When bypassing bass management whiich sounds better

[Diamond Dog]

I have a B&K Reference 50 (no HDMI inputs)

I am hooking up a Sony Blu Ray S100ES to it.

I bought the Blu Ray more for the audio aspects and the new formats (ie Dolby HD) as I love concert videos.

Since there are no HDMI inputs, I have to use the mutichannel analog which I think bypass all the bass management and other things that make the Reference 50 great (ie notch filtering, electronic crossover, etc)).

So my question is this:

Will listening to standard DTS or DD that is being "processed" through the B&K Reference 50 (through the optical cable that will also be hooked up in addition to the muti analog cables) sound better than the DTS-HD or Dolby HD that bypasses everything?

[MrBoylan]

I have a B&K Reference 50 (no HDMI inputs)

I am hooking up a Sony Blu Ray S100ES to it.

I bought the Blu Ray more for the audio aspects and the new formats (ie Dolby HD) as I love concert videos.

Since there are no HDMI inputs, I have to use the mutichannel analog which I think bypass all the bass management and other things that make the Reference 50 great (ie notch filtering, electronic crossover, etc)).

So my question is this:

Will listening to standard DTS or DD that is being "processed" through the B&K Reference 50 (through the optical cable that will also be hooked up in addition to the muti analog cables) sound better than the DTS-HD or Dolby HD that bypasses everything?

The lossy dts and Dolby Digital soundtracks on Blu-ray can sound excellent. In some cases virtually indistinguishable from the lossless Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio soundtracks so you'll probably be happy enough using fiberoptic instead of multi-channel analog. But we usually recommend hooking it up both ways so you can compare it yourself.

There are a couple of things you just can't do with fiber, like pass multi-channel PCM soundtracks, but on blu-ray discs that have multi-channel PCM soundtracks you can usually also find a Dolby Digital or DTS track to use instead.

[MrBoylan]

by the way... Some B&K processors have problems decoding the 640 KBPS Dolby Digital soundtracks that are found on many Blu-ray Discs. I think these issues were limited to mostly earlier B&K receivers, but definitely try out a few Dolby TrueHD BD titles to see if you have any problems.