which component's dac's do what?

[burtlively]

when you hook up a universal player to a av preamp/receiver, which component's dac's are utilized with:

digital outs (coax/optical)

2 channel analog

6 channel analog (dvd/a)

i have heard differing stories regarding this. so someone please set the record straight. the reason i ask is because i am considering getting the zenith 318 to do video, but i know the dac's in my ref 50 are better. so i want to utilize the b&k for audio. likewise i have a denon 5900 on backorder. i believe the dac's in the denon are superior to my ref 50. so i want to use the denon's dac's in that case. i'm sure this is as clear as mud. thanks in advance for your response.

[meuge]

I believe that if you use digital outs, you use the DACs in the receiver, while if you use analog outs you use the DACs in the device. Hence I guess would be the logic in getting higher quality SACD/DVD-A components, since it's their DACs that are doing the job. This makes sense to me, but I could be wrong.

In any case, DACs don't really cost much anyway, even the highest quality ones are only a few $$, so I am not sure if the price of the player really reflects the relative quality of DACs, at least not in a linear fashion.

[jhawk92]

Burt-

They way I understand it, if you use digital outs, either coax or optical, you are bypassing the internal DACs and using the receiver's. Analog out, either 2-ch or 6-ch, use the DVD player's DACs. But, there are folks who are much more knowledgable about this than I am.

I am also thinking about the 5900 to replace my Denon DVD-2500, which is still a great machine, but is getting a bit long in the tooth. It does not have DD/DTS decoders on board, so I use digital coax to run the signals to my AVR-4800 and let it do the decoding.

The digital-only connections like Denon Link and iLink are supposedly used for passing multi-channel audio (DVD-A and SACD) straight from the DVD to the receiver, again, bypassing the internal DACs. This trend, to me, seems to show that internal DACs are not as useful, since people would let their receiver or pre/pro do all the work. On the flip side, because you send the signal still in digital form from the DVD to the receiver, you get rid of a D/A conversion, which may help with sonic quality. I've not experienced this first hand, so I can't comment there.

But, running a single cable between DVD and receiver is sure a nice idea and can help thin out that tangled mess of wires behind the components. Anyone else feel free to chime in and correct me.

[Ray Garrison]

Any analog output, 2 or 6 channel, from your DVD-A / SACD / DVD / CD player will be using the player's internal DAC.

Any digital output from your player will not be using the player's internal DAC. Digital output from your player that is presented to the receiver's DAC may or may not be the same digital signal that would otherwise be presented to the player's internal DAC. In most cases, the digital data from a CD that is transmitted to the outside world is the same digital data that is internally converted by the player's DAC, so the choice of which DAC to use is pretty simple - whichever is better, player or receiver. However, with DVD-A in particular, it is quite common that the digital signal transmitted from the digital output of the player has been "dumbed down" to a lower resolution / lower sampling rate than the internal digital signal. (General industry paranoia about copyright management and pirating.) Thus it is not simply a question of whose DACs are better, because the player's DACs might be getting a higher resolution digital data stream than the receiver's DACs.

As to SACD, there is not SACD digital output available except in a few limited cases where a manufacturer provides a proprietary communications link between their own player and receiver.

To further complicatify things, many receivers digitize the signal coming from their analog inputs and then re-convert them back to analog (though I don't believe any do this to the 6 channel inputs). This is because they use digital signal processing for things like bass and treble adjustment, bass management, balance, and because any surround processing or other DSP must be done in the digital environment. So it is possible that you could spend big bucks on a player reputed to have exceptional DACs, but then find that your receiver is negating that benefit because the damn thing is re-digitizing the input coming from your player and then using it's own DACs after fiddling with the signal.

[burtlively]

thank you all. i am crystal clear on this now!