Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions DVD-A Playing trouble

Hey, I've been wondering, what shows up on your receiver when playing a DVD-Audio disc? I have found that on the only DVD-A disk I have, I can only play on the Dolby Digital side, not the DVD-A side. PCM lights up on the reciever and I only get stereo.

What should I do?

Dan, to get the hi-res DVD-A, you need to have the 6 analogue cables connected from the player to your receiver, and on most receivers, choose the 6-ch input. Have you done this? If PCM is showing, you are still listening to the digital out on the player - not the analogue.

Ohh, okay.

I knew digital could only carry 2 channels of audio, so I was wondering how in the world DVD-A could manage to do it over SPDIF digitally and uncompressed. I'm thankful it wasn't something with the software on my computer.

Thanks for clarifying that.

Since I have a computer, for me to do that, I would have to buy 3 1/8 to RCA adapters (to split the 3 outputs for front, rear, center/sub) and 6 RCA cables just to do DVD-A. Then I'd have to move my SPDIF line to my motherboard SPDIF out. Then I'd have to switch the mode on my software every time for a DVD-A disk. For just one DVD-A disk I have, doesn't seem worth it.

Do most DVD-A disks also have a dolby digital side or selection?

In reply to:

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I knew digital could only carry 2 channels of audio

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Actually, it can carry the information for 7 channels (6.1), but not in "hi-res". Since I don't have a DVD-A player, when I put my one and only DVD-A disc into my standard DVD player, I have the choice to listen in PCM stereo, DD5.1, or DTS5.1.

Until I can afford a new player, my favorite is DTS. Amazing sound quality and discrete channel separation. Huge improvement over the Red Book version of the same disc.

You should be able to do the same thing with your computer set up. Choose DTS on the disc set up menu (if your disc has it encoded) / SPDIF out from computer to receiver / DTS setting on the receiver. Voila, surround!!

Yea, SPDIF I have heard can either send a bitstream of DTS or DD data to be decoded by the reciever, or two separate purely digital stereo channels.

Yea, my soundcard right now is set up for digital out with SPDIF set on my DVD playback software.

If I were to go the multi channel route, I would have to switch the DVD software to tell it to use 6 channel rather than SPDIF.

SPDIF is fine just for now .