Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Analog/Digital sound

For surround sound you pretty much need a digital connection -- either digital over coax or digital over optical -- so running optical from player to receiver makes a lot of sense.

Zone 2, on the other hand, is stereo by definition, so whether you run digital or analog doesn't make so much difference. The suggestions to run two cables from your DirecTV box -- digital for zone one, and analog for zone 2 -- seems like the right answer.

Sound quality isn't so simple -- a digital connection lets you carry the information "unadulterated" over to the next component in line, which hopefully can do a better job of converting digital to analog. Given what we typically spend on receiver vs. DVD player, for example, having the receiver do the D/A conversion is usually a Good Thing, but for zone 2 you're not going to be missing much.