Pioneer SC 05 Doesn’t play DTS HD MSTR or DD True HD

[Iconoclast]

Had my SC 05 for over 1 year & I now think it never worked right.
Just got off the phone with Pioneer & they say I have the settings correct.

When I play a BD with DTS HD MA 5.1 the display has always shown “DTS.” I just discovered the display should have shown “DTS HD MSTR.” So, apparently all the time I thought I was listening to lossless audio I was in fact listening to mere DTS.

When I play a BD with Dolby True HD it now shows “DDigital.” Until yesterday It had always shown “DD True HD.”

I just got it back yesterday from 3+ days at an authorized Pioneer service Center where they did a firmware update. They apparently did a reset so all my MCACC & other setting were reset to factory default. (Annoying!) I spent hours resetting everything.

I have a 5.1 system & also use Speaker B in another room. Auto/Direct set to “Auto Surround” I also tried hitting the “Standard” button & the display still said “DDigital” while playing a Dolby True HD movie. I’ve tried several different BD movies & double checked I selected the correct audio option on the movie when there are choices. SBch set to off.

I am posting in case someone can point out an error in my settings that are causing this or tell me they had the same issue & had it successfully repaired.

Thanks in advance for any help. I dread taking it back for service.

Steve

[MrBoylan]

Had my SC 05 for over 1 year & I now think it never worked right.
Just got off the phone with Pioneer & they say I have the settings correct.

When I play a BD with DTS HD MA 5.1 the display has always shown “DTS.” I just discovered the display should have shown “DTS HD MSTR.” So, apparently all the time I thought I was listening to lossless audio I was in fact listening to mere DTS.

When I play a BD with Dolby True HD it now shows “DDigital.” Until yesterday It had always shown “DD True HD.”

I just got it back yesterday from 3+ days at an authorized Pioneer service Center where they did a firmware update. They apparently did a reset so all my MCACC & other setting were reset to factory default. (Annoying!) I spent hours resetting everything.

I have a 5.1 system & also use Speaker B in another room. Auto/Direct set to “Auto Surround” I also tried hitting the “Standard” button & the display still said “DDigital” while playing a Dolby True HD movie. I’ve tried several different BD movies & double checked I selected the correct audio option on the movie when there are choices. SBch set to off.

I am posting in case someone can point out an error in my settings that are causing this or tell me they had the same issue & had it successfully repaired.

Thanks in advance for any help. I dread taking it back for service.

Steve

Hi, Steve,

3 questions:

1. What Blu-ray player are you using?
2. Have you set *the player* to whichever audio output settings are required to pass lossless surround formats?
3. Are you connecting the player to the receiver only via HDMI and no other cables?

-CB

[Iconoclast]

Hi CB,

Panasonic DMP BD80

Player is & has been set to Bitstream (I double checked)
BTW, unless I am mistaken if I had set the player to PCM then the AVR would NOT change its display from DDigital to DTS depending on which BD movie I played. so it is decoding SOMETHING albeit, not correctly the lossless audio codecs.

HDMI cable only. I thought these cables are all or none from various discussions on quality of the different HDMI cables. In essence it works or doesn’t work.

This really FEELS like a setting error but Pioneer says no & should go back into service. But I have had incorrect replies from Pioneer & other manufacturer customer service reps before.

Case in point. I ended up with the FW update due to an issue playing a rare audio codec (DTS HD MA 2.0) I thought it was my WB BD movie Grumpy Old Men so exchanged for another copy. WB never replied, Pioneer responded via email that the SC 05 had no issue playing that audio format. I found others who had the same issue & learned about the FW updates that fix it. Others reported DIY FW update & some “bricked their unit!” Pioneer said need to have service center do it but, newer AVRs are designed for customer to do any FW updates.
To play that movie & I suspect any of the other DTS HD MA 2.0 ones, I had to set my player to PCM & then set it back to bitstream after the movie. I think many Pioneer AVRs had big problems playing that rare codec. The reason that it isn’t well known is; few movies & some people set players to PCM anyway.

