bluedog Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Hi all was just wondering if anyone on this forum has noticed that HDMI sounds really bad compared to say coaxial and more so analog:eek: I did buy a denon transport bluray to play cd's and dvd's as well as bluray.It has since been returned as DVD and cd play back were disgusting!!!:mad:.I went over to a mates place yesterday to have a play with a new power lead I had. He had his pioneer bluray hooked up only with HDMI and it sounded ummm.We found a couple of leads to hook up coaxial and analog sat back and switched between the three. Wow what a huge difference HDMI was harsh muddled lacking any form of smoothness, digital coaxial was better by far but the stand out was the analog. Has anyone else found this to be the case. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electra Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 HDMI is most certainly not a great way of getting digital audio around the place, I think that its pretty well documented that even though it offers high bandwidth, it does so at the expense of high jitter ( timing issues ) and hence sounds less than appealing. I am interested to hear that the Pio BDP had the best sound via analog. What player was it, and what was the rest of the electronics chain, out of interest? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Umm amp LX 50 bluray lx 70 or somthing like that with theophany bookshelfs M3 i think from memory. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie1553552694 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Might be time to open the can o' worms again. Two digit versus three digit dollar HDMI cables. There's no visible difference in picture quality between short HDMI cables, but the sound issue has never been covered off in the various discussions about HDMI on this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Sound is way more important to me over picture although a good picture is nice to.I am fussy i guess with picture as well just sent my samsung series 6 back as it was patchy in the blacks.They are going to replace the pannel!! da Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gopal Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Interesting timing of this thread: Only a couple of days ago a certain cable manufacturer demonstrated the difference between optical, coaxial and HDMI digital audio. Everyone present was impressed at the improvement in sound when switching to HDMI. There were also significant differences in sound quality between different quality HDMI cables. GO FIGURE!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernie1553552694 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 Oh cripes, it might mean this thread gets relegated to the Double Blind Testing end of the forum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
joe90 Posted July 10, 2009 Share Posted July 10, 2009 not only is there significant differences in sound quality but also picture quality, i recently moved my plasma to my dedicated room and replaced the lounge set with a very good lcd and after a few days i was ready to return it and get another plasma, however when i changed my hdmi cable the picture difference was huge , as my wife even pointed out it is now very watchable, the can is open i feel, i too still prefer coax to hdmi for sound quality Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 10, 2009 Author Share Posted July 10, 2009 Jitter what is jitter anyone from what i have been reading so far this seams to be the problem with HDMI? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Electra Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 jitter is basically the variance in the timing of the digital signal. Digital is pretty good at handling latency, which is purely a delay. Everything digital has latency, and its measures in pico seconds, nano seconds, microseconds, etc etc. What digital is not so great at handling, or at least, without some form of buffering, is variation in that latency. The receiving device ( lets say, the DAC, as it generally is ) is expecting a steady stream of bits, at whatever frequency its clock is set to operate at. A high jitter stream is sending a data stream which arrives at the dac not in a uniform stream. If you visualize it as a ruler, and a data bit arrives every 10mm. However, jitter might cause the first bit to arrive at 10mm, but the next bit is at 19mm. The third bit arrives at 31mm, the fourth at 38mm. This is obviously less than ideal, unless you have a form of reclocking device, which buffers the bits, and then resends them according to its internal clock. This can or can not make the signal better, but a well implemented reclocker right at the DAC is generally a pretty good idea. To bring the latency into this concept, imagine that the device sending the bits originates them at 5, 15, 25, 35mm etc. The device receiving these bits, in a perfect world, expects then at 10,20,30,40mm etc. Make any sense? If not, google it! Wikipedia should have a fairly easy explanation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gopal Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 bluedog;96469 wrote: Jitter what is jitter anyone from what i have been reading so far this seams to be the problem with HDMI? Jitter = digital clocking errors. I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about HDMI being better or worse than Coax connections. I think different pieces of equipment implement different types of connections better than others. It's not so much about the type of connection as it is about what is driving those connections inside the equipment. