Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions play SACD in zone 2 with Oppo

I have the Oppo BDP 83 and it will play SACD's just fine. However, my Onkyo 805 will only accept analog signals for zone 2. I have an HDMI out of the Oppo to the DVD in on the Onkyo for my theater and an RCA out to the CD in on the Onkyo if I want to use it in zone 2. I've played cd's just fine in zone 2 just using the CD input on the Onkyo just fine. It seems that the Oppo will send a signal out of all of the cables you have hooked up and so you don't have to mess with any settings. But, when I tried to do this with a SACD it didn't work. I went into the Oppo settings and turned off the HDMI audio out, and even set the player to just play the CD layer rather than the SACD layer and nothing in zone 2, even though in the theater it is just sending a stereo signal over rca. In the theater it plays fine no matter what setting I have, or if I am using the CD or DVD input. Does anyone have any ideas of how I can play the high resolution SACD layer in zone 2?

Have you tried just using the R+L outs on the 5+1 analog outs on the Oppo? You're pretty much guaranteed for it to play with those, although you might have to hook up both in order to get movies, too.

What Ken said. I think that's your only option. I don't think the Oppo will output multichannel audio over the stereo outputs, and I know the 805 won't output a digital signal to Zone2.

Okay, this is something easy to try. I have the stereo audio out right now (http://download.oppodigital.com/BDP83/BDP-83_English_Manual.pdf page 12), but maybe the left and right channel of 5.1 out will work. I was also thinking that maybe there is a way of downmixing to stereo. This will give me two things to try.

I wish that I had an Oppo unit to try this, but that isn't the case.

I'd be tempted to set the SACD Priority (see item 6 on page 54) to Stereo, and run the Stereo Audio Outputs (item 2 on page 12) to the receiver. Then you won't need to fuss with it, unless you want the multi-channel tracks, which won't be a problem then as you'd be in the same room (I think), and it would be easy for you to make the necessary switch.

Generally speaking, stereo tracks on a SACD disc are still hi-rez.

"A stereo SACD recording can stream data at an uncompressed rate of 5.6 Mbit/s, four times the rate for Red Book CD stereo audio." - Wikipedia

Okay, so I figured out the problem: my 10 month old daughter. She loves to go up to the receiver and open the hidden door and if we don't catch her in time start randomly pushing buttons. It seems that she was able to turn off zone 2 (she must of pushed several buttons to go deep into the settings menu to do this) and so nothing was working in zone 2. I didn't think that there was a problem with zone 2 not being turned on since the day before I used it throughout the day. I guess that I am happy that she is so young and interested in home theater gear. It is good to start them off young.

Anyways, having the stereo audio outputs of the Oppo connected to the cd input of the Onkyo, via rca cables, is the right way to do it. I just had to change a setting in the Oppo player so that it is outputting stereo and not multichannel from the SACD and I am now able to get the high resolution audio in zone 2.

HA! Well, that will take care of it.