More audio geekery...
For some time now, the home audio system has been humming along just fine. A little while back, I cracked and bought an amp to satisfy my high-definition audio needs. Sure, in truth, I actually begged and pleaded with my wife, who allowed us to purchase it, but you get the idea.
Needless to say, it's a real triumph, and is really bringing out the best in whatever source material I'm likely to throw at it. The best discovery has been the ability to digitally connect the audio output from the DVD-Audio/SACD/DVD player directly to the amp, which then does the analogue stuff (getting it to the speakers). The result of using the DACS on a good mid-range amp far outweigh the capabilities of a $200 player, trust me. That's not to say the setup isn't a little retarded at times. Because of the way the HDMI spec works, it's necessary to have the SACD/DVD-Audio/DVD player set to output vision at 1080p - it does video upscaling - in order to get the full bandwidth of the audio to the amp. Unfortunately, it seems to spaz out a bit if the TV is not on (the other end of the HDMI chain), so essentially you have to have the TV on to listen to the full glory of DVD-Audio and SACD. It's annoying, but tolerable.
As a result of this purchase, however, it was "necessary" - note the quote marks - to get an honest-to-God Blu-Ray player, primarily because I was thoroughly unsatisfied with the way the HTPC was handling the Blu-Ray discs for playback. The HTPC had been notoriously unreliable in playing back films in proper sync, and just wouldn't even play back some discs, notably review discs that I had been given by a generous friend.
There was also going to be a problem with handling the high-definition audio, since there was no way of getting the high-def Blu-Ray audio formats (TrueHD, DTS-HD, DTS-HD MA) from the HTPC to the amp without purchasing a sound card that costs around $300-$350 - not much less than the cost of a Blu-Ray player.
So, the Blu-Ray player was purchased, and I chose the one I did because it was the easiest one to mod for multi-region capability, which is definitely a major concern. Currently, we possess a single Region A disc (which is actually locked - loads of Region A discs aren't), David Gilmour: Remember That Night. Unfortunately, while the Blu-Ray player can handle the Region B discs just fine, if a little slowly from initial startup, it shakes its head at the locked Region A discs. This can be rectified with the soldering of a chip to the logic board of the Blu-Ray player, which would, of course, void the warranty. This is something planned for the future, probably when the warranty runs out, though maybe not. :-)
Of course, the primary reason I need to have a player that plays locked Region A discs is the Criterion Collection. Criterion have started releasing Blu-Rays now - it took them long enough - and all reports indicate that they are locked. What they have on the list so far is certainly very tempting, and I've been a long-time fan of the Criterion Collection (I've got the Criterion Laserdisc of Blade Runner, would you believe), though sadly I only have very few discs from them.
The short-term solution to this is to use the HTPC to just play Region A Blu-Rays (and our tiny collection of HD-DVDs), which sounds fine in theory. Up until recently, I had the HTPC ouputting straight HDMI video directly to the high-def screen, and used the SPDIF connector on the motherboard to send digital audio to the amp. While this is fine for most of the stuff we torrent, it's kind of limited when it comes to outputting high-def audio - the SPDIF connector can only handle DTS, Dolby Digital and two-channel PCM.
What to do? What to do?
Many moons again, I picked up an ATI Radeon 4850-based graphics card in an attempt to have a graphics card capable of handling the high-def optical disc formats. It certainly made things a lot easier, but the results weren't always perfect. Still, one of the benefits of this card was that it actually has a high-definition audio chip that is apparently capable of outputting 7.1 high-def audio through the DVI/HDMI port. Now, that doesn't mean it natively supports TrueHD or DTS-HD MA, but it does support 7.1 PCM at 192kHz. Hmm...
OK, the plan was try to get both audio and video going over HDMI through to amp, and then onto the screen. The first issue I hit was that it didn't seem to work. A quick perusal online determined that I needed to use the DVI-HDMI converter that came with graphics card - I was using a Belkin one. OK, now I was getting audio, but the best I could manage was two-channel audio.
Well, to cut a VERY long story short, after a lot of futzing around with drivers and software, I've finally got the bastard working. As a result of my travails, the card now seems to be outputting 5.1 PCM audio at 192kHz. I'm now using TotalMedia Extreme for playing back HD-DVD and Blu-Rays - fie on you, PowerDVD! - but I've only got a trial version at the moment, and I'm balking at the $120 price tag of buying it outright. I've tried cracking it, but to no avail. Oh, well..
One of the advantages of using TotalMedia Extreme is that it supports TrueHD and DTS-MA, and I believe what's happening is that the software and hardware converts that data into 5.1 192kHz PCM - certainly, that's what the amp tells me it's receiving, so I take that as at least mostly confirmed. How about that for certainty?
Now, of course, the important test of how this works out is to play 'Echoes' from Remember That Night. Now, as far as I was able to tell, I think this is the best this has ever sounded on my system. I feel pretty sure of that. Also, the audio sync seems to be mostly fine for a change, so I'm quite happy, truth be told.
Now to ponder the Criterion Collection...