Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater OK I'm Confused

I just picked up a Toshiba 2800 DVD player to replace my ancient CD player. I have a Denon 1802 and I thought I knew what I had to do to set it up. I wanted the Denon to do the DVD sound decoding, and I figured the DAC in the Toshiba would play CDs and MP3s as the Denon can't decode MP3. I ran the digital coaxial into the digital DVD input on the Denon, and I also ran 2 cables to the CD inputs to take care of the analog signals from CD and MP3s. I set the Toshiba to output bitstream and let it play. Everything worked fine from the get go. The thing is, just for sport I played an MP3 and set the Denon to the DVD input, I thought that I would hear static or nothing at all, but got music. Huh? I thought that if the Toshiba outputted a bitstream signal through the digital out then all decoding would be done by the DAC in the Denon. The Denon can't handle MP3. How come I got music. I even disconnected the analog cables to make sure. I still got music. What the heck?

This may not be much help but I have learned just because something states it cannot decode MP3's does not mean it connot decode. For example I used to have a Sanyo dvd player (replaced now by the XBOX)and it did not say anywhere on the unit it could decode MP3's but I put an MP3 encoded disc in and sure enough it worked.

Your DVD player is decoding the MP3's, and sending the audio stream as PCM to the receiver, which doesn't need decoding. PCM is an uncompressed digital encoding of 2-channel audio that can be played by pretty much anything with a digital input.

In the case of DD/DTS, the DVD player does not decode the bitstream, so the receiver has to.

The cd player still ultimately reads the music format on your cd to create a digital signal. That signal is then sent to either the receiver or cd DAC (digital to analog converter) to make the digital signal into analog for playback on your speakers. The digital-analog conversion process has little to do with the fact that the music may have originated as an mp3 although the quality/amount of info contained in that digital bitstream will vary depending on the recorded format.

However, special encoding, such as the DTS surround info on a DVD movie, would be embedded in that digital stream from a dvd player and the DSP (digital signal processor: specialized integrated circuit which manages the processing of specialized signals such as those coming from compressed video) would have to process that info for proper surround playback (hence why dvd movies are best handled by the receiver DAC-DSP which typically has all the digital surround formats compared to a dvd player DSP which is usually more limited.

here is a link to some info (although a bit technical in places).

I agree with JohnK

your toshiba decodes it, then sends a 2 channel digital stream that the Denon DAC is decoding and playing.

Good call, JohnK!