(2012-08-17, 03:30)edru Wrote: I guess I am a bit confused then. This entire time i was under the impression that HD Audio was just optical in general.
You are confused. By optical I guess you mean spdif (which is not just optical, it can also be delivered over a wire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spdif , it is also known as iec958.)
spdif will deliver LPCM (ie uncompressed) in 2 channels or AC3 or DTS. The AC3 and DTS will do up to 6 channels (ie 5.1) and are compressed lossy formats. They are common on DVD and AC3 is also used for 5.1 audio channel TV transmission. They can commonly be bitstreamed (ie passed through untouched) over spdif or HDMI. Passing through the untouched stream for your amplifier to decode is generally regarded as a "good thing".
HD audio refers to the newer formats like TrueHD
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTS-HD. These audio formats are lossless and support more channels, eg 7.1. They are common on bluray. They will not travel over spdif. They will travel over HDMI as either LPCM or bitstreamed in their native format.
Whether your video card will pass through AC3, DTS, TrueHD or DTS-HD is a matter of the capabilities of the video card, and the drivers (eg I understand that AMD video cards will pass through HD Audio on windows but not linux, but I may be wrong). It can also be affected by how the video card manufacturer implements the video card, eg there seems some debate over which ION devices are capable of passthrough, even with the same chipset from different manufacturers.
I hope that I have all that right, and that it helps.
Quote:Seeing that it appears that 5.1 is supported (or am I wrong) how does one get this set up? Using netflix I can get 5.1 perfectly. In XBMC (newest nightlies) I am unable to get anything but stereo sound to play through. If I leave all ATV settings to auto, and XBMC settings to 5.1 Audio, through Optical, with DTS and Dolby enabled I get nothing but time code static playing either a DTS or Dolby movie. Ive tried running the optical from my TV and directly from the ATV with the same results. If I put the ATV settings to "16 bit" my receiver displays "error".
So does XBMC on ATV 2 support anything outside of stereo? And if so, is there a recommended set up?
(it's also very possibly maybe my receiver is just a cheap POS and doenst know wtf its doing - Panasonic SA-HT900 - http://www.retrevo.com/support/Panasonic...bh749/t/2/ )
Not an ATV expert sorry