which sounds better blu-ray drive on PC or external blu ray player?

A Blu-ray 'player' is a blu-ray drive with something to run it.

A PC with a blu-ray drive is therefore far superior, as there is a whole computer providing processing power for display and sound.

Go for a high speed Blu-ray drive and you will be fine - SATA 3.0 transfers at 6 gbps, so unless you are planning on listening to your whole collection at once in a split second, the data transfer will be fine.

Hi iam1simpleguy,

I'll take a different approach:

I would argue that a dedicated Blu-Ray player is better, as long as you get a decent one with sufficient capabilities.  This is especially true if you're planning to use an AVR via HDMI for sound processing.  For one, unless you have a completely silent/fanless HTPC and BD Drive (and I'm sure a high speed drive is even louder), then you'll have a noticeably higher noise floor to contend with while listening to music or watching movies.  Dedicated players, on the other hand, should be essentially silent at all times of operation.  Also, dedicated players are just that--dedicated.  You don't have to worry about all of the possible problems a computer introduces to the process--video not playing right via HDMI due to encryption, etc.  You just pop in a disc and you're good to go.  Ohh, and one more thing. . .  In order to take full advantage of BD features on the computer, you'll most likely need a capable sound card, such as the Xonar HDAV1.3, which further adds to the expense.

Hope this helps.

Best,

Brent

I'm going to accept that Brentatent is right. Listen to him :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by iam1simpleguy 

thx for your replies guys...i been waiting for someone to help.

 

I have Xonar d2x right now.. aint it sufficient?

 

And as u guys saying Blu ray player might make noise then i would say my 6950 CF gpu's already very noisy and moreover i enjoy watching movies on high volume.

 

I be watching movies on my PC LCD and goin to use Onkyo HTr390 .

 

As i mentioned earlier my only priority is SOUND..which ever gives better sound i will go for that.I dont care if blu ray players help me write data and nor im interested if Blu ray external player is beneficial in watching movies in TV also.Though i wanted to buy blu ray drive but my only doubt is that its sound might now be as good as blu ray player.So if u guys can confirm about the sound quality then that would really help me taking decision..

Sound quality is mainly determined by whatever is decoding the sound, either your home theater receiver or your sound card.  If you are sending a digital signal, such as optical or coax, the bits are going to be basically the same no matter what device is sending them.  Generally optical will have the best sound quality, because it isolates the receiver electrically from the source and therefore gets rid of any hum from the source end at least.

So, if you use a high quality receiver to drive your speakers, the best sound quality is going to be a standalone Bluray player with an optical cable.  Though a computer with an optical output, and playback software that can send optical surround sound, will have the exact same sound quality.  Same bits, same cable type, same decoder, same DAC, same amplifier, same speakers.  No difference.