Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions DVD Audio setup

Anyone care to give an overview of the difference in setup for DVD-Audio play via 6 channel analog hookup and digital connection. I'm trying to make it a simple switch when I want to listen to these discs via analog outputs. I think I have it right by simply checking multi track outputs on both the player and the receiver. It certainly sounds different with a little more volume and bass.

Anyone have some directions or answers?

Panasonic DVD-92
Rotel 1056

The digital outs won't put out the high quality audio that the analog jacks will; I think they use different decoding or something. I used to know all of this stuff... grumble...

I just read in the rotel manual that you are correct.
"The existing optical and digital connection standard does not provide sufficient bandwidth for multichannel high sampling rate MLP recordings. Therefore, DVD-A discs with these high-resolution audio soundtracks must be decoded by the DVD player and the resulting analog signals sent to the rotel's multi-input."

It also seems that the Rotel can re-direct bass from all channels and put them through a 100Hz low pass filter, thus creating a summed mono subwoofer output.

Thanks, you gave me the key. I always thought the digital output was the highest quality ....

GL, I'll add a bit more overview. First, the Rotel statement about insufficient bandwidth is pure hogwash. Besides the fact that the optical connection is a digital connection, both optical and coaxial connectors would have no problem with the digital DVD-A output. The problem is that the recording industry fears that the digital output would be used to make unlimited numbers of perfect digital copies if it was made readily available. So, the material using higher sampling rates and/or bits is available only through the analog outputs of the player.

Since receivers generally do their bass management processing in the digital realm, the analog input doesn't allow for this, and none of the lowest bass from the other channels gets sent to the sub unless the player has already done some bass management before it converted digital to analog. Your Rotel has a partial solution in that it can duplicate the bass under 100Hz and send it to the sub simultaneously with the other speakers. This doesn't separate the duties but may be a net plus. It's for you to decide if you prefer to use it.

One last question? Am I stuck with only being able to get a 2 track analog stereo copy of this to transfer to CD? When you stick this DVD Audio in your DVD in your computer I can find no way to rip it as there are no typical CD track lists. Am I missing something here? Anyone tried to rip any tracks in any format from a DVD Audio disc? Just trying to get a "fair use copy" like I can get with any CD.

The reason you can't rip the tracks like you can with a CD is that that the DVD-A isn't a CD. The tracks your computer's DVD player can see are encoded in DTS.

There IS a way around this however. I know of a fantastic program called Audio Hijack that can capture ANY audio from ANY program on your computer. Unfortunately (for some), it is only available for Macs.

My lucky day, I have a Mac Powerbook G4. Thanks, I'll check it out.

sweet.

My understanding was that digital playback was limited to stereo... or maybe that was with SACD and not DVD-A?

SACD is most definetley not limited to stereo, thus the beauty of Multi-channel SACD's, music in 5.1

- D