HTPC audio question

mattchapman

mattchapman

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Joined
Dec 30, 2005
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I currently have been using my regular desktop to play movies on my HDTV. I output video using DVI and audio using SPDIF. I run through my Onkyo TX-SR604 receiver to my 5.1 speaker setup.

My movie MKV files typically have DTS or DD (ac3) sound. Now I was under the impression I was getting the best sound quality possible as SPDIF was digital passthrough. However, after researching my new HTPC build I think perhaps not as it appears DTS-HD and TrueHD are the best these days.

My question is...given my receiver does not appear to support DTS-HD or TrueHD then do I really need to worry about getting a CPU/GPU/MOBO to support that? I was headed toward the cheaper AMD setup but was told i3 is better because it supports DTS-HD or TrueHD...but again I don't think my receiver will even support that.

Thanks
 
mattchapman said:
I currently have been using my regular desktop to play movies on my HDTV. I output video using DVI and audio using SPDIF. I run through my Onkyo TX-SR604 receiver to my 5.1 speaker setup.

My movie MKV files typically have DTS or DD (ac3) sound. Now I was under the impression I was getting the best sound quality possible as SPDIF was digital passthrough. However, after researching my new HTPC build I think perhaps not as it appears DTS-HD and TrueHD are the best these days.

My question is...given my receiver does not appear to support DTS-HD or TrueHD then do I really need to worry about getting a CPU/GPU/MOBO to support that? I was headed toward the cheaper AMD setup but was told i3 is better because it supports DTS-HD or TrueHD...but again I don't think my receiver will even support that.

Thanks
Click to expand...

You need a HDMI reciever that can handle DTS MA or TrueHD. If you are happy with your setup then there's no need to upgrade.
 
Yes. You said your movie files typically have DTS or DD sound. If you don't have any files (or blu-rays) that has HD audio, then there is no reason to upgrade. And as pointed out, upgrading would require upgrading your reciever (and probably adding a $25 5450 graphics card, so you can bitstream HD audio via HDMI). You wouldn't need to upgrade anything else though. i3 paired with say the H55 chipset has the built in ability to bitstream HD audio via HDMI (but many users have frame rate bugs that affect blu-ray playback). However, an intel solution has a higher initial cost than an AMD solution (which by itself does not have integrated graphic support for HD audio via HDMI), but you can add a cheap 5xxx graphics card for that functionality, and still come out cheaper than intel. I wouldn't say i3 is better for those reasons.
 
You don't need your receiver to support DTS-Hd or Dolby TrueHD.

You can just decode those audio tracks in software and send them via HDMI as a 6 channel LPCM stream.

Thats just the uncompressed version and is the same quality.
 
Go with AMD. When you update to blu-ray, as xrintrahx stated, just grab a cheap 5000 card and sell your old receiver for one that support those features (DTS-HD and TrueHD). By the way, I'm running the Onkyo TX-SR605 and it plays DTS-HD and TrueHD flawlessly.
 
SirMaster is correct on that point. In fact, if you don't have HDMI on your motherboard, you could do the decoding via software and then send the LPCM stream via analog as well, if your motherboard has that capability, which most have for awhile now. But again, this is all moot if you don't have any sources with any HD audio codecs to begin with.
 
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