I brought this up in my "ramblings" thread, but I'm curious as to whether anyone else has had this same issue.
I have a Sony STR-K750P reciever (part of their HT-DDW750 home theatre setup). My PS2 is connected to it via the digital optical cable. I mention that only because the problem didn't raise it's ugly head until I started using the optical cable.
Now, as most of you probably know, a reciever has to identify the incoming digital signal before it can do anything with it. Basically, it senses an incoming signal, analyzes it, says "Okay, you're a Dolby Digital 2.0/3.1 signal", and then it applies the proper decoding to it and sends it out to the speakers. Awesome audio ensues.
The problem is, this process takes about a half a second.
Granted, once this "analysis" is done, the audio will continue unabated so long as it's still recieving an audio signal from the input device (i.e. the PS2/3/XB/360/whatever). The problem comes from situations where there isn't a constant audio signal being sent. This led to my practically going insane with annoyance at my sound system back when I first installed my optical cable.
What happened was that many games had periods of silence, where the PS2 wasn't sending out any audio signal at all. So, when sound finally resumed (i.e. gunshot in a FPS, button press on a GT4 menu, whacking the ball in Hot Shots, etc), my reciever would have to analyze, identify, and then decode the incoming signal. Which means you'd miss the first part of the sound. All you'd hear is the shot echoing in the trees, the button-push fading out, or the sound of a golf ball magically whizzing through the air without any actual "whack".
It sounds like no big deal, I know... but believe me, it's MADDENING. It almost made me want to switch back to the analog cables, because those were always constant, never dropping.
Since then, I've fixed the problem, thanks to a feature in my reciever that's meant to bypass this annoyance for audio CDs, which are constant PCM audio, the same thing the PS2 exports. I could "lock" the incoming signal to PCM, so that the reciever would automatically decode it that way without any analysis, unless it recieved a full-bore digital signal, at which point it would switch to whatever was needed (i.e. the DD5.1 intros of MGS or something).
So, my question is this: Has anyone else here experienced this problem?
You may be wondering why I'm concerned about this, since I no longer have it. Well, with the next-gen systems right around the corner (and the 360 already here), my reciever will be back to decoding digital signals again (since they all use digital audio). That means my little "trick" of using locked PCM audio won't work anymore. And if anyone else is using the same trick, it won't work for you, either...
I have a Sony STR-K750P reciever (part of their HT-DDW750 home theatre setup). My PS2 is connected to it via the digital optical cable. I mention that only because the problem didn't raise it's ugly head until I started using the optical cable.
Now, as most of you probably know, a reciever has to identify the incoming digital signal before it can do anything with it. Basically, it senses an incoming signal, analyzes it, says "Okay, you're a Dolby Digital 2.0/3.1 signal", and then it applies the proper decoding to it and sends it out to the speakers. Awesome audio ensues.
The problem is, this process takes about a half a second.
Granted, once this "analysis" is done, the audio will continue unabated so long as it's still recieving an audio signal from the input device (i.e. the PS2/3/XB/360/whatever). The problem comes from situations where there isn't a constant audio signal being sent. This led to my practically going insane with annoyance at my sound system back when I first installed my optical cable.
What happened was that many games had periods of silence, where the PS2 wasn't sending out any audio signal at all. So, when sound finally resumed (i.e. gunshot in a FPS, button press on a GT4 menu, whacking the ball in Hot Shots, etc), my reciever would have to analyze, identify, and then decode the incoming signal. Which means you'd miss the first part of the sound. All you'd hear is the shot echoing in the trees, the button-push fading out, or the sound of a golf ball magically whizzing through the air without any actual "whack".
It sounds like no big deal, I know... but believe me, it's MADDENING. It almost made me want to switch back to the analog cables, because those were always constant, never dropping.
Since then, I've fixed the problem, thanks to a feature in my reciever that's meant to bypass this annoyance for audio CDs, which are constant PCM audio, the same thing the PS2 exports. I could "lock" the incoming signal to PCM, so that the reciever would automatically decode it that way without any analysis, unless it recieved a full-bore digital signal, at which point it would switch to whatever was needed (i.e. the DD5.1 intros of MGS or something).
So, my question is this: Has anyone else here experienced this problem?
You may be wondering why I'm concerned about this, since I no longer have it. Well, with the next-gen systems right around the corner (and the 360 already here), my reciever will be back to decoding digital signals again (since they all use digital audio). That means my little "trick" of using locked PCM audio won't work anymore. And if anyone else is using the same trick, it won't work for you, either...
