Video Asylum

Posted by David Aiken (A) on October 07, 2010 at 23:48:32

In Reply to: RE: Can an AV receiver be used for 2 channel and... posted by HiOnFi on October 07, 2010 at 14:37:12

HDMI is a cable connection and I think it works reasonably well. It carries a digital signal which needs to be converted to analog at some point. The quality of the conversion depends on the quality of the DAC you use to do the conversion. You either need to use the receiver's DACs to convert that to analog or find a DAC that accepts HDMI, feed the Oppo's signal to that via HDMI, and then feed the DAC's output to the receiver via analog i/c. Alternatively, as jbufka2 said, you can use the Oppo's analog outputs and feed that to the receiver. I suspect there will be some differences depending on which of those ways you go. Which way is best is likely to depend on the quality of the different DACs involved with each of those approaches.

If you're setting up a 2 channel HT system and you're going to be feeding video as well as audio from the Oppo to the AVR, and if you have any other source components which also have HDMI outputs, and your AVR has enough HDMI inputs, then HDMI is definitely a good way to go because it simplifies your cabling arrangements immensely, even if it doesn't necessarily give the best sound quality. There are times when simplicity and convenience can be worth the cost.

Even if you're only using one source, the Oppo, and you're feeding video through the AVR as well as audio, if your AVR has some setup and/or EQ functions that you're going to use and those functions are handled in the digital domain, I'd probably prefer to go with HDMI for the sake of cabling simplicity. I'd prefer not to feed an analog audio signal to the AVR, have it redigitise the analog signal in order to do the EQ and/or whatever other functions it's going to do in the digital domain, and then convert the signal back to analog. My preference if you're going to be doing some digital processing in the AVR would be to keep the signal digital from Oppo to receiver and only do a D/A conversion after the processing.

There's no "wrong" way here but there are a variety of options, each of which has different strengths and weaknesses. You need to work out what you're doing, what things are important to you in how you do what you want to do, and then run with the option that's best for achieving that outcome.



David Aiken