should. "Bits is bits," say the digiphiles; "The right bit at the wrong time is the wrong bit," argue the phobes.

Until it's proven otherwise, we'll come down on the side that argues that the all-digital process of converting TrueHD or DTS-HD MA to multichannel PCM digital involves no sonic compromises.

But there are, despite this alternative, advantages to passing these audio formats along to the receiver in their raw "bitstream" form. The most obvious is that no HD DVD or Blu-ray player yet available will decode the full high-resolution data stream of DTS-HD Master Audio into PCM.

The original article is here:
http://www.ultimateavmag.com/features/807hdmi13/

To further illustrate this look at this from the Dolby site:
http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technology/trueHD/AVRs/trueHD_avrs_3.html

Excerpt from Dolby:

To decode these bitstreams, the A/V decoder will need to support the updated data protocols, as well as incorporate these new decoding algorithms. In addition, it will be necessary to select HD discs in which the content maker has permitted the core 5.1 or 7.1 audio bitstreams to bypass the player’s mixing process and be sent directly to the digital outputs of the player. We expect that certain HD discs will permit this, but they may represent a minority of titles. In the end, the sound quality will be essentially the same as that of audio decoded within the player as PCM signals and transported through a current-generation HDMI connection to the A/V receiver.

With six or eight channels of 24-bit/96 kHz audio to handle from these new HD formats, the post-processing DSP requirements for an A/V receiver more than double. Rather than devoting the considerable DSP resources to decoding the core audio signals within the A/V processor itself, it may be more fruitful to use the A/V processor’s DSP resources to perform high-resolution post-processing such as bass management, room or speaker equalization, Dolby Pro Logic® IIx decoding, or other types of digital signal processing.

As a result of the quality and capabilities that the new digital interfaces provide, hardware manufacturers can offer more highly optimized system designs that attain the ultimate in performance while providing the greatest flexibility and efficiency for the consumer.


That last paragraph is funny. What quality??? HDMI SUCKS! This rate of change of its specification cant be suported. Whats the point? Every other device has analog outs anyway (except the PS3). If I were a sales guy, I would never tell someone to use HDMI. Its too hard to figure whats what. I would get them the player with DTS-MA decoding (thats not out yet), and make sure it had 7.1 or 8.1 analog out, and their receiver or amp had at least 5.1 analog inputs.

Prehaps Oppo or some other high end audio/video company will eventually get in the game with better quality player with great DACS?

This fiasco sure makes the 990 look more appealing, especially given the ridiculous amount of changes the HDMI committee keeps making.

tres0r

Those links make up a good set of references on HDMI.

Sorry to rant. I think many people are going to be set up for failure. It makes me angry to think that average Joes will be spending money on gear and not getting what they paid for. We love this stuff, if and its difficult for us to understand, the average Joe doesn's stand a chance. The average sales person wont be able to sell the right electronics either. The easiest solution is not to push HDMI altogether and recommend to use analog connections.

tres0r

This situation demonstrates one of the reasons I appreciate the OA methodology – even if every product is not ‘wrinkle free’. In my view OA is situated in a rather good place along the range of priorities between a measured approach (with some wisdom applied) at one end and maximizing the number of units sold annually at the other. The manufacturers and retailers that will have new models coming to market at least annually, if not more often, are not likely as concerned with product ‘usefulness longevity’ as a company that is going to replace a current model only every three to five years. The ‘annual companies’ are just going to move on and, in a sense, try to drive consumer demand. The ‘3to5 companies’ are in a position to say, “What demand(s) will we really need to respond to?” The ‘3to5 companies’ won’t be the first out of the gate trying to drive consumer expectation, but when they do arrive, likely they’ve had time to be wiser in their approach.

In this respect, I am glad that OA takes the clamor at the gates for ‘new, more, now’ in stride – whether the patience of those making the noise holds out or not.

IMHO, with the media computer firmly on the horizon of the commonplace future, what processors need to be ready for, as a primary source, is whatever format(s) the audio/video cards will providing – regardless of whether the data arrives in the computer via a provider’s stream/channel, as a disc, or as a prior download. Some folks may keep separate players for their own reasons, but I think the mass market will eventually have the one ‘box’ that handles all source material, and out of that, one main data pipeline for audio use, perhaps with analog outputs as well. (I’m using 7.1 analog out of a recently purchased PC.) With DVI already in use as a computer output format for video, a full-fledged, all-inclusive HDMI format may the way we’re going.

Bottom line: Whether HDMI or any other format/standard, I won’t feel that I’m behind the times until there is source material commonly available with content I can’t properly take advantage of, the format/standard has reached a fairly mature state, and there is real price competition for the equipment involved. As long as the next generation of Outlaw processor is available by that point, that’s good enough for me.

Outlaws: I appreciate your ‘reasoned, seasoned’ approach. Whether by philosophy, necessity or both, keep resisting the clamor for immediacy.

I think that it's a reasonable rant under the circumstances. On the one hand, HDMI is a concept that offers some clear benefits. On the other hand, the way the HDMI has been deployed has been messy and confusing.

