Quote:
Originally Posted by
dreaux 
Are you going analog for Blu-ray viewing? Maybe you can explain to me the advantage of using analog. I did finally go with the 751BD and got it today.
I admit I am somewhat new to the audio part of Blu-ray players but I thought the reason people went to the analog was to pick up a richness that is not found with digital sound. That the 'audiophiles' prefered analog.
Perhaps I misunderstood what all the fuss was about with analog listening.
If HDMI is as rich and pure I will go with that. I heard the 751BD over HDMI and the sound was much deeper and better than on a Denon 2012 I was listening to.
The Cambridge 751BD claims let the 751 do the decoding...its better than most AVR's.
I have a mid range AVR ...a Yamaha AX800. For blu-ray viewing should i go with HDMI or analog audio?
Definitely go analogue. Either way, you are decoding digital data on the disc (BluRay/CD etc) to analogue audio. What you hear will be determined by the quality and nature of this conversion. I think the comparison to analogue audio you're confused with is with that of true analogue source material such as vinyl rather than CD etc which stores audio digitally. A lot of people do prefer this sound but the discussion is not really relevant when we are discussing BluRay etc as this is all-digital media.
The difference between HDMI/analogue on your player is that if you send audio to the receiver by HDMI, the receiver will do the digital to analogue conversion. If you use the analogue outputs, the player (751) does the D-A conversion and sends the analogue audio to the receiver for amplification.
The main features of the the 751 are the Wolfson Digital to Analogue converters and also the Sharc upsampling DSP. The 751 upsamples the data (all channels) prior to D-A conversion.
I am able to do a fairly direct comparison as my receiver - Pioneer SC-LX90 - has the same series of Wolfson DAC's as the 751 and also my 740C cd player. The main difference is that whereas my CD player upsamples the audio to 24bit, 382kHz prior to DA conversion, the amp does not. If I switch between digital and analogue connections with my CD player, the difference is quite significant - it sounds a lot larger with a better soundstage. Bass is also lower and cleaner. Although I havent had much chance to experiment yet, a couple disc spins last night gave me a lot better sound than my current Panasonic BluRay/PVR combo which I have connected just HDMI.
With your AVR, you should have an improvement as the Burr Brown DAC's in the Yamaha arent on the same level as the Wolfsons in the 751. I'm pretty sure the Denon 2012 also has Burr Brown DAC's but as discussed it would depend how it was set up as to whether you were listening to the player's DAC's or the receivers...
Once I've got the 751 set up properly and had chance to do some extended listening I'll report back.
If you werent going analogue (ie just HDMI & letting your receiver decode) you may as well get the 651 as the results would be much the same.
Hope this helps
