Rear speakers silent, side speakers playing rear/side channels on PS3 Bluray/Onkyo Receiver

[Kythlyn]

Edit: So, I tried hooking my PS4 up to the same receiver, and it worked perfectly in 7.1. That led me that this is a PS3 specific issue, and that the Onkyo is working properly. I did a little further digging and found the answer on another forum... apparently the PS3 can't handle True HD Audio and a 3D Blu-ray at the same time. I tried the 2D version of the same movie on my PS3, and got all 7.1 channels. It's just the 3D Blu-ray that has the problem. Apparently this is a hardware limitation on PS3 that Sony never managed to overcome with software. In any case, I don't think there's anything you guys can do to help me, but thanks anyway!

Hi all,

I'm trying to set up a 7.1 system on my PlayStation 3. The receiver I am using is an Onkyo HT-RC360. With nothing else plugged into it except the speakers, I was able to confirm all 7.1 channels were working and adjust the levels. When I plugged in my PS3 and tried out a blu-ray, I noticed the back channels seemed silent, even though the receiver was indicating 7.1 channels.

I put in the 3D Finding Nemo blu-ray since it has a great tool for testing all 8 channels out one by one. I discovered that 5.1 channels were playing correctly, but the rear speakers were silent. Turns out the side speakers were playing both the side channels AND the rear channels. It seems no matter how I configure the PS3 and the Onkyo, this problem persists.

Anyone been through this? Any suggestions?

Could the HDMI wire from the PS3 to the receiver be the culprit? Do all HDMI wires support 7.1 or is it possible I need a newer wire? That's my only theory at this point, so I'm looking for some new ideas.

Things I've tried:
Toggling Linear PCM / Bitstream on the PS3
Disabling all of the audio options on the PS3 except for 7.1
Toggling through the various listening modes on the receiver (Direct, Multich, etc.)

Thanks all!

 

[Aikouka]

Edit: So, I tried hooking my PS4 up to the same receiver, and it worked perfectly in 7.1. That led me that this is a PS3 specific issue, and that the Onkyo is working properly. I did a little further digging and found the answer on another forum... apparently the PS3 can't handle True HD Audio and a 3D Blu-ray at the same time. I tried the 2D version of the same movie on my PS3, and got all 7.1 channels. It's just the 3D Blu-ray that has the problem. Apparently this is a hardware limitation on PS3 that Sony never managed to overcome with software. In any case, I don't think there's anything you guys can do to help me, but thanks anyway!

I wonder if it comes from how Sony implemented 3D? If I remember correctly, the PS3 did not originally support 3D Blu-rays. (To be fair, there probably weren't any when the PS3 came out.) I did a bit of digging, and it looks like my memory hasn't failed me too much. Sony had to "upgrade the HDMI version" in the PS3 to support 3D Blu-rays. My guess is that their update was actually adapting their hardware to work with the new features, but they might not have been able to affect the actual bandwidth available. 3D requires a smidge over 2x the visual data per packet (there's the two frames + a 20 pixel bar in between), which means they might have had to limit the audio to fit all the visual data.