[gtleonard]

I took the plunge in purchasing my first HD A/V piece of equipment with a Panasonic 42PZ80U, but I'm wondering if I can get by with my current 5.1 system or if I need to upgrade my receiver sooner rather than later to enjoy 5.1 sound from HD broadcasts. For now I am running a HDMI cable directly from the cable box to the HDTV to get the meager stero sound from the tv's speakers, but it would be nice to enjoy a broadcast movie or game in 5.1!


My receiver is a Sony GA7ES and only accepts RCA inputs and does not have a built-in digital decoder. I have always run the video directly to my tv and I've gotten by since my DVD player has DTS and DD decoders so I run that sound directly from the 5.1 out on the DVD to the 5.1 in of the receiver. I also have a Sony EP9ES Dolby Digital decoder that I got way back when, but have never used. Would that be all I need to convert HD audio, or is that piece too archaic too?


Or, if I use the L/R audio outputs directly from the cable box would those be analog and I could at least use Pro Logic to get sound out of all five of my speakers even if it isn't true 5.1?


I was going to play around with the set up, but any advice I can get would help save time and possibly $ since I would need to buy the extra cables to experiment! If it is not going to be worth it I'd rather put the $ towards a new receiver than the cables! Thanks!

 

[whoaru99]

If you could live without DTS, you could connect the Sony decoder to the 5.1 inputs of the receiver and then connect the DVD player and cable box to the decoder via digital.


This would get you true 5.1 DD from the DVD player and cable box (when DD 5.1 is present).


Cables shouldn't be a big expense. Sounds like you already have enough RCAs to connect the decoder to the recevier, then all you need are a couple of optical or coaxial cables for the digital connections. That's much cheaper than a new receiver, but OTOH, an Onkyo TX-SR606 seems to be pretty decent bang for the buck (although you'd still need cables for your digital connections).

 

[BIslander]

If your Sony DD decoder has 5.1 analog outputs and two digital inputs, you could run your DVD player and cable box through it. You'd lose DTS from the DVD player that way. But, that's no big deal as I think DD sounds as good as DTS on home video releases.


Using the stereo output from the cable box may also be a good option. Does your receiver have ProLogicII? PLII does a decent job of creating an anchored center channel and filling the surrounds. I don't whether ProLogic can do that unless the source is encoded as Dolby Surround. At any rate, matrix processing works well for TV because most shows don't make good use of the surrounds.

 

[gtleonard]

Thanks for the feedback. It's been so long since I bought the AC-3 receiver and I haven't kept up on the differences in the later sound formats so I wasn't sure if just having a DD decdoder meant that the digital sound would just be decoded in a different way than the source intended or not at all!


I spent $72 on one 6' digital optical, one premium 6' L/R RCA and a set of 3' "cheap" RCA cables for the extra 5.1 connection. I'll go look at monoprice to find cheaper cords and also try to watch some football today with the other set-ups and cords I have now to see how Pro Logic or DD sound to me!


If I use the DD decoder to process the 5.1 material, do I need to turn off the decoder of the DVD player? My options are to hook up the via digital optical (the EP9ES has 4 digital optical hookups) or to use the decoders 5.1 bypass inputs (which I guess would allow me to continue using the DVD's DTS decoder). It sounds like if there isn't a huge difference in how things sound in DD vs. DTS it doesn't really matter, but is there a hookup method you would prefer? Thanks for the help!!

 

[BIslander]

I'd suggest running both devices into the decoder.

 

[gtleonard]

Just running the L/R RCA from the cable box to the Pro Logic receiver worked to at least give all five of my speakers a workout and provided decent sound (better than the tv's built in speakers at least). I still want to give my digital decoder a try. For the DVD player should I send the sound using an optical digital output or use the 5.1 bypass? Would the sound output from the DVD via digital optical be decoded by the DVD's DTS/DD decoder or not? Thanks!

 

[BIslander]



Quote:
Originally Posted by gtleonard /forum/post/15401549


Just running the L/R RCA from the cable box to the Pro Logic receiver worked to at least give all five of my speakers a workout and provided decent sound (better than the tv's built in speakers at least). I still want to give my digital decoder a try. For the DVD player should I send the sound using an optical digital output or use the 5.1 bypass? Would the sound output from the DVD via digital optical be decoded by the DVD's DTS/DD decoder or not? Thanks!

Cable box --- optical --> Decoder

.................... ............. Decoder -- 6 analog cables --> receiver

DVD player -- optical --> Decoder

 

[arnyk]

If your surround receiver has only one optical input, there are such things as optical input switchers, that allow you to feed multiple optical outputs through one optical inputs. http://www.cablesondemand.com/produc...TOSLPROTSW.htm