My dilemma, some advice please.

How good is the integra 9.8 with 2-channel?

Sounds to me like our minds are already made.

I do enjoy my Onkyo 805 receiver... and INtegra reportedly is the better made end of that heritage... so it seems a less involved idea to go Integra if an HT rec is preffered now... regardless the reasons. I'll assume a deal can be had just now on one, or $$$ is a now consideration.

I found a very interesting article by Robert Harley in AVGuide.com He defines two different functions involved in decoding a lossless BluRay:

“unzipping” of the TrueHD bitstream to PCM, and the conversion of that PCM to analog. The former is best done in the player; the latter in the controller.“unzipping” of the TrueHD bitstream to PCM, and the conversion of that PCM to analog. The former is best done in the player; the latter in the controller.

Here is the detail:

"...The confusion arises from the term “decode.” Here’s how it works. The film soundtrack starts out as high-res PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) audio and is encoded into, for example, a Dolby TrueHD bitstream for storage on the Blu-ray disc. (I’ll use TrueHD as a stand-in for all the new audio formats.) You can think of this process as creating a Zip file on a PC.

The file must then be “unzipped” on playback; that is, the Dolby TrueHD bitstream must be decoded back into multichannel linear PCM audio for conversion to analog. This decoding can take place in the Blu-ray player or in the controller.

If the decoding to PCM takes place in the player, the controller receives high-res PCM over the HDMI interface. The controller then converts the PCM to analog for listening.

If the decoding of Dolby TrueHD to PCM takes place in the controller, the HDMI interface carries the TrueHD bitstream.

It really makes no difference sonically where the “decoding” takes place—in the player or in the controller. In fact, it may be advantageous to decode in the Blu-ray player rather than the controller because the format has the capability of mixing different audio sources on the fly during playback. An example of this is a director’s commentary posted on a movie studio’s website after the Blu-ray disc has been released; you can watch and listen to the movie from disc as well as hear the director’s commentary streamed from the web. [ED NOYE - this is the BD 2.0 standard only where content can be accessed from the Internet assuming of course that the studio created it.]

There are many other examples of Blu-ray’s interactivity—features that are lost if the TrueHD-to-PCM decoding doesn’t take place in the Blu-ray player.

Not all Blu-ray players can perform this “unzipping” of TrueHD bitstreams to PCM. It requires a fair amount of DSP horsepower, making it an expensive (for now) feature for disc-player manufacturers. I expect, however, that all next-generation players will have this capability.

For a full listing of Blu-ray player features (including whether the player can output decoded PCM), go to www.idoblu.co.uk/page2%20Blu-r... Scroll down the page to see the player features. You’re looking for blue boxes in the True-HD and DTS-MA columns.

Kal, in referring to the Integra 9.8 in his last Music In the Round column, said “All processors have limited DSP capabilities, and the Integra DTC-9.8 cannot use Audyssey EQ with HD sources over 96 kHz”. To me, a critical point that’s never been discussed in this forum or any other forum that I am aware of.

Does this issue go away as you move up the price scale (faster DSP chips, more DSP chips)? Only knowing this would be a good argument for doing all the decoding in the BD player, leaving the prepro with enough capacity to handle the Audyssey equalization at 192kHz.

Would love to see Kal comment on this.

Russ