PS3 and Linear PCM

Okay, sorry I have to do this, but I am posting another PS3 thread. The PS3 can be somewhat of a pain, but hey, at least it makes a good Blu Ray player.

Anyway, the current problem I'm having is that I can't get my PS3 to output Linear PCM sound out of the HDMI cable on certain games. The manual says that if you select only the default audio formats (which are both stereo and Linear PCM) then the PS3 will convert all audio to those formats. However, when I try to play certain games, like Time Crisis 4 or Sega Rally Revo, it only outputs Dolby Digital (if I have it enabled). If I don't enable Dolby Digital, it outputs nothing at all.

This wouldn't be a problem except that the device I'm using for sound only accepts Linear PCM; it won't accept any sort of bitstream such as Dolby Digital or DTS. I've tried messing around with every option regarding sound that I could find and nothing seemed to help. Any ideas?

 

What model have you got?

 

It's a 120GB PS3 Slim, but I figured out how to fix it. You have to enable 5.1 Linear PCM, 44.1 and 48khz. I think you probably lose some channels when you do it that way (on my setup, anyway), therefore I plan to enable this option only when I'm playing those games that won't work otherwise.

 

Glad you found a solution so quickly.

I always advise folks to go with THX/DTS/Dolby capable amps so it's nice to know what you did there

 

Missed this but Linear PCM only works via 5.1 and 2 channel options for a lot of things. A DTS amplifier is recommended...

 

For anyone who's curious, what I'm using is a Gefen Digital to Analog Audio converter and some PC speakers (Klipsch/THX Promedia 2.1). The reason I'm doing this is because A. I don't want a huge amplifier in my dorm at school, B. the only audio output on my TV is optical (toslink), and C. I don't want to have to use a switch for my audio devices - I want to be able to just switch to the video input and the audio will go along with it. The Gefen device facilitates all of this, except for the above issue which is now resolved.

Jamtex: I'm pretty sure the PS3 will automatically convert DTS to Linear PCM, but I'll check.

 

You're trying to get multichannel PCM over OPTICAL? You'll only get two channels that way.

 

I know, but it's better than nothing. Besides, like I said, I'm only going to enable it for the games that won't output any sound whatsoever otherwise.