Do not worry, this shows that reclock is working fine on your system. You have to know that James is not very fond of the bitstreaming option and due to some careless remarks some people now think that it does not work or is in some sense inferior to resampling.
It is, measurably, and perceivably. In some cases less so than others, to the point of being irrelevant (that depends on the user), but that's the cold hard truth.
Here is my take on the pros of bitstreaming:
- no degrading of sound quality due to unnecessary decoding (and even reencoding if reclock is set to ac3-encoding)
True in some cases, if you're using SPDIF, (which Jack Carver was, I know), but not with HDMI. The sound quality hit (if any) would come from the AC-3 re-encoding itself, so I don't get the "due to unnecessary decoding" bit. Also, lossy encoding is more likely to produce artifacts if you're lossy re-encoding an already lossy stream. If you're lossy-encoding a lossless or uncompressed stream such as most blu-rays offer nowadays, it's probably imperceptible. Lossy encoding gets a very undeserved bad rap when actually, when done properly, it's usually transparent (codecs like mp3 can be brought down by so-called "killer samples", but they're not regular music/movie soundtracks, and the listener needs to know what to look for - no "golden ear" nonsense here).
- most if not all receivers have limited bass management/delay/postprocessing capabilities if fed raw pcm instead of the original bitstream (f.e. on my flagship denon model some of the options are still available but do not work anymore)
Is an oft-repeated claim for which I haven't found any evidence, or even reliable anecdotes.
Every time I've asked the person making the claim, either they don't own the receiver they're talking about, or they don't respond back. You're the first one to say you own one, so: which processing options are not available to you, and which model do you have? And how do you arrive from your one receiver, to
most? I have tested at home Harman Kardon (AVR254), Onkyo (606) and Pioneer (VSX-01). I think one can safely assume that other models of the same brands behave similarly.
The only thing I can think of is for legacy DTS, if you have a 7.1 system, my Pioneer won't let you apply DPLIIx, but instead will force DTS-Neo:6 if you wish to expand the surrounds. DTS-HD doesn't apply Neo:6, but automatically duplicates the 5.1 surrounds into the rear-backs, which is worse (this one may vary by receiver, but I suspect it's on DTS's specs). DPLIIx or Neo:6 can be applied to PCM streams, thus giving you
more choice, not less.
The audio in the receiver is decoded to PCM, then the DSP applied. I think the confusion (not in your case, but in others) arises by the fact that multichannel
analog in many cases can't be DSP'ed.
- channel mapping is an issue if some receivers do not decode the stream by themselves
How so? WASAPI exclusive solves this.
- Older receivers with only spdif inputs do not allow for multichannel pcm input, but work happily with the DTS/AC-3 cores of the HD formats
If you already have an HD format then you have an equivalent (to the "core") AC-3 stream from decoding the HD format and re-encoding with ReClock.
on some of the myths of packet drop/repeats:
- if the monitor refresh rate is very close to a multiple of the movie-framerate you will rarely get any drop/repeats. In fact I get none for the duration of a whole movie (except for the obligatory counted one at the start of playback)
Most people don't have the refresh rate close enough that you don't get any during a whole movie. Not even me, and I'm one of the luckier ones. Which card are you using, and did you not pause or skip at all during that test (I'm assuming also that you're using ReClock's counter)?
- while repeats are audible and bad, drops are not. DTS and AC3 were designed to be error resilient in the case of corrupted or dropped packets
- so when using a monitor refresh that favors drops over repeats you will probably not even notice the adjustment happening
"error resilient" doesn't mean "error free". But I agree (and said above) that they are probably unnoticeable most of the time.