Hi,
I agree the Analogues should sound better, I currently use the HDMI for SACD not bought the other interconnects yet.
The stereo does go through the Analogue cables.
I use dbpoweramp to rip my CD's, it rips the SACD to 44Khz 24 bit, I am looking for something to rip the SACD layer myself.
Problem is computer CD / DVD drives do not support this, I did hear that the original Playstation could do this as long as it was on the early firmware.