I'd really like to have seen HDMI take a somewhat different approach to their licensing and require that any HDMI product include a clear indication of the HDMI version - to the point that it was integrated into the silk-screened logo on the front panel. The options would have been HDMI v1.0 (video plus DD/DTS bitstream audio and PCM stereo audio), HDMI v1.1 (video plus DD/DTS bitstream audio and multichannel PCM audio), HDMI v1.2 (same as v1.1 plus DSD bitstream), HDMI v1.3 (which would only be allowed if the integration included support for DD+, TrueHD, and DTS-HD MA bitstreams), and a separate logo for HDMI Video (for all those receivers and processors that have included HDMI switching without any audio support). That would all of course be accompanied by a short, concise, and readily available brochure from HDMI explaining the differences to help educate consumers. Alas, this idea lives in the same dream world where DTS came up with a less tedious name for their lossless format than "DTS-HD Master Audio," and where the consumer electronics giants and studios realized that an HD format war was unnecessary and standardized on one HD format. Meanwhile here in the real world, we enjoy HDMI's loosely-identified version stew, the format war continues, and I keep find myself typing the "abbreviation" DTS-HD MA.

Tres0r,
Good rant and i'll second bestbang4thebuck thoughts. Got to love OA.

Gonk,
Do you think a macro for every abbreviation will help?
Then you will have to create a list just for the abbreviations. The list could be a macro also....

Excellent points, bestbang4thebuck - especially when it comes to the design philosophy required for a company whose products can be expected to have something like a three year life cycle, which Outlaw has done as good a job with as I think can be done.
Hey, you might be in to something... Forums could even incorporate them, just like smileys and such. [MA] could automatically display as "DTS-HD Master Audio (TM)"!

I suppose that the only way to have a cushion for future gear* separate from any media computer is to have four sets of 7.1 through 9.2 analog inputs. That's a lot of back panel real estate, but might not ever be out of date!

*(When new digital formats are in continual revision and "you'll never keep up." Fifty years from now, will they be beyond digital and into ... bio-plasma conduits? Beyond that, I suppose if they start interfacing with our nervous system, the best home entertainment will have done away with loudspeakers and video screens anyway.)

I would add a clarification to say that while tresor's comments are certainlly valid, I'm not so sure I would blame HDMI for this. That's like killing the messenger because you don't like the message. THere's plenty to point at HDMI for, but in this case it's simply the pipe that enables the various combinations of audio, and it's up to the player folks, receiver manufacturers, the studios and the people who author the discs and the DOlby and DTS groups to find a reasonable way to square up all the combinations regarding the codecs, where they get decoded and how the data streams get transported from one component to another.

It's very true that HDMI can't take all of the blame for the format war (or even any significant portion of it, as there are a number of very large corporations that have worked very hard - and continue to work hard - to earn that blame). Independent of either format, though, HDMI's revisions to their standard have been a source of consumer confusion since before either format announced launch dates. The issues relating to the new HD formats (mainly the issue of multichannel PCM output vs. bitstream output of the new audio formats) are among the more hotly debated ones and can probably be blamed for many companies like Outlaw being cautious about introducing HDMI into their line-ups, but some of HDMI's other problems are unrelated to the format war. I think it's legitimate for folks to be unhappy with non-locking connectors that are prone to slipping loose, HDCP included without some sort of system in place to assure consistent compatibility between manufacturers, capabilities added by revision that should have been included from the beginning to justify HDMI's existence (multichannel PCM being right at the top of that list), and allowing a mix of implementations without any clear identification (such as the HDMI inputs offered by many receivers that don't allow any audio).

Podboy,

Im not referring to Bluray or HDDVD as standards. I am referring to the HDMI committee and their additions to the standard, and manufacturers that are shipping incomplete gear(not enough processing power to decode DTS-MA, and no BD-Java on Bluray). Some were obviously significant enough that it makes you wonder why they didn't take the time to make sure the specification was feature complete. I am not a luddite analog guy. Im all for convergence and media centers as long as I can get high quality sources (not iTunes!).

The deceptive advertising whether inadvertent or not is what got me mad. After taking a step back I came to the conclusion that I'm better off without it, especially when used for audio with next gen HD video sources. I use HDMI for my cable reciever and TV, and it looks great.

Do you really think the kids at Magnolia have a clue as to what receiver and what HD player supports what features and which don't? Don't you think that most people are going to make rather significant mistakes like new Onkyo HDMI receiver owners that cant get DTS-MA tracks of their disks?

The easy solution is to skip HDMI for audio from your HD Video sources. People are so used to digital everything that they don't even consider analog, which is the other 50% of the problem.

As much as we complain about the audio problems with HDMI implementation, it's the problems it has with display compatibility that gets the most attention. SimplayHD was set up by Silicon Image as a way to certify (and, by way of another logo, indicate to consumers) that source components will play nice with any HDMI capable display, which (as you might expect) is not an uncommon problem.

It is sad that SI don't see these audio issues coming, and work to include or develop a certification for audio compatibility as well, in order to keep consumers from losing their minds. It's a telling sign that the considerable audio expertise in this forum is scratching their heads over this issue - just imagine how the general consumer public is likely to react to it.

I wonder how much of an improvement the audio formats will be over the current ones. Should I be frustrated over the way audio is being implemented over HDMI or not? I don't have a reference point other than the audio formats (via coax and optical) used by my 990, but I like the way it sounds. Would an upgrade in other components (e.g. speakers, room treatments, SMS-1) provide a greater benefit to my enjoyment over the new audio formats? The answer is partially based upon objective info but subjective measures (does it sound better) too.

Is the audio improvement with the new formats comparable to a reference everyone already knows? For example, are the new formats better than the current ones like standard CDs are better than audio from mp3s?