Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on July 08, 2007 at 14:57:36

In Reply to: RE: What will I gain by using a 5.1 Analog connection? posted by mitch4t on July 08, 2007 at 02:38:29

As far as digital vs analog interconnect cables go, you can argue about which is going to be a more interference free connection, less likely to be affected by things like RFI, proximity to power cords and the like. A significant part of the answer will depend on cable quality. Good analog will probably beat bad digital and good digital will probably beat bad analog. There's a bit of "you pay your money and you take your choice' here.

More important are the following 2 factors:

• which has the best decoding and digital to analog conversion for standard def sound, your pre-pro or your Toshiba player? I'd expect best results from the device that does that best and if it's the pre-pro then you should get better results with the digital connection.

• a second issue is how the pre-pro processes analog inputs. If it does any sound processing in the digital domain, then it will probably convert analog inputs to digital and then back again after processing. If that's the case you're probably better off feeding it a digital signal and avoiding the digital to analog conversion in the player and the analog to digital conversion in the pre-pro.

I suspect my preference, provided both the player and pre-pro do a good job on the d to a conversion, is to leave the signal in the digital domain for as long as possible so I'd opt for the digital connection. That also offers the convenience of a single cable connection for audio instead of 6, and that keeps the back of the system a lot tidier, makes it easier to avoid cable placement that can result in interference being picked up, and makes it a lot easier to do cable tracing when something goes wrong. Simplicity has some virtues all of its own.

Finally, regardless of which approach measures best, you may still have a preference for the sound of the other approach. The best way to decide which gives the best sound, taking particular cable choices into account, is always going to be to compare both.


David Aiken