Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Technical Questions DVD-Audio connections

My DVD player connects via an optical (TosLink) cable to my receiver and works fine for movies but the only way I can getany sound out of a DVD-A disk is to use 5 standard analog cables cinnected through the " externall in" jacks on the receiver. I'd like to use the Toslink cable for the DVD-A as well. What to do?

Not a whole lot. This is a normal thing; the industry doesn't want the possibility of making totally accurate copies of DVD-As or SACDs, so they've done it by forcing decoding in the player. There may or may not be truth in the fact that the optical digital connection is too low bandwidth for the data coming from DVD-As and SACDs. There are some solutions, such as Firewire, but these remain on high end receivers/players for the time being.

At this point in time, you CAN'T use a toslink connection (i.e. digital connection) for DVD-A or SACD. It's not allowed for security reasons. They're afraid of copying if they allow a digital connection for Hi Rez audio. Maybe some day in the future it will be enabled. But, for the moment, you have to use the 6 analog cables for Hi Rez audio.

I think if you have a Denon DVD player (3910 or higher) with D-Link (Denon's proprietary digital connection), and a Denon receiver with D-Link, you can use a single digital cable for DVD-A only. SACD hasn't yet granted permission for it's use with D-link, but it's supposedly in the works.

In reply to:

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SACD hasn't yet granted permission for it's use with D-link, but it's supposedly in the works.

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And it sure seems like it has been for a long, long, time!

Whaaat, my reply not good enough, Jack?

Hey! When I started mine you hadn't posted yours yet. What am I supposed to do, check back every 30 seconds, while I'm composing my post, to see if somebody else posted?

It's been forever, Mark. At least it's been forever that I've been hearing that permission is just a few weeks away.

6 minutes in between the two. You're a slow typist.

(this is when you get to guilt trip me by saying that you only have one finger...)

No, I've got 10, just like you. But, they're 59 year old fingers (with a 59 year old brain, I might add), which are wracked with rheumatoid arthritis. You're lucky my posts don't look like dmwop dnmfoow nsl nfn[p ]] dnnk nnj ; kwf s m;mdwangg, dkn fwa! So, count your blessings.

Jack - I'll THANK you to stop copying my typing style.

Bob, as Ken and Jack pointed out, the optical or coaxial digital outputs of a player don't output DVD-A material because of copy protection concerns. However, you say that you can't get any sound at all from a DVD-A on the optical output. Besides the actual DVD-A track, all DVD-A discs also include a DD and/or DTS track which will play on any DVD player(since they're the audio formats used for DVD-Video). There should be a setting on your player to play those tracks, which are output from the optical or coaxial digital outputs. It shouldn't be assumed that the DVD-A track is necessarily audibly better than the DD or DTS. For example, see the report of Howard Ferstler of Sensible Sound.