[halfelite]

This is strange, in anyone knowledgeable to explain this, are those HW limiting the Audio passthrough?

Bitstream is Bistream. People used to say the same thing about Med8ers that they had louder/punchier bass. I think a lot of it is placebo or you have different settings setup in your AVR based on HDMI input. I also thought the same thing at first with the med8er but I pulled out my meter and ran both the DTS_HD and TRUEHD test tracks through a Mede8er and then through my PCH they mapped out almost identical. I think what happens most often for me is I am watching something on one input and I change settings that only hit that hdmi input things like dialog normalize and I forget that I turned it on so when I switch inputs to something that is set in Direct MODE it sounds louder then the other source.