PCM and bitstream are two industry standards for sending audio from the player or transmitter to the receiver or speaker. Let’s discuss everything in great detail and settle the bitstream vs. PCM debate for good.
PCM refers to an algorithm that devices use to represent analog waves. This technology has been around for more than 100 years and remains the standard for transmitting audio streams.
A bitstream is a binary sequence (also known as 1's and 0's) that is used to convert audio input into digital bits. It's the foundation for PCM and other high-resolution audio transmissions, but that doesn't make it obsolete.
As a result of this setup, the player does all the work, providing you with untethered access to secondary audio, which is responsible for descriptive audio, audio commentaries, and supplementary audio tracks.
The first thing that will happen is that the player bypasses all of its internal DTS and Dolby decoders. The player will simply transmit digital signals to your receiver, which will be responsible for decoding and converting it.
PCM and bitstream may seem very different in terms of the formats that they can produce, but both of these two configurations are capable of delivering high-quality audio.