Blu Ray Player with older receiver

[admin_exported]

I have a 4 year old Denon AVR 3805 receiver and Denon 3910 DVD player.

I am considering purchasing a Blu Ray Player and would like (for the moment) to retain the receiver. The Blu Ray player will obviously need to decode the HD audio, but how should I connect the player and receiver to get the best sound: with 5.1 analogue interconnects, a digital coaxial or a digital optical lead?

How will the DVD performance on, say, the Panasonic 55 compare with the 3910 fed through to the TV via HDMI?

 

[professorhat]

So long as you get one which can decode all formats onboard, you'll want to use the 5.1 analogue outputs to get the HD audio soundtracks.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks, that is what I had understood from a similar letter in this month's magazine. An assistant in Richer Sounds led me to believe I would be able to use an optical cable just as well. This is obviously the cheaper route, rather than buying 3 set of analogue interconnects.

Any comments on the DVD performance? Obviously, technology and processing power have moved on a pace in four years, so I would expect the Blu Ray to give a better performance but would like confirmation.

 

[professorhat]

Richer Sounds man is wrong (tut) as optical doesn't have the bandwidth to carry the HD audio signals.

Can't comment on your DVD player as I haven't seen it in action I'm afraid.

 

[d4v3pum4]

I have the same AV Receiver as you and use multi-channel analogues from my HDDVD player for HD audio. It sounds fantastic. I use bluejeanscables m/chan cables (mark grant cables also use the same components to hand make his cables). I would demo the SD performance of the BD55 before ditching your Denon 3910. However, since moving over to HD DVD/Bluray, I can't seem to watch SD DVD anymore other than TV boxsets

. I'm toying with the idea of an amp upgrade at some point but I'm more than happy with the 3805. I've got my eye on the Marantz SR6003, Denon 2809 and Yamaha 863SE/1900 etc. etc. Marantz is current fave as I want to downsize and it has twin hdmi out and apparently sounds pretty good with music.

 

[Anonymous]

I use this method with my setup. It's broadly excellent, but it does throw up some anomalies depending how the disc audio is mastered. On my amp, using the 5.1 disables any processing so I can't use any of the fancy schmancy DSPs that Yamaha like so much. I can't make the surround image any wider and stereo soundtracks can sound weird (eg Zulu) when the two channels are pushed through each of the 5.1 speakers.

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Prof,

I have a simlar issue so does using a coax cable have the same issues as using an optical cable, ie it doesn't have enough bandwidth for an hd audio signal?

In that case I will need to pick up the compoent leads too.

Rgds

Shayn

 

[Anonymous]

Very odd posts here.

The coaxial and optical cables will only support Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1 (ie the old surround formats designed for DVDs) they will also support 2 channel PCM ie CDs. That's it. That's what they were designed for and I always found coaxial to be vastly supperior to optical in my experience.

If you try to use a BluRay player connected to an old amp, you need to let the BluRay player do all the decoding to analogue and then use the 5.1 or 7.1 analogue outputs to send the audio to the amps 5.1 or 7.1 analogue inputs. We're no longer in the digital domain here.

If you insist on using a digital connector the BD player will downgrade the signal to old fashioned DD 5.1 if it can. You will not be receiving HD sound. The only way to get HD sound out of an older AV amp is to let the BD player do the decoding and send an analogue signal to the amps analogue inputs using either 6 or 8 seperate phono cables. (Multichannel in / out).

I hope this helps.

 

[nads]

shayn:

Hi Prof,

I have a simlar issue so does using a coax cable have the same issues as using an optical cable, ie it doesn't have enough bandwidth for an hd audio signal?

In that case I will need to pick up the compoent leads too.

Rgds

Shayn
correct both coax and optical do not have the band width.

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks very much for your help, appreciated.