The PS3 is alive with the sound of Uncompressed PCM 5.1

Too much attention has been given to the visual department in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle, and not enough to the audio department. Well, it ain’t hooray for the sounds of silence – any movie buff will tell you that Clark Gable may have looked dang hot for his day, but what really nails his look is his classic “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a d**n” line. So it’s time to pump up the volume.

A blogger at the IGN Blogs dropped an analysis post on Uncompressed PCM 5.1-7.1 audio off of the PS3. And while the debate on HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray visuals continues to rage on, there are at least clear differences in the audio department here. Blu-Ray supports PCM – as does the PS3. HD-DVD supports Dolby TrueHD, but it cannot contain PCM 5.1.

So what are the benefits of doing PCM 5.1? The blogger reports that PCM 5.1, with the proper audio setup, “is a joy to hear.” He cites a number of testimonies of excellent audio presentations, like you could hear every detailed and subtle sound. One comment, though, noted (or claimed) that the difference between TrueHD and Uncompressed PCM isn’t “as much as (the blogger) think(s).” Theoretically, TrueHD has “everything” in the track, this dissenter says – lossless – it’s just compressed data. This might all simply be personal opinion until someone finally does a proper TrueHD vs. PCM 5.1-7.1 comparison (and even then it’ll be in the ears of the beholder). Then there’s also the sound resolution of the soundtrack and effects to consider.

Eh, there’s more to hear at the full, uncompressed PCM 5.1 article. See, there’s one benefit of uncompressed already.

Too much attention has been given to the visual department in the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray battle, and not enough to the audio department. Well, it ain’t hooray for the sounds of silence – any movie buff will tell you that Clark Gable may have looked dang hot for his day, but what really nails it is his classic “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a d**n” line. So it’s time to pump up the volume.

A blogger at the IGN Blogs dropped an analysis post on Uncompressed PCM 5.1-7.1 audio off of the PS3. And while the debate on HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray visuals continues to rage on, there are at least clear differences in the audio department here. Blu-Ray supports PCM – as does the PS3. HD-DVD supports Dolby TrueHD, but it cannot contain PCM 5.1.

So what are the benefits of doing PCM 5.1? The blogger reports that PCM 5.1, with the proper audio setup, “is a joy to hear.” He cites a number of testimonies of excellent audio presentations, like you could hear every detailed and subtle sound. One comment, though, noted (or claimed) that the difference between TrueHD and Uncompressed PCM isn’t “as much as (the blogger) think(s).” Theoretically, TrueHD has “everything” in the track, this dissenter says – lossless – it’s just compressed data. This might all simply be personal opinion until someone finally does a proper TrueHD vs. PCM 5.1-7.1 comparison (and even then it’ll be in the ears of the beholder). Then there’s also the sound resolution of the soundtrack and effects to consider.

Still, “all things being equal”, by its virtue of being lossless and uncompressed, PCM might score on reliability of the full audio experience. “Uncompressed PCM 5.1 is simply that: an uncompressed version of the filmÂ’s standard 5.1 to 7.1 soundtrack.” Again, we can’t make a scientific call until there’s a scientific test.

There is only one way to get the full PCM 5.1-7.1 experience, however – and that’s over an HDMI cable (which is also a reason why the Xbox 360 can cannot output Dolby TrueHD, despite the HD-DVD add-on, let alone Uncompressed PCM. It has no HDMI output for either). You’ll also need a receiver that has HDMI-decoding capabilities. There’s another downside to Uncompressed PCM, and that it’s uncompressed. It will eat up a lot of disc space. The above-mentioned dissenter says that we’ll get less DVD-extra features on the disc as a penalty for the greater storage demands of Uncompressed PCM. Thank goodness for the beefy Blu-Ray discs taking up the slack, then.

Another limitation is that only two movie publishers, Buena Vista and Sony, have Uncompressed PCM 5.1 audio in their movie Blu-Rays, but strangely enough, the blogger noted, other studios have just used Dolby Digital 5.1 on Blu-Ray, which means they’ve got a lot of room for improvement (heck, even jumping to TrueHD for Blu-Ray would be a significant improvement for them).