Which Sony Blu Ray Player?

I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

TIA

Norm B wrote:
I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

TIA


Some purists feel that one should maintain all signals in the digital
realm as much as possible. Your answer may well depend on where you
intend to process the audio - in the BD player or the AVR. Using analog
between the BD player and AVR, the BD player will need to do the 5.1
processing. Coax or optical to the AVR allows either to process audio.
As for which is best, that answer depends on which one offers the most
flexibility for individual channel balancing to the speakers.
Calibrating a system to the room will require this, and thusly, will
have much more impact on the quality of the system's sound than any
digital or analog difference in that one hookup link.

--
jer
email reply - I am not a 'ten'

Norm B wrote:

I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

It really depends on your hearing, your listening environment, and your
Hi-Fi gear. Many can't hear any difference. Many can. YMMV.

[The S350 doesn't support BD-Live? I thought all it needed was a firmware
update. That's one reason I went with the Panasonic DMP-BD35. It already
gets BD-Live, and any firmware updates are automatic over the Internet.
Nice deals as well around Black Friday and Cyber Monday.]

On Mon, 29 Dec 2008 23:42:14 -0600, Jer wrote:

Norm B wrote:
I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

TIA


Some purists feel that one should maintain all signals in the digital
realm as much as possible. Your answer may well depend on where you
intend to process the audio - in the BD player or the AVR. Using analog
between the BD player and AVR, the BD player will need to do the 5.1
processing. Coax or optical to the AVR allows either to process audio.
As for which is best, that answer depends on which one offers the most
flexibility for individual channel balancing to the speakers.
Calibrating a system to the room will require this, and thusly, will
have much more impact on the quality of the system's sound than any
digital or analog difference in that one hookup link.

I think the question is more regarding the newer lossless audio
formats that, with his existing surround amplifier can be decoded by
the S550 (if connected with analogue multichannel connections).

I'm not sure but a limitation with this method seems to be that most
surround amplifiers disables processing such as delay adjustments when
connected this way. The S550 is reported to lack such adjustments so
this is then not a good solution.

I also have an older, non-HDMI, surround amplifier so
I haven't heard the difference between DTS/DD5.1 and the new formats
but I still judge (good sounding material) from these older sound
tracks (connected via S/PDIF coax or optical) as very good and still
matches the Blu-Ray picture quality.

Check out the extensive discussions of these issues at
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...073637&page=67


"Norm B" wrote in message
.. .
I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

TIA

Jer wrote:

I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

Some purists feel that one should maintain all signals in the digital
realm as much as possible. Your answer may well depend on where you
intend to process the audio - in the BD player or the AVR. Using analog
between the BD player and AVR, the BD player will need to do the 5.1
processing. Coax or optical to the AVR allows either to process audio.
As for which is best, that answer depends on which one offers the most
flexibility for individual channel balancing to the speakers.
Calibrating a system to the room will require this, and thusly, will
have much more impact on the quality of the system's sound than any
digital or analog difference in that one hookup link.

The optimum, of course, is to use HDMI to your AVR, then HDMI from your
AVR to your monitor.

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:11:23 -0800, UCLAN wrote:

Jer wrote:

I have an older receiver that has 5.1 input capability. I'm looking
at the Sony BD S350 and BD S550. The 550 has analog outputs that I
can plug into my older receiver to get the lossless audio. The 350
can provide audio to the receiver via either digital coax or optical.

My question is whether it is enough of an audio improvement to warrant
going for the 550 over the 350. The price difference is about $100
these days. I don't think the BD live capability on the 550 will
matter much to me - it's really a question of the potential audio
improvement.

Some purists feel that one should maintain all signals in the digital
realm as much as possible. Your answer may well depend on where you
intend to process the audio - in the BD player or the AVR. Using analog
between the BD player and AVR, the BD player will need to do the 5.1
processing. Coax or optical to the AVR allows either to process audio.
As for which is best, that answer depends on which one offers the most
flexibility for individual channel balancing to the speakers.
Calibrating a system to the room will require this, and thusly, will
have much more impact on the quality of the system's sound than any
digital or analog difference in that one hookup link.

The optimum, of course, is to use HDMI to your AVR, then HDMI from your
AVR to your monitor.

That setup (HDMI to your AVR, then HDMI from your AVR to your monitor)
was what I had at first. Then I had problems which seemed to come
from my when my older receiver (2 years old maybe) had trouble passing
through the HDMI signal.

Finally, I decided, after a thread on this newsgroup to... (hmm, I
notice that I'm typing this for the third time in about as many
minutes. I think I'll paste instead.)

I now have two wires running out of my Blu-ray player: (1) an HDMI
cable that goes straight to the TV, used to delivering 1080p picture
only, and (2) a digital audio cable that goes straight to the
receiver.

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 14:37:24 -0800, dgates
wrote:

That setup (HDMI to your AVR, then HDMI from your AVR to your monitor)
was what I had at first. Then I had problems which seemed to come
from my when my older receiver (2 years old maybe) had trouble passing
through the HDMI signal.

Finally, I decided, after a thread on this newsgroup to... (hmm, I
notice that I'm typing this for the third time in about as many
minutes. I think I'll paste instead.)

I now have two wires running out of my Blu-ray player: (1) an HDMI
cable that goes straight to the TV, used to delivering 1080p picture
only, and (2) a digital audio cable that goes straight to the
receiver.

I assume you have decided that you are satisfied with the usual DD and
DTS codecs for audio and don't feel the urge to listen to the newer
lossless ones which require either an HDMI connection to the AVR or
else an analog one requiring (6,7,8?) individual cables.. You may be
right. I have not seen any accounts of blind listening tests where
the old codecs are compared to the new ones.

dgates wrote:

Finally, I decided, after a thread on this newsgroup to... (hmm, I
notice that I'm typing this for the third time in about as many
minutes. I think I'll paste instead.)

I now have two wires running out of my Blu-ray player: (1) an HDMI
cable that goes straight to the TV, used to delivering 1080p picture
only, and (2) a digital audio cable that goes straight to the
receiver.

That's how mine is set up, but my old SonyES AVR doesn't have HDMI.

On Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:17:59 -0800, UCLAN wrote:

dgates wrote:

Finally, I decided, after a thread on this newsgroup to... (hmm, I
notice that I'm typing this for the third time in about as many
minutes. I think I'll paste instead.)

I now have two wires running out of my Blu-ray player: (1) an HDMI
cable that goes straight to the TV, used to delivering 1080p picture
only, and (2) a digital audio cable that goes straight to the
receiver.

That's how mine is set up, but my old SonyES AVR doesn't have HDMI.

Likewise and it sounds great to me.
Thumper