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T110 Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 We have a 42" Viera Plasma with Digital Terrestrial Freeview via HDMI and have occasional timing problems with speech being out of sync. No problems with Digital Sky using analogue cables. Is the problem likely to be HDMI related? Also the old DVD player uses analogue pipes and we have no issue there either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 11, 2009 Author Share Posted July 11, 2009 too_tall;96482 wrote: jitter is basically the variance in the timing of the digital signal. Digital is pretty good at handling latency, which is purely a delay. Everything digital has latency, and its measures in pico seconds, nano seconds, microseconds, etc etc. What digital is not so great at handling, or at least, without some form of buffering, is variation in that latency. The receiving device ( lets say, the DAC, as it generally is ) is expecting a steady stream of bits, at whatever frequency its clock is set to operate at. A high jitter stream is sending a data stream which arrives at the dac not in a uniform stream. If you visualize it as a ruler, and a data bit arrives every 10mm. However, jitter might cause the first bit to arrive at 10mm, but the next bit is at 19mm. The third bit arrives at 31mm, the fourth at 38mm. This is obviously less than ideal, unless you have a form of reclocking device, which buffers the bits, and then resends them according to its internal clock. This can or can not make the signal better, but a well implemented reclocker right at the DAC is generally a pretty good idea. To bring the latency into this concept, imagine that the device sending the bits originates them at 5, 15, 25, 35mm etc. The device receiving these bits, in a perfect world, expects then at 10,20,30,40mm etc. Make any sense? If not, google it! Wikipedia should have a fairly easy explanation. Thank i think it is clearing it up for me :rolleyes: i guess that if the player does the decoding and then outputing it in analog one would get less jitter then. As it is only between the reader and the players Dac ??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nixon76 Posted July 11, 2009 Share Posted July 11, 2009 T110;96486 wrote: We have a 42" Viera Plasma with Digital Terrestrial Freeview via HDMI and have occasional timing problems with speech being out of sync. No problems with Digital Sky using analogue cables. Is the problem likely to be HDMI related? Also the old DVD player uses analogue pipes and we have no issue there either. No that's a different issue. It's down to slow video processing in your panny: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_to_video_synchronization AV Amps often have features to delay the audio so it syncs up with the video. HDMI 1.3 has auto syncing capabilities, but both source and display would need to make use of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HDMI#Version_1.3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Crozzy Posted July 12, 2009 Share Posted July 12, 2009 After reading this thread... had to try... so plugged in a coax cable to the digital out on the blu-ray player... and behold... to my ears the audio is better on the coax cable than hdmi..... not as harsh... hmmmm :rolleyes: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 12, 2009 Author Share Posted July 12, 2009 Crozzy;96553 wrote: After reading this thread... had to try... so plugged in a coax cable to the digital out on the blu-ray player... and behold... to my ears the audio is better on the coax cable than hdmi..... not as harsh... hmmmm :rolleyes: Now try analog much nicer again IMO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Gopal;96484 wrote: I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements about HDMI being better or worse than Coax connections. I think different pieces of equipment implement different types of connections better than others. It's not so much about the type of connection as it is about what is driving those connections inside the equipment. Agreed. I currently have two BDPs in-house with major differences in their audio performance through HDMI. One sounds great through HDMI with all formats; CD, DVD, BD. Not quite so great via analogue. The other kinda sucks with CD, is OK with DVD, much better with BD. But switch to coax or analogue (where applicable) and sound quality goes up several notches. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Junchoon Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 imho it also depends on the AV amp connecting with the hdmi source. my new Sony SACD player will output low-jitter 5.1 SACD output via HATS (High-quality digital Audio Transfer System) with compatible AV amp, as does AV amp with PQLS (Precision Quartz Lock System). with HATS on, it is reported the jitter on the Sony will be reduced from 8000 psec to 200 psec http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1134289 cheers, wps Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 15, 2009 Share Posted July 15, 2009 Great results but the start of another numbers game ? Pioneer's BDP-LX91 has jitter down to 120/25psec with their PQLS (Pioneer Quartz Locking System) player/receiver interface. What will the next manufacturer be claiming ? As usual it's not what you got but what you do with it that really counts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bluedog Posted July 16, 2009 Author Share Posted July 16, 2009 I had a denon 3910 before my new toy and it sounded great through denon link maybe another case for sticking with the same manufacturer for all? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted July 16, 2009 Share Posted July 16, 2009 If the manufacturer is using some proprietory form of audio processing (eg. HATS, PQLS etc.), then yes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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