I’m concerned the service center may have somehow screwed something up so cannot play Dolby True HD anymore yet, since I always saw DTS when playing DTS HD MA 5.1, perhaps I always had issues due to faulty conversion in this AVR. Just seems suspicious that right after service the Dolby True HD issue arose. I only have two authorized Pioneer service centers. The other one wasn’t selected since when I called about doing a FW update they balked & said it is trouble & may destroy the motherboard (Pioneer said nonsense when I told them)

FYI these movies have DTS HD MA 2.0:

Grumpy Old Men DTS-HD MA 2.0/ Grumpier Old Men /DTS-HD MA 5.1
Blair Witch Project DTS-HD MA 2.0
Bad Lieutenant - DTS-HD MA 2.0
Bloodsport - DTS-HD MA 2.0 (With Timecop DTS MA 5.1)
Clash of the Titans (1981) - DTS-HD MA 2.0
Ancient Aliens:The Complete Season One - DTS-HD MA 2.0
PRESUMED INNOCENT/FRANTIC - both DTS-HD MA 2.0
Funny Farm / Spies Like Us - both DTS-HD MA 2.0

--Steve

[MrBoylan]

Hi CB,

Panasonic DMP BD80

Player is & has been set to Bitstream (I double checked)
BTW, unless I am mistaken if I had set the player to PCM then the AVR would NOT change its display from DDigital to DTS depending on which BD movie I played. so it is decoding SOMETHING albeit, not correctly the lossless audio codecs.

OK, first make sure that the player is set so that BD-Secondary Audio is set to OFF (on the same screen where you set DTS and Dolby to bitstream - the digital audio settings screen). Setting it to OFF will disable any Bonus View commentary, but it will also prevent the player from stepping down to standard DTS or Dolby Digital soundtracks in the presence of menu sound effects or BonusView commentary.

The BD80 is perfectly capable of decoding DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD to PCM so if you do switch from "bitstream" to "PCM" both for DTS and Dolby, then you will get multi-channel PCM and you WILL get the full quality of the lossless codecs, extracted to PCM. Then the receiver's display will just say "multi-channel" or "Multichannel PCM."

But it should work properly as long as the player is set to bitstream and the BD Secondary audio is set to OFF.

If that does not solve the problem then try a hard reset on the player. I actually suspect the player, not the receiver.

To do a hard reset (warning - may lose menu settings) Hold in the power button for about 3-5 seconds. You can also try reset to factory defaults in the set-up menu. and see if this changes anything.

Let us know how it goes.

-CB

[Iconoclast]

Thank you! It now works perfectly! I was so sure it was related to this week’s firmware update which was needed to hear DTS HD MA 2.0 (Which strangely now displays as Stereo) I see “DTS HD MSTR” & I see “DD True HD” when appropriate.

The issue was NOT the recent FW update but as you astutely guessed, my BD player settings. Specifically I had BD-Secondary Audio set to ON. I had been told by you & others to set it to off back in 2009 when I had a non-HDMI AVR & was using analog outs to get lossless audio from my BD 80. I did just that. When I later upgraded to my new HDMI AVR I (incorrectly ) assumed that the BD-Secondary Audio s/b set to ON since I Now had all HDMI connections. I just assumed that the DTS display meant DTS HD MA. I did think I occasionally did see DD True HD even with the wrong “ON” BD -Secondary Audio setting but, I may be mis-remembering.

I never suspected my BD player settings other than bitstream vs. PCM could affect lossy vs. lossless audio. My many forum searches had been related to the FW issue with the SC 05.

I’m very happy now! Everything works & the sound is absolutely awesome!

Steve

[MrBoylan]

Glad it worked out for you. The issue at hand is that once you need to mix different sounds together (menu sound effects, Bonus View sounds, main soundtrack), you will lose the lossless bitstream because the players can't mix in sounds in real-time using the lossless HD codecs - they typically mix in the PCM domain which means extracting to PCM, mixing in the sounds and re-encoding to a lossy format for output over the digital outputs.

Ideally the players would extract everything to PCM in full lossless quality, mix in the sounds and send an uncompressed multi-channel PCM signal over the output, but this is not typically what happens. So a simple solution is to remove those secondary sounds from the mix (BD Secondary Audio OFF) so the player can just pass along the underlying sound to your receiver for processing. I guess some day it might be possible for a player to decode from lossless, do the mix, and re-encode to lossless but there is limited value to that, really: once it is PCM, assuming it's decoded from the lossless mix, it's just as well to keep it PCM.

And this isn't a Panasonic-specific issue. Most players have some kind of setting to preserve the lossless bitstream for precisely this mixing issue. You can always turn BD Secondary Audio back on if you want to hear the menu sound effects or BonusView commentary.

-CB