2. misc-audio
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What's really happening in my receiver?

Situation:
In the process of evaluating the need/want for an SACD player I ended up listening to three different CD players, one was a standard multi-disk player and the other two were SACD players. The SACD players were/are hooked up analog while the standard player is hooked up with both analog and digital cables.

What I've found is that all three players have a similar sound stage using the analog cables, but the standard one hooked up with the digital cable has a very different soundstage. Obviously, whatever is happening in the receiver in digital vs. analog processing is the major difference.

I have an Integra 50.1 that has been running in Direct Mode for all listening. It seems strange that the D/A converter can be totally responsible for the change considering how similar three other players sound, so what else is going on?

I thought the direct mode was supposed to do as little as possible, but seems to be making a significant change.
mceljo
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
I don't know that one sounds better than the other, probably more different than anything else.

None of the CD/SACD players have HDMI ouputs, I have not tried it with my blu-ray player that is HDMI so not I have an assignment to do. The only digital connection is toslink.

I guess I would have expected the sound of my two Integra D/A converters (i.e. CD player and Receiver) to sound more similar because they are, I believe, both burr-brown and the same model years than the CD player does compared to two others that are of a different brand and vintage.
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
Home work results are in. The HDMI from the blu-ray player sounds nearly identical to the toslink from the CD player, as I expected it would.
rwwear
2,871 posts
 
You won't get hi res Bluray audio over toslink though.
mceljo OP
1,357 posts
 
Agree, HDMI is the only connection from the blu-ray player and the toslink is from the CD player. I believe that the toslink can only support two channels of uncompressed audio.
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