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Analogue for Home Theater???

Has anyone else but me used 5.1 analogue for home theater listening and what are your thoughts and conclusions to your decision of staying or switching back to HDMI digital??? How do you describe both digital vs analogue???

I have been using 5.1 analogue from my Oppo 83SE to my Onkyo Pro Sc885 pre processor and Hdmi for just video only. It is a big difference but I am wondering if a dedicated analogue 5.1 channel system would be more practical or would it not exceed the DTS master audio specs.

I noticed while watching a movie you can still switch the format through the Oppo from Dolby Digital to DTS master audio. The Onkyo will still show "Analogue Direct Multichannel" but you can hear the sound difference when you switch the movie audio format. Is there such piece as a analogue 5.1 processor??? Help anyone....

Regards Bacardi
128x128bacardi
bdgregory
1,710 posts
 
Bacardi, how is the movie soundtrack (which exists on the DVD) converted from its digital form into analogue?
bar81
791 posts
 
There is no such thing as an analog home theater when using digital medium.

DVDs and Blu-Ray (and CDs, SACDs and DVD-A for that matter) are all digital mediums. There has to be a digital to analogue conversion (DA) to be able to hear the soundtrack/dialogue. As has been pointed out above, all you are doing when you are running audio out of the analogue outputs on a player is pushing the DA conversion up so that it happens using the DA Converter (DAC) of the player. Alternatively, when you output the audio over HDMI, SPDIF or Toslink, then you are pushing the DA conversion down into the DAC in the processor.
kr4's avatar
kr4
3,669 posts
 
My last column (September Stereophile) covers my analysis and opinions of the analog-vs-hdmi connection issues.

Kal
magsterone
64 posts
 
Hi Kal,

I am obviously blind as I cannot find the article. Can you point the way for me?

Joe in Mobile
cappuccino
122 posts
 
I have a Theta Digital Compli Blu player and a Cary Cinema 11a HD surround processor. Playing music this system sounds best when I connect the player to the processor with analog interconnects (The Cinema 11a has very good analog multichannel preamp section). But for movies I always prefer going digital. I believe there is a difference in decoding music and movies (Dolby, DTS).
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