Digital vs. Analog Audio

[AZNracerx1989]

Should I hook up a regular analog sound cable from my dvd player to my receiver or a digital cable? Are there any sound differences? Analog uses 2 rca's while digital only uses 1.

[Zen Traveler]

For 2 channel/multi channel music I use the analog connections. For Dolby Digital and DTS I use the optical. I think the difference depends on what DAC's you have in your DVD player vs. AVR insofar as if there will be a difference on Music sources.

[Guest " "]

Try both see which you prefer.

in most case, since there is a minimal difference in the quality of a cheap 10 dollar ditigtal cable and an expensive 100 dollar ditigal cable vs the significant difference a cheap 10 dollar audio cable and a 100 dollar audio cable, for 10 bucks, there is more bang for th buck if you use a ditigal cable. Exceptions being if you have an inexpensive receiver that used a crude ditigal processor, then this is where you will have to decide after listening tests.

[TheEAR]

The answer lies in the quality of the DAC's in the DVD player and the receiver's.

Listen to both configs and decide. For music I always use the integrated DAC's in my high end CD/SACD players and for HT still high quality DAC in pre pro.

[DrWho]

To get discrete surround sound, you must use the digital connection.

[Zen Traveler]

To get discrete surround sound, you must use the digital connection.

Really? [:^)]

[JetJockey]

I am running an HK DVD22 through a Yamaha RX-V2500 receiver. For CD's or 2 channel the analog out using the DVD players dacs sounds like night and day from digital toslink. This one simple change that I only discovered a week ago make my RF83 sound like they are supposed to, utterly fantastic! For DVD's you have to use either toslink or coax digital, either is as good as the other. When you have both types of wiring hooked up, put on your fav CD and switch back and forth from DVD to CD inputs on your remote and it will be quite evident which sounds better. If you have a decent DVD player, my guess is it will sound better through analog. let us know the results. Below is from another thread in more detail.

Thanks for the input everyone. My HK DVD22 is supposed to have a good set of Wolfsen Dacs in it, from what I have read anyway. To me some CDs sounded good but something was missing, rich full sounding sound (mids) and sometimes very screechy at the high end. I finally decided to change the wiring between the DVD and receiver as a test. I hooked up a pair of RCA audio cables from the analog out on the DVD player into the CD in on the receiver, after realising that CD players output analog signals. The toslink connection was sending a digital signal to the receiver which then had to do the decode to analog or something like that, LOL.

Anyway, the results were simply astounding. This is no placebo effect or psycho want it to sound better, even my wife could hear the difference! The whole sound reproduction is completely different, so full sounding and rich, nice mids, good bass extention and those nasty ear fatiging screechy highs have dissapeared.

Maybe you audiofile types have been doing this forever or maybe I am just dumb but I consider myself to be alittle bit savy with this stuff but it never donned on me before to try this analog out thing. If you are configured as I was and I suspect a whole pile of you are, try it out, it takes two secs and for me is just amazing at the difference in sound quality. Maybe some receivers handle the decode better but my yamaha did not seem to do a very good job, however to be fair it is excellent with digital soundtracks.

Hope you have good results and would love some feedback on my "test".

[Cal Blacksmith]

To get discrete surround sound, you must use the digital connection.

Really? [:^)]

Sorry, yep!

The two analog outputs are for Left and Right only. If you

try to use these for surround sound in a HT you are using the DSP processors in

the receiver to SIMULATE surround sound. The Digital out, sends all channels to

the receiver and the receiver then decodes it into discrete channels. If the

DVD player has a built in 5.1 (for the most part) processor on board, you will

have 6 RCA jacks (one for each channel) on the back of the DVD player. These

are used for SACD playback and possibly 5.1 surround playback on DVDs as well.

[Islander]

With my system, with a DVD/CD player, I have both the analog and the digital coax cables connected. For surround, digital is required, but for stereo, either is good.

When playing CDs, I sometimes switch between DVD input (digital coax) and CD input (analog RCA) to see which sounds better. The difference is noticeable, but neither one is better all the time. A choice of flavours at the touch of a button.

Pat on the Island