i find the variety of audio outputs on the back of my dvd player a little confusing
optical- digital coax - 5.1 or 7.1 and good old rca
which is the best to use and why
i read somewhere 5.1 or 7.1 is the best, but why would that be better than optical i mean with optical we are dealing with the speed of light right

Zest, the optical and coax outputs will work for 5.1 or 7.1 for DVDs. Very simple, one wire for all channels. If you want to listen to multichannel music, such as an SACD or DVD-Audio, then you must use the analog. Unless something has changed over the last year or so, that's the way it is.

Zest,

You have to differentiate between analog and digital outputs. A coaxial digital output uses a single RCA cable. An optical digital output uses a fiber-optic cable. Both are digital and sound identical. Both carry Dolby Digital/dts 5.1, etc. bitstreams as well as standard 2-channel digital CD stereo (PCM).

The digital outputs will generally sound superior to any analog outputs, assuming the D/A converters in your AV receiver are reasonably good quality.

And your DVD player may have a 6-channel analog RCA set for DVD-Audio and/or SACD, which you have to use for these two multichannel formats.

Regards,

I beleive Denon is the only receiver that can use one digital cable for SACD (Denon Link III) at this point in time.

In reply to:

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I beleive Denon is the only receiver that can use one digital cable for SACD (Denon Link III) at this point in time.

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The Pioneer Elite offerings can as well I believe.