[era]

I'm getting a new receiver and it has three ways I can connect my DVD player to it, for surround sound: 1. optical 2. coax (digital) and 3. six RCA jacks for six discrete channels (one for each of the six surround speakers). My DVD player also has all three of these ways to output its sound. Which kind of connection should I use to get the best sound?

 

[rt297]

Coax digital. The analog jacks are best used for DVDA or SACD.

 

[era]

Shoot! I wanted to use the six RCA jacks for six discrete channels with the DVD and reserve the coax for the digital audio out from the cable TV set top box...


Wouldn't the six RCA jacks offer greater bandwidth than the coax connection? Or do the six jacks bypass the Dolby Digital decoder in the receiver or something?

 

[turbobuick86]

Toslink (optical) works well. You're not losing anything if you use it for DVD and save the coax for your cable box.


Terry

 

[rt297]

era,

The 5.1 jacks are analog. Arguably the optical digital cable works as well as the digital coax, but I would get a good one with glass fibers. They are supposedly prone to clocking errors and jitter, although at most levels, I think it's nit picking. That way you could save your digital coax for the set top box if you only have one set of inputs. Frankly any of those combinations will work fine, but your original post was asking what was the BEST connection, and in my opinion it is digital coax.

 

[Blade007]

Yeah, it dosen't really matter what digital input your using, I would bet anyone would find it extremely difficult to hear ANY difference coax vs optical using the same price point cables.


Now, the discreet inputs are for SACD as someone said, and are analog inputs, I'd connect one of the digital inputs AND the discreet RCA's if your DVD player has these.

 

[era]

Thank you for clarifying these things. I know it's way too much to hope that the manual will explain the purpose of the various inputs. The manual will describe which kind of connector (RCA, Coax and so on), but not what or why they do what they do.


Thanks again for clearing this up for me.

 

[Morbius]

Quote:

Originally posted by era Wouldn't the six RCA jacks offer greater bandwidth than the coax connection? Or do the six jacks bypass the Dolby Digital decoder in the receiver or something?

era,


The six jacks will bypass the Dolby decoder in the receiver.


The 6 analog outputs are the outputs of the Dolby decoder in the DVD player. Therefore, if you use the 6 analog jacks -

you are using the DVD player's decoder - not the one in your receiver. The analog signal has already been decoded.


Dr. Gregory Greenman

Physicist

 

[Blade007]

Which you need for DVD Audio playback (the six discreet outputs), you can usually select what output you want in the DVD players menu system.....

 

[THE_COW_IS_OK]

SPDIF digital coax is alway better then optical link. If your passing DTS/AC3 Compressed signal to receiver processor, then any of the 2 would work the same. if its DVD PCM2.0 soundtrack , then I would rather use the DVD Ramdac and use 5 analogue out rather then pass them as PCM 2.0 digital signal and use Receiver RAMDAC. At the price point of sub $1500 receiver, a dedicated RAMDAC on DVD should be better then all pupose all signal ramdac on Receiver(unless u own a $100 DVD player )